Is Joe Biden a Republican plant? Seriously. Is he some behind-the-back triple-bank-shot ingeniously foisted upon the American people in order to bring the nation to its knees and then bring Donald Trump and his “ultra-MAGA agenda” back to the White House amid pomp and palm fronds?

Well, okay, not seriously. But we ask because everything “Mr. 81 Million Votes” does seems to Make America Worse, seems to Put America Last, and seems to cause the American people to yearn for those awful ultra-MAGA days — you know, those days in the not-too-distant past when we were energy independent and the price at the pump was $2.39 a gallon. Or less. These days, you’re paying somewhere around $4.40 a gallon, which, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, is yet another all-time record.

It’s as if the guy’s on a nationwide tour, slapping “I DID THAT” stickers like so much Flex Tape on every gas pump in America.

Joe Brandon has nothing, though, if not an impeccable sense of timing. Yesterday, for example, on the very day that gas prices hit the aforementioned record high (before being broken again today), his administration canceled one of the most high-profile oil and gas lease sales pending before the Department of the Interior. As Fox Business reports: “The DOI halted the potential to drill for oil in over 1 million acres in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, along with two lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico. The move comes as Biden has taken a few actions to combat high gas prices, despite his administration’s generally hostile approach to the oil industry.”

What the heck?

Recall that Scranton Joe had hardly leaned back and put his feet upon the Resolute Desk when he signed an executive order suspending new oil and gas leases on federal lands. He finally resumed the new leasing last month due to court challenges against his ban, but his green legal team is appealing the ruling that forced his hand. After all, this is the guy who canceled the Keystone XL pipeline on his very first day in office.

There’s a word for behavior like this: zealotry. And another, especially when the nation teeters on the brink of a recession: imbecility.

And the excuse from the eco-theologians is always the same. As our Nate Jackson pointed out recently: “Democrats love to dismiss drilling or pipelines as solutions to today’s high gas prices because it’ll take so long to get oil to the gas pump. But what they’ve done is, for decades, hamper the production process and then point to that slow process as ‘proof’ that we can’t drill our way out of the current mess. Donald Trump proved just the opposite — unleashing American energy production could yield incredible results within a few months.”

As for the Biden administration’s claim that there’s an abundance of leases out there that aren’t being used by the oil and gas industry, it’s rubbish. Industry experts note that these leases take years to explore, to develop, and to produce on. The truth is that Joe Biden is hell-bent on killing American energy production. And, sadly, he’s succeeding.

Is a “California Summer” in our future? City Journal’s Steve Malanga thinks so:

Soaring gasoline and electricity prices may turn out to be only part of Americans’ energy woes this summer. In recent months, a host of power suppliers have issued warnings that millions of residents could endure rolling blackouts because of the growing inability of America’s evolving energy infrastructure to meet power needs. From western states like Utah, Colorado, and California to midwestern states like Illinois, energy providers have cautioned that rising prices, shortages due to the closure of some coal and nuclear plants, and the unreliability of renewables like wind and solar have reduced energy surpluses. That’s left some places with little margin for error during peak usage times in mid-summer — potentially prompting the kind of blackouts California saw last year.

Joe Biden did that. And just think: 15 miserable months down, and only 33 to go.