A farmer told a reporter this month that at these fuel prices he just cannot survive. I believe him. I have no interest in arguing with a man holding a diesel receipt.

Diesel is averaging around $6.52 a gallon. A year ago it was $3.69. It crossed $6 for the first time in history earlier this month and kept climbing.

Back in the spring, before this latest spike, farmers had already spent $1.4 billion more on diesel than the year before. That is a 63 percent jump in the cost of putting a crop in the ground.

So I understand why people are angry, and I understand why some of that anger has landed on the President. When a number that big moves that fast, it feels like somebody must have done it on purpose.

Except that is not how diesel works, and I would rather tell you something true than something satisfying.

Diesel does not come from a wish. It comes from a refinery, and the world is short on refineries that can make it. Since the war with Iran began in February the national average has climbed roughly 60 percent.

On the other side of the world, Ukraine has spent this year putting drones into Russian refineries with real success, and every one of those hits takes distillate capacity off the global board. You can be glad about that campaign or furious about it. You cannot pretend it fails to show up at a truck stop in West Virginia.

No American president sets the price of a barrel. He does not set refinery throughput on the other side of the ocean either. A President can open leases, cut permitting, fill or drain a reserve, lean on allies, and he is doing those things and is now pushing to restrict diesel exports to keep more of the supply here at home.

Analysts think an export ban will not move the price much. They may well be right. It is still a man reaching for levers that exist rather than the ones people wish existed.

I have watched conservatives spend 4 years explaining to liberals that a president does not control fuel prices. We were right then. That argument did not stop being true the day our guy was the one in the chair.

Now the honest part, because I am not interested in defending anybody with half a story. The war with Iran is his. That is his decision and his to answer for.

If you want to argue the war was not worth this, that is a real argument and you are entitled to make it. Make that one. It is a different argument than saying he raised the price of your fuel, and only one of the two is actually true.

Blame the man for the decisions he made. There are enough of them to keep us busy. A refinery burning in another hemisphere is not one of them.