Trump Tries to Jump-Start Global Oil Industry He Stalled

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.”