Americans are feeling pain at the pump, and that means inflation for consumer goods is coming 'round the bend, but Trump offers a hearty, reassuring shrug

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Donald Trump seems to be counting on Americans to happily put up with higher gasoline prices in exchange for whatever it is he is trying to accomplish by attacking Iran. A jointly published report from Rolling Stone and Yahoo! News, however, suggests Trump is wildly miscalculating the situation, with potentially dire results for his presidency and Republican hopes in the 2026 midterms.

As someone who lived through the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973, and a similar "oil shock" in 1979, I know from firsthand experience -- along with millions of others in my age group -- that Americans do not react well to pain at the pump. If Trump doesn't know that -- and it's likely he never has pumped a gallon of gas in his life -- he is even more dense than many of us have long thought.

Under the headline "Trump Shrugs Off Skyrocketing Gas Prices as Iran War Intensifies," Nikki McCann Ramirez paints a picture that could spell trouble for Trump and his allies:

The war always comes home, and the effects of Donald Trump’s campaign against Iran are already being felt by Americans in the form of skyrocketing gas prices, which could lead to inflation and pile more economic pressure on everyday Americans. While the nation is quite literally paying the price for the president’s war, he would like everyone to please stop complaining.

“Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday afternoon. “ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY!

So anyone who has qualms about Trump's unauthorized war is a fool? That means, based on my social-media feeds, there are busloads of fools out there, typing feverishly on their devices. I happen to know that many of these people are caring, intelligent, and informed Americans. They tend to publish posts, create videos, and share memes that indicate they consider Trump to be an existential threat to American democracy.  If Trump thinks he is in a war with Iran, he should take a hard look at his March 2026 approval numbers to see that he might have even more serious problems at home. Ramirez writes:

A few days earlier, Trump dismissed the idea that prices were getting steep in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash. “I asked about rising gas prices, and he said, ‘That’s all right. It will be short term. It will go way down really quickly,’” Bash recounted. When she told Trump prices were high now, she says he replied: “No, they’re not. They’re up a little bit, not much, but it will drop to record lows.”

Prices are indeed up a lot. On Monday morning, global oil prices spiked to more than $110 a barrel — the largest surge since the Covid-19 pandemic. Nationally, the price of a gallon of gas is up to an average of $3.48 — a hefty upswing from the $1.99 Trump touted, dubiously, during his State of the Union address just a few weeks ago. The spike in gas prices — caused primarily by the Iranian blockade of the Strait of Hormuz — is threatening to spill over into virtually every industry as increased transportation costs may result in higher prices for consumer goods, and a resurgence of inflation.

When Bash asked Trump if he was going to figure out the Strait of Hormuz, Trump claimed, according to Bash, that “it’s already figured out” and that Iran’s navy had been “knocked out.”

In time, some knowledgeable figure -- assuming there are any in the Trump administration or the GOP-controlled Congress -- might rise from the mist to credibly show that Iran's navy truly has been greatly diminished. Until that happens, we are left with Trump's word -- and his word has a worth similar to that of the six casinos, hotels, and resorts Trump drove into bankruptcy. For those who persist in thinking Trump is a business titan, here is a summary of his "achievements," as uncovered by The Washington Post:

Trump’s Taj Mahal opened in April 1990 in Atlantic City, but six months later, “defaulted on interest payments to bondholders as his finances went into a tailspin,” The Washington Post’s Robert O’Harrow found. In July 1991, Trump’s Taj Mahal filed for bankruptcy. He could not keep up with debts on two other Atlantic City casinos, and those two properties declared bankruptcy in 1992. A fourth property, the Plaza Hotel in New York, declared bankruptcy in 1992 after amassing debt.

PolitiFact uncovered two more bankruptcies filed after 1992, totaling six. Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts filed for bankruptcy again in 2004, after accruing about $1.8 billion in debt. Trump Entertainment Resorts also declared bankruptcy in 2009, after being hit hard during the 2008 recession. 

What is the grim tally on all of this? Well, we knew from Trump's first term that he can't govern; it's been documented that he can't tell the truth, and now we know that his business skills pretty much begin and end with the ability to file bankruptcy petitions. 

Let's return to Rolling Stone's take on the Iran war and its deleterious effect on the U.S. economy. We learn that Trump isn't the only GOPer trying to smooth things over with the public. Nikki McCann Ramirez writes:

Republicans and figures in Trump’s administration similarly have been trying to assure Americans that everything will be all right.

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) backed the president in a Monday appearance on CNBC’s Squawk Box. “There are going to be some temporary effects on our domestic economy,” Emmer said. “But as soon as this is taken care of, those prices will tumble and people will recognize that this was a short-term cost to pay for a major long-term gain in terms of peace and security.”

Trump’s energy secretary, Chris Wright, predicted prices would be back down to normal within a month in an interview with CNN on Sunday. “You never know exactly the time frame of this, but in the worst case this is a weeks, not months, thing,” he said after Jake Tapper asked him about the historic spikes in oil prices and Trump telling Reuters “if they rise, they rise,” regarding gas prices.

Trump's buddies seem to forget that the president has offered no logical rationale for getting into the Iran war and no discernible plan for getting out of it. Ramirez writes:

The central problem with Trump’s confidence that the conflict driving this instability will be a short-term problem is that he himself cannot establish a clear end point to the offensive against Iran. What was initially sold to the public as a series of strikes has over the course of a few days evolved into a war of escalation the president refuses to pull back on unless he secures the “unconditional surrender” of Iran. If anything, the conflict seems on the precipice of escalating into full-blown regional warfare, with the Trump administration keeping open the possibility of deploying American troops to Iran.

But even as Trump attempts to project confidence, the anxiety over high prices is creeping in. Enough so that he’s suggesting potential nonmilitary courses of action. According to Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade, Trump is encouraging oil-tanker captains to “show some guts” and power through the danger.

“Here is exactly what he said: ‘These ships should go through the Strait of Hormuz and show some guts, there’s nothing to be afraid of. [The Iranians] have no navy, we sunk all their ships,’” Kilmeade recalled.

But this isn’t a game of Battleship, and no one is eager to face the possibility of a flaming shipwrecked death to help keep the price of oil down in the United States.