Trump Is Trying to Bully Oil Tankers to Sail Through a Conflict Zone

President Donald Trump says he wants hundreds of ships to “show some guts” and sail through the war zone he created.

Speaking to Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade Sunday, Trump tried to bully shipping companies into reopening the Strait of Hormuz—where global trade has come to a screeching halt amid Iran’s retaliation to U.S. and Israeli strikes.

“These ships should go through the Strait of Hormuz and show some guts, there’s nothing to be afraid of,” Trump said.

“They have no Navy, we sunk all their ships,” he added.

The halt of trade in and out of the Persian Gulf has quickly rippled out into the global supply chain, sending oil prices skyrocketing. Last week, Trump offered to send the U.S. Navy to escort ships through the essential passageway, but the surplus of stopped ships is likely too great for American assets to assist. On Sunday, more than 1,000 vessels waited to sail through, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Appearing on Fox Sunday, Energy Secretary Chris Wright pledged that “energy will flow soon” through the Strait of Hormuz, and that energy prices were only rising out of concerns that the conflict could become a “drawn-out crisis.”

While Trump has insisted he only wants the war to last four weeks, U.S. Central Command is making plans to keep fighting until September, and the Pentagon is eyeing a request for supplemental defense funds. Trump and other top administration officials have also refused to rule out deploying troops to Iran. Why would that sound drawn-out?

The current standstill at the Strait of Hormuz is unprecedented. “In the whole written history of the strait, it has never been closed, ever,” JPMorgan Chase analyst Natasha Kaneva told the Journal. “To me, it was not just the worst-case scenario. It was an unthinkable scenario.”

President Trump’s sons are trying to sell drones to the Pentagon.

Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. are merging their publicly traded golf-course holding company with Powerus, a Florida-based drone company, with the goal of filling the gaps left by the Trump administration’s ban on Chinese drones.

The drone market “is certainly going to grow faster than, say, golf courses are,” Powerus CEO Andrew Fox told The Wall Street Journal.

The Trump-backed investment firm American Ventures, the Trump-backed investment bank Dominari Securities, and drone parts maker Unusual Machines, the latter of which Trump Jr. is a shareholder and advisory board member of, are involved in the public merger. Eric Trump is also invested in Israeli drone maker Xtend.

Powerus wants to build more than 10,000 drones a month.

While the financial and political impacts of this merger remain to be seen, it is impossible to ignore that as drone usage ratchets up, as the Trump administration blocks drones from China, and as Trump wages war in Iran using AI, the president’s sons and their investment firms are immediately at the scene ready to reap any benefits they can find. Family corruption has been a defining aspect of Trump’s second term, so much so that his sons investing in drones while he starts what may be yet another violent, drawn-out war in the Middle East is just another headline.

“Raise your hand if you elected @realDonaldTrump so his kids could make money off of government contracts,” one large pro-Trump X account complained.

“Rushing to cash in on Daddy’s failed war before they’ve even gotten Barron and Kai to enlist,” another large account on the liberal end of the spectrum wrote. “Truly deplorable behavior, but what we expect from these corrupt reprobates.”

Fox News does not air reality.

The conservative broadcaster caused uproar on Sunday when it showed footage of a December 2025 dignified transfer rather than the one honoring six U.S. soldiers recently killed in Kuwait. The big difference: Donald Trump dared to don his own merch—a white-and-gold USA baseball cap—for the funereal procession that took place over the weekend, an exploitative fashion faux pas that was apparently too egregious for the network to air.

But the error forced Fox & Friends weekend co-host Griff Jenkins to apologize.

“We want to acknowledge a mistake made earlier on our program,” Jenkins said. “During our coverage of yesterday’s dignified transfer, we inadvertently aired video from an older dignified transfer instead of the ceremony that took place yesterday. We deeply regret the error and extend our respect and condolences to the servicemembers’ families.”

So far, seven U.S. soldiers have lost their lives fighting Iran. The six service members honored in the weekend ceremony were Capt. Cody Khork, 35; Sgt. 1st Class Noah Tietjens, 42; Sgt. 1st Class Nicole Amor, 39; Sgt. Declan Coady, 20; Maj. Jeffrey O’Brien, 45; and Chief Warrant Officer 3 Robert Marzan, 54, of the 103rd Sustainment Command.

“All American heroes,” Jenkins said.

The Pentagon announced Sunday that a seventh troop had been killed when Iran struck a Saudi military base on March 1. The seventh troop has not yet been identified.

Exactly how the network could have mistaken the event is not clear, considering that the broadcasting software used to pull clips for air sorts them chronologically. Beyond that, Fox News is the largest media company in America—they should know how to put together a show. If they don’t, then the network’s morbid flub warrants scrutiny of all their broadcasts, and whether the conservative machine is capable of documenting and relaying the real world.

Trump’s casual disregard for American troops, however, has been going on for years. He has requested that wounded veterans be kept out of military parades; refused to visit a World War II graveyard; derided deceased soldiers as “suckers” and “losers”; and claimed that the Presidential Medal of Freedom he awarded to one of his billionaire donors was “much better” than the nation’s highest military honor, the Medal of Honor. Trump doesn’t have any military experience of his own, however, thanks to a conveniently timed bone-spur diagnosis that helped him skirt the Vietnam War draft in 1968.

Meanwhile, the president is privately warming to the idea of deploying U.S. troops on the ground in Iran, showing “serious interest” to the possibility of keeping a small contingent there for “specific strategic purposes,” reported NBC News. Trump’s vision for Iran involves controlling the government, securing its uranium, and leeching off its oil supply, similar to how the White House infiltrated Venezuela in January, according to internal sources that spoke with NBC.

When it comes to Donald Trump’s illegal war in Iran, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham says it’s time to get rich or die trying. For other people, of course, not him personally.

Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Graham described Trump’s military campaign in Iran as a “good investment” toward security—but clearly, he saw another upside, too.

“When this regime goes down, we’re gonna have a new Mid-East, we’re gonna make a ton of money, no one will threaten the Straits of Hormuz again,” Graham said.

How exactly would the United States get rich off of Trump’s illegal war? By installing a friendlier regime it could “partner” with on energy deals. “Venezuela and Iran have 31 percent of the world’s oil reserves. We’re gonna have a partnership with 31 percent of the known reserves,” he said. “This is China’s nightmare.”

Later on Sunday, Graham took to social media to criticize Israel’s strikes on three Iranian oil depots, while claiming the goal was to keep infrastructure intact and “liberate” Iran. You’ll have to remind me, do liberation plans often make foreign super powers rich?

The South Carolina Republican also urged other Middle Eastern nations to join the effort. “Has any Arab country struck Iran? Now if you want a treaty with the United States, you need to get in this fight. Now America is not going to the Mid East just to fight alone,” he said.

His plea doesn’t seem to have gone over well abroad. UAE billionaire Khalaf Ahmad Al Habtoor called out Graham in a post on X Monday.

“Senator Graham says they are ‘the Arabs’ allies’ and that we need and benefit from U.S. protection. And I say to him: We do not need your protection. All we want from you is to keep your hands off us,” he wrote.

Graham is on the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committees, and will be a key decision maker on approving any potential supplemental defense funding.

Even GOP Senator Lindsey Graham—one of the most hawkish, warmongering politicians in this country—has come out against Israel’s recent attacks on Iran, specifically the fuel-supply bombings in Tehran that caused black oil to rain from the sky on Sunday morning.

“Our allies in Israel have shown amazing capability when it comes to collapsing the murderous regime in Iran. America is most appreciative. However, there will be a day soon that the Iranian people will be in charge of their own fate, not the murderous ayatollah’s regime,” Graham wrote Sunday on X. “In that regard, please be cautious about what targets you select. Our goal is to liberate the Iranian people in a fashion that does not cripple their chance to start a new and better life when this regime collapses. The oil economy of Iran will be essential to that endeavor.”

Israel struck at least three oil depots in the Kuhak and Shahran areas of Tehran on Saturday night, releasing “significant quantities of toxic hydrocarbon compounds, sulfur, and nitrogen oxides” into the air and putting thousands of Iranians at risk of skin burns and lung damage.

The goal of “liberation” that Graham mentions is hard to take seriously as the U.S. and Israel bomb elementary schools. But their concern for oil—especially as costs skyrocket worldwide—is very serious.

Graham wasn’t the only U.S. insider more bothered by the oil attack than the more than 1,300 Iranian casualties. “We don’t think it was a good idea,” an anonymous senior U.S. official told Axios. And according to an Israeli official, the U.S. response to their attack was “WTF.” A White House adviser told Axios that “the president doesn’t like the attack. He wants to save the oil. He doesn’t want to burn it. And it reminds people of higher gas prices.”

The American and Israeli war on Iran is causing oil prices to skyrocket, fueling alarm around the world. 

Finance ministers from the Group of Seven, a collection of the world’s seven wealthiest nations, plan to meet on Monday to discuss a possible joint release of their emergency oil reserves in an effort to lower prices, Reuters reports. South Korea also plans to cap fuel prices for the first time in close to 30 years. 

At an emergency meeting, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung called the war “a significant burden on our ⁠economy, which is highly dependent on global trade and energy imports from the Middle East.” Japan, which imports close to 95 percent of its oil from the Middle East, is reportedly preparing to release oil from its reserves, although no decision has been made yet. 

Vietnam has removed its import tariffs on fuel, while Bangladesh has shut down its universities to conserve energy. Last week, China asked its refiners to suspend fuel exports and cancel any existing oil shipments. 

In the Middle East itself, Iraq cut production in its oil fields by 70 percent, while Qatar, the world’s second-leading liquefied natural gas producer, has halted natural gas exports. Kuwait Petroleum Corp cut oil output on Saturday and declared force majeure, meaning that it can’t fulfill its contractual obligations. Bahrain’s state-owned Bapco Energies also declared force majeure on Monday after its refiners were attacked.  

Trump is trying to deflect concern about the oil price surge, posting on Truth Social Sunday night, “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. ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY!” But that’s of little comfort to the rest of the world. Oil prices have shot up to over $110 a barrel, the highest levels since the pandemic. With no plan in place for the war’s aftermath and no end in sight, it doesn’t look like things will get better anytime soon. 

Democrats are preparing to launch investigations into Kristi Noem’s conduct at the Department of Homeland Security.

Noem was removed from her post Thursday by President Trump, who has appointed her as the newly created special envoy for “The Shield of Americas.” But now, Democrats in Congress as well as Minnesota Governor Tim Walz are taking aim at Noem for the widespread misconduct and lawless behavior at DHS under her watch.

“We need a reckoning with the fact that there were murders that took place under her watch,” Representative Jamie Raskin told NBC News Thursday after her removal. “There was mass violence and violation of people’s civil rights and civil liberties. There’s been intense corruption, and there’s been rampant lying in the courts and disobeying of court orders.”

“She abused her power. She engaged in corruption. She spent millions of taxpayer funds on a luxury jet fleet with beautiful bedrooms, and her masked federal agents killed Americans,” Representative Ted Lieu said. “We’ll definitely investigate anyone within DHS who violated criminal law.”

Senator Richard Blumenthal, the ranking member of the Senate’s permanent subcommittee on investigations, wants the panel to investigate Noem for perjury because at a hearing Tuesday, she denied that her aide and rumored boyfriend, Corey Lewandowski, had any say in how DHS handled its funding.

“Her firing doesn’t absolve her or relieve her of potential liability for perjury,” Blumenthal said. “We are going to pursue an investigation of the evidence that she lied, because it relates to corruption in the administration.”

Blumenthal sent a letter to Noem Wednesday pointing out that DHS records showed Lewandowski personally signing off on agency contracts, with DHS personnel seeing his signature at departmental approval. “There are criminal penalties for knowingly and willfully making materially false statements or representations to Congress,” Blumenthal wrote.

Referring to DHS operations in his state that left two Americans dead, Walz said on MS NOW Thursday, “I would just say at this time that former Secretary Noem should probably get used to spending more time in Minnesota because I have a pretty good feeling in the future she may be doing that because we have got to get accountability.”

Walz isn’t the only state governor who thinks Noem should face consequences. Governor JB Pritzker of Illinois said in a video statement, “I can guarantee you you will still be held accountable,” while California Governor Gavin Newsom posted on X, “Firing her is not enough.” With all of these officials looking to hold her accountable, Noem may spend the rest of Trump’s presidency trying to escape criminal charges.

On Thursday, Texas GOP Representative Tony Gonzales dropped his reelection bid in Texas’s 23rd district amid an ethics investigation into reports that he had an affair with one of his staffers who later killed herself. His primary opponent—and now de facto GOP nominee—is Brandon Herrera, who is going viral for being a Nazi apologist.

Herrera, a right-wing, pro-gun YouTuber who goes by “The AK Guy,” has plenty of troubling red flags.

On Friday, a recent podcast clip began circulating featuring Herrera joking about Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

“That’s my copy at my house next to a bunch of the German stick grenades,” Herrera said, showing a co-host a picture on his phone. “I got the 1939 edition printed in English, just because I thought it was wild that you couldn’t buy it on Amazon, but you could buy The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital.” Mein Kampf is very much available on Amazon, making Herrera’s lazy and ahistorical equivocation all the more troubling.

In other past clips, Hererra has goose-stepped to a Nazi song, expressed affinity toward the white supremacist Dutch settlers who fought against locals and Communists in the Rhodesian Bush War, and referred to the Civil War as the “war of Northern aggression” while wearing a Confederate-flag shirt.

“I stand by it, this shit was funny as hell,” Herrera remarked on Friday, referring to the Nazi goose-stepping reenactment.

One man tied to a massive ethics breach and brutal suicide switched out for a man who has an unhealthy obsession with the far right and its weapons. Just another day in the MAGA-verse.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement are trying to deport a journalist covering immigration, in one of the most egregious attacks on freedom of speech under Donald Trump’s administration so far, Migrant Insider reported Friday.

Estefany Maria Rodríguez Flores, a reporter who’d been covering a series of immigration raids in Nashville, Tennessee, was headed to the gym with her husband Wednesday when her vehicle was swarmed by federal agents. Her car bore the name of her newsroom, Nashville Noticias.

The agents did not produce a warrant for her arrest, her attorney told Migrant Insider. They simply presented her with a Notice to Appear—the first of many steps toward deportation.

Rodríguez Flores, who entered the country legally in 2021 and later married a U.S. citizen, was in the process of applying for permanent residency. When her recent appointment with Immigration and Customs Enforcement was canceled and an agent was unable to find her name in the system, she got a handwritten note rescheduling her for a meeting March 17—in less than two weeks.

It wasn’t immediately clear where Rodríguez was taken.

“We don’t know where she is,” her husband, Alejandro, who is still in Tennessee with their child, told Migrant Insider. He hasn’t been able to speak to her since Wednesday.

The ICE detainee locator originally placed her in Alabama, but then she disappeared altogether, the outlet reported. She now appears to have been transferred to the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center, where detainees have alleged repeated sexual assault.

Rodríguez is a reporter for Nashville Noticias, a local Spanish-language outlet that serves as a lifeline to immigrant communities most affected by the Trump administration’s sweeping deportation scheme. Rodríguez often reported critically on immigration policy, her attorney told Migrant Insider.

Her abduction follows the shocking arrests of former CNN host Don Lemon and local journalist Georgia Fort, who were reporting on a protest at Cities Church in Minnesota. In October, Mario Guevara, an Atlanta-based Spanish-language reporter, was deported after being arrested at a No Kings protest. Guevara’s removal was widely criticized as the first case of a journalist being deported in retaliation for their work under the Trump administration.

President Donald Trump on Friday demanded Iran’s “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER,” but what does that look like? According to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, that’s up to Trump himself and not Iran.

“What the president means is that when he as commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces determines that Iran no longer poses a threat to the United States of America and the goals of Operation Epic Fury has been fully realized, than Iran will essentially be in a place of unconditional surrender, whether they say it themselves or not,” Leavitt said Friday, in response to a reporter asking whether Trump means that “the regime has to fully relinquish control.”

“Frankly, they don’t have a lot of people to say that for them because the United States and the State of Israel have completely wiped out more than 50 leaders of the former terrorist regime, including the supreme leader himself,” Leavitt added.

It’s absurd to demand a surrender and then claim that “no, we will decide when you’ve surrendered,” but that appears to be the stance of the Trump administration at this time. Trump himself told Axios Friday that “unconditional surrender could be that [the Iranians] announce it. But it could also be when they can’t fight any longer because they don’t have anyone or anything to fight with.”

Reading between the lines, it seems that Trump wants to unilaterally decide when hostilities with Iran are over, and would prefer to inflict heavy damage on the country’s defenses first. But considering that the U.S. was apparently spurred to attack Iran by Israel, surrender may be moot as long as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu still sees advantages in bombing Iran. Whether Iran “surrenders” or not, the bombings will continue until Trump and Netanyahu decide otherwise.