On Sunday, August 16, Mike Flood went on "The Hill Sunday" and was asked a simple question. Two days earlier, President Trump had told a crowd of law enforcement officers in Garden City, New York: "For you to pay a tiny little bit more for your gasoline, just remember, you're doing it so that a very evil country cannot have… a nuclear weapon." Host Chris Stirewalt put it to Nebraska's congressman directly: "The president's saying that paying high gas prices may just be part of a patriotic duty to help protect the world. Please explain."

Flood's answer:

"Well, prices are too high. I don't want to dismiss that. It's important. It's something that every single person talks about in my district and across the country. … We've done a good job on housing affordability. Obviously, I was the architect of that bill to … increase supply and bring down prices. As it relates to gas prices, you've gotta, you know … play the hand you're dealt."

Play the hand you're dealt.

Here is the thing about that phrase. It's what you say about weather. About a bad harvest. About the cards, which somebody else shuffled and somebody else dealt to you.

Mike Flood dealt this hand.

What the Hand Actually Costs

The day after that interview, AAA put the national average for regular gasoline at $4.06 a gallon — more than 92 cents higher than a year earlier. GasBuddy petroleum analyst Patrick De Haan said that was the highest ever recorded for mid-August.

Not high. Not elevated. The highest mid-August price in the history of the country.

In the same Garden City speech, Trump said of the higher prices from his war on Iran: "I'll never apologize, I did the right thing."

That is the hand. Now here is who dealt it.

He Voted Six Times to Protect the Tariffs

Flood has defended Trump's tariffs from the start. Days after the first round took effect in March 2025, he told reporters that "the right to place tariffs on countries is solely the right of a president" — "And so I have to trust the president." He voted six separate times to protect them — including in April 2025, when he voted to shield the tariffs from any check.

Tariffs are a tax. The Tax Foundation estimates the tariffs raised taxes by an average of about $1,000 per American household in 2025. And Nebraska has taken the hit twice over — farmers bracing for harvest as tariffs and low prices hit, and manufacturers from chocolate makers to farm-equipment companies calling them pain points.

When "every single person" in his district talks to him about prices, they are describing a bill he voted six times to keep them paying.

He Voted to Keep Us in the War

The gas price is not an act of God either. Iran has shut down the Strait of Hormuz — the shipping route Flood himself named on air, where roughly 20 percent of the world's oil and gas exports originate.

On July 23, the House voted 214–208 to order U.S. forces out of a war with Iran that Congress never authorized. It passed, over the objection of 207 of the 211 Republicans who voted. Flood was one of 182 Republicans we track who voted no — voting to keep American forces in the war whose disruption is driving the price he now describes as a hand he was dealt.

He had a chance to fold. He voted to stay at the table.

And He's Been Paid

Pro-Israel PACs, led by AIPAC, have given Mike Flood $48,340, according to TrackAIPAC's tally of FEC filings through July 5, 2026.

That is not a side note in a story about Iran policy. It is a running theme across the party — we've documented how a handful of billionaires bought the Republican Party's foreign policy — and Flood is on the receiving end of it while telling Nebraskans that the resulting price at the pump is just how the cards fell.

The Tell: What He Said Next

Stirewalt then asked Flood a fair question. Democrats made this exact argument during the inflation spike after Russia invaded Ukraine, and Republicans hammered them for it. Was there any "reverse sympathy"?

Flood didn't engage with it at all. He answered:

"Right now, ironically, Republicans are united, and Democrats are busy trying to defund the police, close prisons, and [cancel] Thanksgiving because it's a colonist holiday, have government grocery stores."

A Nebraskan filling up at record prices got a culture-war riff about Thanksgiving.

That is what happens when a politician has no defense of his own record: he changes the subject to something you're supposed to be angrier about than your grocery bill.

Even Karl Rove Isn't Buying It

You do not have to take a Democrat's word for any of this. Karl Rove — George W. Bush's White House adviser, as Republican as the job gets — said on Fox News that Trump should stop "gaslighting" Americans about the economy:

"The president made a mistake, in my opinion, last week in saying we've got the greatest economy in the history of the world and prices for groceries and gasoline and everything are coming down rapidly. That's not the experience of the American people."

Flood's own instinct in the interview was the same — "prices are too high. I don't want to dismiss that." He knows. He said so on television. Then he dismissed it anyway.

What Nebraskans Are Owed

In May 2026, ahead of a Flood town hall in Madison County, the group Nebraska For Us asked him to prioritize policies that lower prices for Nebraskans struggling to pay the bills: "From rolling back tariffs and providing refunds to ending the war and eventually lowering gas prices, there are many moves our leaders could take." They were asking for the thing he keeps saying he understands.

This is not the first time Flood's public explanation hasn't matched his voting record. He voted to strip federal courts of their power to enforce their own orders, then told a town hall he hadn't read that part of the bill.

There is a pattern in how Mike Flood handles the gap between what he votes for and what his constituents live with. He doesn't defend the vote. He describes the consequence as something that simply happened — a provision he didn't read, a hand he was dealt.

Somebody dealt it. He was holding the deck.

Source

• GOP Rep. Mike Flood says 'too high' prices are worth stopping Iran's nuclear ambitions — Ryan Mancini, The Hill, August 16, 2026. Photo: Greg Nash / The Hill.