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An easily understood idiom or expression is “making a mountain out of a molehill.” It dates all the way back to the 1500’s.

We all know what mountains and molehills are. One is much bigger than the other and the expression means that, sometimes, we take something almost insignificant and blow it up into another something that seems very important.

News media are great at making mountains out of molehills. In my opinion, we witnessed a great example with the president’s recent trip to the Middle East. I say “in my opinion” because that’s the way I looked at it. Obviously, there were national newspapers and news organizations that thought differently than I.

Maybe it was because the trip offered no earth-shaking results and those professionals who are charged with the reporting of important news sought to find anything of significance. Because there was no such animal as mountainous news, they scrounged around until they created a worthy molehill of a news flash.

What on earth am I writing about? It’s obvious that the biggest story to come out of the president’s trip was his fist bump with the Saudi Arabian Crown Prince. A fist bump?

Remember during the pandemic when all of the world was encouraged not to shake hands, but if you must concoct some friendly greeting with another, it was best to make your hand into a fist and lightly tap the other person who made his hand into a fist. Thus was born the fist bump. Pretty significant, uh?

President Biden and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salmon (MBS), literally, created “The Fist Bump Seen ‘Round the World.” If Walter Cronkite was still living and presenting the news, CBS would have ended their newscast with a picture of the famous fist bump and Walter saying, ‘And that’s the way it is this Friday, July 15, 2022.”

Before the Middle East trip, there had been much speculation as to whether the president would even meet with MBS. A Washington Post opinion writer, Jamal Khashoggi, had been murdered while in Istanbul in 2018. Most think that the order to kill was given by MBS. As a candidate for the presidency, Joe Biden, had condemned the murder and called MBS a “pariah.”

You’ve heard that politics can make for strange bedfellows and it’s not unusual for countries to sweep foul deeds under the rug if there are benefits. Our president paid a visit to Saudi Arabia and its most powerful politician, MBS, for the purpose of extracting an agreement for more of their oil. The cost of the deal would be a public and friendly meeting between the name-calling president and MBS.

Saudi Arabia wanted the president to come to their kingdom and publically show that all was forgiven, especially the accusation of murdering Khashoggi. The dilemma for the president, of course, was just how he could meet with one he had deemed a “pariah” and, at the same time, accomplish his goal of more oil to help with gasoline prices.

At the end of the day, the president was criticized heavily here at home and, still, didn’t get the oil for which he had begged. Not a good look.

I’ve got a good idea. Why not turn the spigot back on for the oil that is underneath the ground and off the shores of this great nation. As I recently read, the oil reserves of the United States are even greater than the Saudi Arabian nation we were visiting.

Instead of begging a country that you really don’t like, how about fist bumping a few oil industry executives in the good ole U.S.A.