Things got crazy on Twitter this week when people interpreted a statement made by a Biden official to mean that Biden is coming for gas stoves and might even be planning on banning them. Was that threat of gas stove confiscation real? Not really, as the AP reported, saying:
The Biden administration has come under fire this week due to overcooked fears that it is planning a nationwide ban on gas stoves.
The claim was sparked by comments from a Consumer Product Safety Commission official published Monday that “any option is on the table” when it comes to regulating gas stoves, amid growing health concerns over the appliances. In the days after, discussion online evoked images of the government dragging four-burner cooktops from homes, as social media users shared memes of gas stoves with text like, “Don’t Tread On Me.”
[…]The White House says President Joe Biden would not support a ban, and the commission, an independent agency, says no such ban is in the works.
“I am not looking to ban gas stoves and the CPSC has no proceeding to do so,” CPSC Chair Alex Hoehn-Saric said in a statement on Wednesday.
So, whether they actually never intended on banning gas stoves or just backed off after the public freaked out, Team Biden is now saying it doesn’t want to ban gas stoves.
But that didn’t stop conservative and libertarian political figures from sounding off on Twitter and using the incident to make a point about standing up to Big Government, or at least about their wanting to be seen as standing up to Big Government.
Congressman Ronny Jackson of Texas, for example, tweeted “I’ll NEVER give up my gas stove. If the maniacs in the White House come for my stove, they can pry it from my cold dead hands. COME AND TAKE IT!!”
Joining him in performative, pro-gas stove messaging was current Florida Governor and like 2024 candidate Ron DeSantis, who said:
“Yeah, when you have inflation the way it is, there are certain things that you may decide, okay, you know, this is going I mean, some of the grocery is unbelievable how much some of this stuff’s going up.
“So you see some things maybe go up, maybe you make a different choice. But you know, you really don’t have a choice about whether you go to work or not, I mean, you gotta go. So you have a lot of people that are racking up big tolls, and those bills are gonna be cut in half, that’s gonna save commuters, hundreds of dollars, but some, it’ll save 1000s of dollars, because some of them are paying three $400 a month, in tolls for doing around and doing their job.
“So we’re happy to be able to do that. And again, we wouldn’t have been able to do that. If we didn’t have really strong fiscal reserves. Very good. Our economy has continued to outperform the nation. We’re going to do more tax relief in the upcoming legislative session.
“I’ve mentioned some of this stuff in the fall about how we’re going to make basically raising kids tax free. No tax on diapers, wipes, children’s clothes, strollers, cribs, none of that stuff going to be too late for me and my and my wife and our kids, they’re getting the you know, five, four and, and two now but for for younger families be able to do it. It’s going to be really, really important because again, those are things you just have to buy.
“You got to buy the diapers, you got to buy these things. So that’s going to save families a lot of money. You know, we may even say no tax on gas stoves coming up this year won’t do that. That’s fine with me. I want you to be able to have a choice.”
Watch DeSantis here:
Gov. Ron DeSantis: “We may even say no tax on gas stoves coming up this year. We’ll do that—that’s fine with me! I want you to be able to have a choice.”
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) January 18, 2023
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