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Wright on Fox News: Driving Energy Prices Down Within 12 Months; NNSA Staffing Reversal Was a Mistake Caught Immediately, Feb. 20, 2025

February 20, 2025 · U.S. Department of Energy · 0:02:20

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

Energy Secretary Chris Wright told Fox News hosts Sandra Smith and John Roberts that President Trump is angry at what happened to American consumers and wants to drive down prices — not just electricity, but heating, gasoline, and products — to drive inflation down across the board, according to Wright. Asked whether cutting electricity bills in half within 12 months, as candidate Trump had pledged, is still achievable, Wright said there is a lot of low-hanging fruit, costs to businesses will be reduced, production will be encouraged, and significant progress will be seen in the next 12 months, according to the interview.

On DOGE and staff cuts, Wright said the Washington bureaucracy has huge inertia and government keeps growing — his department grew headcount by 20 percent during the last administration, he said — so the administration will move aggressively, according to the interview. He acknowledged a problem at the National Nuclear Security Administration, where staff were cut and had to be brought back, calling it a mistake that was reversed immediately, and said moving aggressively to make big change will not be perfect, according to Wright.

Asked where the national average gasoline price — $3.16 that day — would be by year’s end, Wright said he did not know, but hopefully and likely lower than that, according to the interview.

Why it matters

The short interview is an early-tenure accountability moment: the secretary’s 12-month progress expectation on prices and his on-record admission of the NNSA staffing error, in his own words.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard candidate: Wright said on February 20, 2025 that significant progress on driving energy prices down would be seen in the next 12 months, and predicted gasoline would likely be lower than $3.16 by year’s end. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; no verdict is entered here.

Sources: U.S. Department of Energy, “Secretary Wright joins FOX News’s Sandra Smith & John Roberts - February 20th, 2025”, 2025-02-20 (official upload, embedded above; published 2025-02-20). Transcript via Supadata (private research store, paraphrased and attributed, not republished). All figures and characterizations as stated by the speakers.