Scene from a new Jeff Hurd ad titled “Fight for American Energy” that’s running on local TV
We had hoped that maybe Jeff Hurd, a home-grown Grand Junction Republican running to represent Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District in Washington, D.C., might be a slightly more honest politician than we’ve had in the CD-3 office for several years now, but Hurd just disappointed us all.
He put out a new TV ad two days ago in which he straight-up lies to viewers.
Hurd casts himself as a strong proponent of fossil fuels in the ad, showing piles of coal and people filling up their cars at gas pumps. But he lies to viewers right out of the gate by making a false claim that “Biden is waging war on American energy.”
Whether we like it or not, that’s hardly the case.
Jeffrey S. Hurd (Photo: G.J. Chamber)
A March, 2024 report by J.P. Morgan (pdf) says (on p.19) that “the U.S. has achieved energy independence for the first time in 40 years,” and the U.S. Energy Information Administration says that in 2022, total U.S. energy exports were the highest on record. In fact, under President Biden, the U.S. is producing more oil than Donald Trump did. As of March 11, 2024, the U.S. was the largest oil producer in the world for the 6th year in a row, so it’s unclear where Hurd’s supposed “war on American energy” is.
Then, 21 seconds into the ad, Hurd says he will “oppose Joe Biden’s ban on gas cars.”
A ban on gas cars?
That’s another lie aimed purely at generating anger among his Republican supporters.
President Biden has not banned gas cars.
What is Hurd talking about, then?
In 2023, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a rule aimed at reducing vehicle emissions by boosting sales of electric cars. The rule was finalized this year. It calls for automakers to increase sales of electric vehicles to 67% of all new passenger cars and light-duty trucks by 2032. Car makers can also meet the requirements by having all-electric vehicles account for 56% of sales, and plug-in hybrids account for 13%. The lowered emission standards are key to slowing climate change, and apply only to cars sold after 2027. All existing vehicles currently on the road, including gas and diesel-powered vehicles, are unaffected.
As of May, 2024, twelve U.S. states have enacted laws banning gas-powered cars after 2035, but those decisions are being made by the states, not the federal government, and Colorado is not one of them. Instead, Gov. Polis is having state agencies focus on making EVs more affordable and practical, with a goal of having EVs account for 80% of all new car sales in Colorado by 2032.
It would be refreshing if Republicans would stop lying to people to try to win their votes, and instead tried doing it by proposing new, innovative and positive ideas instead.
I’m told he is a good guy by those who have known him for many years, but apparently he is a political neophyte and is taking bad advice. He appears to think that he must lie to win the primary, but by lying now, he has tarred himself and placed himself in the Trump/BoBo camp. He takes his kids when he campaigns—how will they feel when they learn that the ends justify the means and facts are alternative? Perhaps another well meaning man who has allowed himself to be corrupted, rather easily it appears.
Yes. When did “win at all costs” become the mantra of the GOP.
When they realized that the majority of the American population doesn’t agree with them.
For ever illusory “good guy” and “family man” running as a GOP candidate is the pile of (dark) money and promise of power that got in the race to begin with. So mark my words, you can countdown to his next ad full of lies and paranoia rhetoric will be about…….the hordes pouring over the border.
The state party is piss broke too, so these ads aren’t going to run for long nor much further than local gas stations and cheap broadcast affiliates that nobody watches anyway. It’s delightful to see this pig-pen race, among so many others both in CO and swing states elsewhere, are all being run by a bunch of four star clowns who are gonna end up giving the whole circus away (to the Dems).
Call him out on his lies. Back them up as you did in this coverage and don’t stop at one time. Send info to local television stations etc. Write a comment in the Daily Sentinel. Promote who you want to win if you want to spend your energy on this in a productive solutionary endeavor.
If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win without being blatant dishonest, they will not abandon conservatism. They will just reject reality and choose to believe their own rhetoric.
Jeff has started his political career with a series of lies. We call some body that lies, a liar. We elected a liar in Boebert, and we have seen just how well that worked for us. She spent her entire time in office lying about her finances, the money she stole from her campaign coffers to pay her taxes on her failed restaurant, and travelling on the taxpayer’s dime to every evangelical punkin doings and Nazi rally that she could find even if there were only a dozen fanatics attending. Meanwhile never holding an announced and open town hall with her constituents.
Jeff has started out in the very same way, and we deserve honest representation, by an honest person, Jeff has already failed us, we cannot afford to have yet another screechy liar be sent to Washington by the voters of CD3.
Maybe Hurd was just pointing to the fact that Biden’s EPA has unilaterally (without Congress) enacted regulations which will, in the near future and to save the planet, ban the sale of ICE vehicles beyond the EPA’s unilaterally and arbitrarily decided upon deadlines and thresholds.
Thank goodness Biden isn’t a dictator like Trump!
Oh boy, oh boy…we certainly don’t want to “save the planet”. Good grief, there is no end to the excuses used to justify Trumpian idiocracy!
Here’s a fact check you clown; EPA regulations do not nor have ever gone through Congress. But go on…keep ginning up those inane whatabout-ism comments and subversive defenses of these right-wing lunatics. It’s a pathetic and impotent effort; but certainly reflects the desperate and depraved nature of GOP rhetoric.
No GOP candidate can have an independent thought, as they must follow the Great Authoritarian Idiot, where truth and reality is only what he decides and pronounces to his cult. I could never have imagined all GOP could become completely self serving syncophants.
There is no shortage of local home grown idiots spewing the Fox garbage rhetoric like Hurd.
Give him a break. He’s trying to win a primary with an extremely conservative electorate who votes in primaries. When the general election rolls around, let’s see what he says. He’s many orders of magnitude better than Boebert.
Another Republican pathological liar like Blowbert and nothing changes with these clowns!
So who is he lying to? Far-right primary voters, general election voters, or both?
And why is any of that OK?