I don’t usually play the If-Donald-Trump-Had-Done-This-The-Left-Wing-Media-Would-Lose-Its-Mind parlor game, but I will today.

How do you suppose the media would have reacted if Donald Trump had drained America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserves in a Hail Mary effort to salvage a Republican majority in Congress?

Be honest. Would Trump have gotten away with it?

No, he wouldn’t. And neither should Joe Biden.

It’s worth remembering why the reserves were created: They were started 1975 after the first crippling OPEC oil embargo. Those of us who were around back then remember waiting in interminable odd-even gas lines to fill our tanks.

It was maddening.

Once America realized the country could be brought to its knees by a disruption in  global oil production, the U.S. decided it needed an insurance policy: We began to amass huge reserves of crude oil to protect our national interests in the future.

In case you’re interested, the reserved petroleum is stored at four Gulf Coast locations in underground salt caverns. Two are in Louisiana - at Bayou Choctaw and West Hackberry- and two are in Texas, at Big Hill and Bryan Mound.

At full capacity, the caverns can hold 714 million barrels. On October 14 there were only 405 million barrels remaining, the lowest level since 1984.

Joe Biden sold our safety net.

We are now in a precarious strategic situation should global production be hit by a sudden rupture, thanks to the Biden Administration, which declared war on fossil fuels on Biden’s first day in office. Almost immediately, the price at the pump began to rise. This past summer, prices soared to an average of more than $5 a gallon everywhere, with California spiking at over 7 bucks a gallon.

Not coincidentally, the president’s already anemic approval rating plummeted as gas prices rose. And Democrats - who ghoulishly pinned their election hopes on abortion - saw their prospects of success in the mid-terms dim.

Instead of green-lighting more oil production in the U.S., Biden began recklessly releasing crude from the reserves, which temporarily reversed some of the price increases.

Over the past two weeks, however, the price at the pump began ticking up again. Nationally, it’s risen about 18 cents.

Democrats are panicking.

To save his majority in Congress, Biden begged Saudi Arabia not to cut oil production. Or at least wait until after the mid-terms to do it. They ignored the president’s entreaties and slashed production by 2 million barrels a day. Double what had been expected.

There were rumors that Biden was ready to crawl to Venezuela and beg the corrupt Madura government for oil, but thought better of it.

Instead, Biden - a crass political animal - is expected to announce that he’s going to release another 10 to 15 million barrels from the SPR in the next three weeks in a pathetic attempt to temporarily lower gas prices in the run-up to the election.

That brings Biden’s oil-releasing orgy to at least 180 million barrels. The largest release - by a large margin - ever.

The Washington Post reports that in the past the SPR were tapped only in genuine emergencies. For instance: In 1991, President George H.W. Bush released 17 million barrels during the Gulf War. In 2005 President George W. Bush released 20.8 million barrels in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which caused massive disruptions in Gulf oil production. In 2012, President Barack Obama released 30 million barrels due to disruptions in Libyan oil production. And in 2017, President Donald Trump released 5 million barrels after Gulf Coast refineries were damaged by Hurricane Harvey.

Now we have Biden, wantonly draining our reserves in a doomed attempt to help Democrats.

It’s time someone in Biden’s inner circle told the old man that his poll numbers are not a national emergency. Just a national disgrace.