Trump Says We Don’t Need Middle East’s Oil But War Will Continue

Now that the situation in Iran is thoroughly complex—enough that it could take months or even years to solve, according to some analysts—Donald Trump is attempting to convince the nation that America doesn’t need Iran, the Middle East, or the Strait of Hormuz at all.

Per Trump’s speech Wednesday night, the $25 billion sum spent on the war thus far has instead been in an attempt to “help our allies.”

“We’re now totally independent of the Middle East, and yet we are there to help,” Trump said. “We don’t have to be there. We don’t need their oil. We don’t need anything they have. But we’re there to help our allies.”

Beyond the nickels and dimes, the war has cost the lives of more than 1,937 people in Iran, including dozens of political leaders, according to Al Jazeera. At least 13 U.S. soldiers have also been killed in the war, and more than 300 have been wounded. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted Monday that the conflict would be resolved in the coming weeks, though military officials have indicated that the war could rage for months or even years.

Even before Trump initiated American involvement in the war, Iran—and the Middle East at large—accounted for less than 10 percent of U.S. oil imports. Most of America’s oil, approximately 60 percent of it, comes from Canada.

But the price per barrel has nonetheless shot up, particularly after Iran sealed off the Strait of Hormuz, which serves as the single most important energy transit point in the world. (Oil prices are set globally, not by the individual countries that export it.) Situated between Iran and the United Arab Emirates, the strait funnels approximately one-fifth of all crude oil shipments.

Most of that oil would head toward China or India. In 2024, the U.S. imported roughly 500,000 barrels of crude oil per day through the strait, accounting for about 7 percent of total U.S. crude imports, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

On Tuesday, gas prices surpassed $4 a gallon across the nation for the first time since 2022, but Trump’s speech late Wednesday made the matter even worse. Several comments made by the president about potentially escalating the war rattled the markets, sending the price of oil surging by 13 percent.

Trump attributed the preceding increase in oil prices to the “Iranian regime launching deranged terror attacks against commercial oil tankers and neighboring countries that have nothing to do with the conflict.” He then promised to “hit” Iran “extremely hard.”

The White House mistakenly uploaded Donald Trump’s remarks at an Easter lunch, which was supposed to be closed to the press, to YouTube Wednesday, before realizing its error and making the link private.

In the speech, which Business Insider’s Bryan Metzger uploaded to X in full, Trump fantasizes about being a king, admits there’s no money left for health care or childcare because of the war he started, and daydreams about seizing all of Iran’s oil.

“We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of daycare. You got to let a state take care of daycare, and they should pay for it too. They should pay. They’ll have to raise their taxes, but they should pay for it. And we could lower our taxes a little bit to them to make up,” Trump said. “It’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing: military protection.

“I can’t get a ballroom approved. It’s pretty amazing, right?” Trump also said in the speech. “If I was a king, we’d be doing a lot more. I’m doing a lot, but I could be doing a lot more if I was a king.”

Trump went on to lament that it’s “unfortunate” that Americans don’t have the “patience” to take Iran’s oil.

“We could just take their oil. But, you know, I’m not sure that the people in our country have the patience to do that, which is unfortunate. You know, they want to see it end. If we stayed there, I, you know, I’d prefer just to take the oil. We could do it so easily. I would prefer that, but people in the country sort of say, ‘Just win, you’re winning so big. Just win, come home,’” Trump said in the speech.

Trump also mentioned his address to the country to take place later that evening, saying to the audience, “Tonight I’m making a little speech at 9 o’clock and basically I’m gonna tell everybody how great I am.”

The whole speech seems to be an insight into what Trump actually thinks but isn’t willing to say to the broader public. But the American people deserve to know what the president thinks about them and their needs, even if it’s not very much.

The death of a blind Rohingya refugee who was abandoned by Border Patrol agents in a parking lot has been ruled a homicide, the Investigative Post reported Wednesday.

The Erie County Medical Examiner’s autopsy report, released Wednesday, suggested that the death of Nurul Amin Shah Alam was the result of negligence from Border Patrol agents after he “was placed into a hostile environment that he could not reasonably be expected to extricate himself.” Shah Alam, 56, was a blind Burmese refugee who spoke no English.

The Department of Homeland Security claimed that the Tim Hortons in Buffalo where federal agents left Shah Alam was “determined to be a warm, safe location near his last known address.” Video footage reviewed by the Investigative Post, however, showed that the location, which was miles away from his home, had already closed for the night, except for the drive-thru.

The Border Patrol agents drove away after one minute. Shah Alam was found dead days later.

The Medical Examiner’s office said that Shah Alam suffered from a burst ulcer in his small intestine that was precipitated by hypothermia and dehydration.

It was unclear whether Shah Alam had first developed the ulcer before or after he was taken into custody more than a year ago, and charged with trespassing and misdemeanor possession of a weapon. The blind refugee was lost on a walk and using a curtain rod as a walking stick that police alleged he was “swinging in a menacing manner.” He was tased, beaten, and arrested.

Terrence Connors, the attorney representing Shah Alam’s wife and sons, said that he intended to file a lawsuit on the family’s behalf.

“Now that we have the medical evidence and the cause of death, we will look into the filing of the necessary documents to hold the individuals and the entities responsible for his death,” he said.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul said Erie County District Attorney Michael Keane announced Wednesday that they had opened an investigation into Shah Alam’s death.

“As more details of this case emerge, I want to be crystal clear: Every individual involved in the death of Mr. Shah Alam must be held fully accountable,” Hochul said. “To ensure a fair and impartial investigation, the Erie County District Attorney must continue his investigation and, if warranted by the evidence, prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.”

New York Attorney General Letitia James also opened an inquiry into Shah Alam’s death targeting the Erie County Sheriff’s Office, from where Shah Alam was released after Border Patrol determined that his charges did not render him removable. They should have returned him to the holding center where sheriff’s deputies could contact his family to retrieve him, but the holding center called Border Patrol instead.

The United States and Israel bombed the home of Iran’s former Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi, killing his wife and leaving him “gravely wounded,” according to Iranian media.

Kharazi has been seen as a potential peace negotiator in the current conflict given his role as head of Iran’s Foreign Policy Council. Two Iranian officials said Kharazi was attempting to assemble a meeting with U.S. Vice President JD Vance, according to The New York Times, leading many within the Iranian government to believe that the attack was meant to derail peace talks. Did Israel push the button while the U.S. stood by, allowing them to drag out this deadly war? Or is the United States lying about peace talks to locate and assassinate any of the Iranian leaders still willing to negotiate?

“Targeting Kharazi sure looks like an effort to undermine peace talks and prolong the war,” The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristoff wrote Thursday on X. “It would be good to know if the attack was American or Israeli, and if Israeli whether the Americans signed off on it.”

Kharazi was complaining about this lack of diplomatic transparency on Western media just last month.

“Trump had been deceiving others and not keeping with his promises, and we experienced this in two times of negotiations—that while we were engaged in negotiation, they struck us,” he told CNN.

The U.S. and Israel have now killed multiple Iranian state leaders, nearly 2,000 Iranian civilians, and over 1,200 Lebanese civilians.

Two more members of Donald Trump’s Cabinet could soon be on their way out.

The president is reportedly considering axing Attorney General Pam Bondi and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

Trump has polled his top advisers about the duo’s fate, asking other Cabinet officials in recent weeks whether he should give them the boot.

His gripe with Gabbard relates to her decision to shield a former deputy who disagreed with Trump’s war with Iran, people briefed on the discussions told The Guardian. It’s not clear if Gabbard will actually be fired, or who could possibly replace her.

Meanwhile, Bondi’s administrative future is apparently on the fritz due to her handling of the Epstein files. Trump has been “frustrated” with her leadership at the Justice Department, and is considering tapping Lee Zeldin—the current administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency—to replace her.

Yet Trump is still opting to publicly display his confidence in Bondi. The duo traveled to the Supreme Court together Wednesday for the court’s birthright citizenship case (something that no sitting president has ever done), and Trump chose to heap praise on Bondi’s performance when asked about the situation by The New York Times.

“Attorney General Pam Bondi is a wonderful person and she is doing a good job,” Trump said in a statement to the Times.

In comparison to his first administration—which was practically a revolving door for the president’s underlings—Trump has been much more sparing with his staffers over the past year. Still, Bondi and Gabbard would not be the first officials from Trump’s second term to receive a pink slip from the Oval Office.

Trump axed Kristi Noem from her position atop the Department of Homeland Security last month, immediately following a string of abysmal appearances before Congress. Her position among the higher echelons of the Trump administration had become increasingly tenuous in recent months due to a series of scandals, though most notably after ICE agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis, marring Trump’s immigration agenda—a chief MAGA priority—in the process.

President Donald Trump said that if there’s no deal with Iran, then he’ll blame Vice President JD Vance.

Speaking at an Easter lunch Wednesday, Trump asked Vance for an update on negotiations with Iran in front of his guests.

“He’s working on the deal, right? How’s that moving? Is it OK? The big deal?” Trump said.

“It’s going good, sir,” Vance said from the audience.

“Do you see that happening?” Trump pressed.

“We’re gonna brief you too,” Vance said.

“So, if it doesn’t happen, I’m blaming JD Vance. If it does happen, I’m taking full credit,” Trump said to laughter.

“No, I think it’ll be uh. I think it has to happen. I think they’re desperate,” he added.

Not desperate enough, it seems. Multiple U.S. intelligence agencies have determined that Iran believes it is still in a strong position and is not currently willing to engage in substantial negotiations to end the U.S. and Israel’s military onslaught, U.S. officials told The New York Times Wednesday.

Trump has claimed that the U.S. has satisfied nearly all its objectives in the region—but will continue to hit Iran very hard over the next two weeks. Meanwhile, he has offered no plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

Donald Trump doesn’t think the federal government should fund childcare, Medicare, or Medicaid.

At an Easter lunch reception at the White House Wednesday, the president told guests exactly what he thought about what the U.S. should be prioritizing, and it doesn’t bode well for the government’s most widely used and popular social programs.

“I said to [Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought], ‘Don’t send any money for daycare because the United States can’t take care of daycare.’ That has to be up to a state. We can’t take care of daycare. We’re a big country. We have 50 states. We have all these other people,” Trump said. “We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of daycare. You got to let a state take care of daycare, and they should pay for it too. They should pay. They’ll have to raise their taxes, but they should pay for it. And we could lower our taxes a little bit to them to make up.

“It’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things. They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal. We have to take care of one thing: military protection. We have to guard the country. But all these little things, all these little scams that have taken place … you have to let states take care of them,” Trump continued.

It’s a glaring admission from Trump, who confessed point-blank that he thinks the government’s only responsibility is to fund the military. It explains why he supported a bloated military budget even before starting the war in Iran. It also explains why he didn’t seem to mind massive cuts to Medicare and Medicaid with his “big, beautiful bill” last year. The White House’s YouTube account, after broadcasting Trump’s remarks live, has made the video private on the website.

The Trump administration tried to use childcare funding as a way to punish five Democratic-led states earlier this year, suspending federal funding for public welfare programs in New York, California, Colorado, Illinois, and Minnesota and making false claims about fraud. While that decision was struck down by a federal judge on Tuesday, his comments about Medicare and Medicaid don’t bode well for the millions of Americans who depend on them. How will Trump’s fellow Republicans, and the rest of the country, take these disturbing remarks?

This story has been updated.

House Republicans have finally caved, agreeing to pass a bill to end the shutdown without additional funding for ICE and parts of Customs and Border Protection.

House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune announced in a joint statement Wednesday that instead of holding the nation hostage on this issue, they will later fully fund the Department of Homeland Security through appropriations and reconciliation, a longer process has more administrative hurdles than a normal budget bill, but only requires a simple majority in the Senate rather than a filibuster-proof 60 votes.

This is the same proposal from Senate Democrats—and Republicans—that Johnson rejected days ago, calling it a “crap sandwich.”

Last week, Republicans in each legislative chamber were at odds, as the Senate passed a bill that would fund DHS without additional funding for ICE and CBP, a sticking point for Democrats who have called out the agencies’ violence and legally questionable tactics.

The House, meanwhile, passed a bill that would fully fund DHS (ICE and Border Patrol included) for 60 days, which would require enough Senate votes to avoid a filibuster, given Democratic opposition. The impasse meant the shutdown extended through yet another weekend, and that long security lines taxing unpaid TSA agents continued. Oddly, many Senate Republicans still decided to travel out of town before the week was out.

But now, Johnson and Thune have agreed on something that could have happened on Friday, or even weeks before. The sudden reversal seems to have come after Trump’s own 180, as he blessed Republicans on Wednesday to move forward with the two-track approach, and demanded a bill to fund DHS on his desk by June 1.

“Unlike Republicans, Democrats want to DEFUND the Police, Border Patrol, and all Immigration Enforcement. They want to allow Criminals, the Mentally Insane, and Lunatics from all over the World to come into our Country, totally unvetted and unchecked, putting Americans in serious danger,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “That’s why we are going forward to fund our incredible ICE Agents and Border Patrol through a process that doesn’t need Radical Left Democrat votes, and bypasses the Senate Filibuster (which should be repealed, IMMEDIATELY!), working in close conjunction with House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Leader John Thune.”

In short, Johnson and Thune kept government workers unpaid and traveling Americans frustrated, all because Republicans couldn’t agree on how to ignore the serious issues with ICE. Now, instead of addressing those concerns, they’ll try to ram through funding for immigration enforcement over any opposition.

Some of Donald Trump’s biggest supporters now believe he has no political future.

Alex Jones, the bankrupt host of InfoWars, claimed that Trump is “done” and too sick to remain in the Oval Office.

“When your ankles swell up three times the size they were before, that means heart failure,” Jones said on an episode of the Alex Jones Show Tuesday. “And he does look sick. He does babble and sound like the brain’s not doing too hot. And so, we just cut bait on Trump, and we just mobilize against the Democrats. And we mobilize against the neocons, we primary them, and we just fight even harder.”

Jones noted that there was a new conservative wave taking over the country that has involved a “Christian reawakening” that Trump has nothing to do with.

“Trump is just a minor figure in all of that now,” Jones said. “We need to be sad about Trump. This is not funny, this is not good, but he’s gone. And that’s it.”

Jones went on to compare Trump to his own grandfather, who Jones said was “not there” in the last year of his life due to dementia.

He also suggested that members of Trump’s Cabinet, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, were “freaked out” about Trump’s health but too loyal to speak out.

“We need to pray for other people to be awakened … because we’re in so much danger,” Jones said.

The 79-year-old president has repeatedly claimed that he is in pristine condition, brushing off public alarm over his deteriorating body, but several health scares over the last several months have sparked questions over his ability to remain in office.

The large bruises on his hands—often covered with ill-matched makeup—have become a near routine fixture on the president’s aging body as they shift from hand to hand. The White House has blamed the superficial injuries on handshaking and aspirin, though doctors have suggested that the bruises could be a warning sign of something more serious.

Other symptoms of Trump’s deteriorating condition have been more concerning, such as the sagging mouth and drooping expression he sported in September during 9/11 memorial ceremonies, causing some onlookers to suggest that the president could have suffered a stroke.

The next month, Trump spent hours at Walter Reed Medical Center. The White House refused to disclose the reason, but eventually Trump let slip that he had received MRI scans, the results of which he said came back “perfect.” At least one former White House physician questioned the timeline of Trump’s appointment, pointing out that his four-hour visit to the hospital was far longer than would be required by an MRI test. Trump later revealed he might not have gotten an MRI at all, but something “less than” that.

Trump has also appeared discombobulated and lethargic during critical meetings with world leaders. Over the course of the last year, Trump has fallen asleep roughly a dozen times during critical public appearances. It has happened during Cabinet meetings, in the middle of bombastic military parades, while meeting leaders of critical allies, and even during the Pope’s funeral.

As the U.S. job market continues to crumble, Donald Trump’s White House is looking to hire a new batch of sycophant interns—but won’t pay them for their devotion or their time.

The White House Internship Program offers young Americans full of vim and vigor a full-time, 10- to 12-week stint working in person for one of the many offices of the White House. One need only glance at the application’s short-answer questions to get a sense of exactly who the White House is hoping to enlist.

“Describe how President Trump’s vision for the country has influenced your decision to apply to the White House Internship Program,” read one prompt.

“In your view, which current Cabinet Secretary do you most admire and believe best demonstrates effective leadership?” asked another.

Should one select the labor secretary accused of using government funds for a birthday party and having an alleged affair with her security guard, or the trigger-happy Christian nationalist waging Trump’s reckless war in Iran? Maybe one could choose the secretary of state who wants to take over Cuba in clown shoes? How about the hapless secretary of transportation, or the clueless director of intelligence? There are just too many great options! How will one ever decide?

Notably, the posting for the White House’s internship program made no mention of payment or a stipend, while during President Joe Biden’s administration, White House interns were paid a stipend of $750 per week. A June 2022 press release announcing the paid internships stated that unpaid federal internships had been a “barrier to hardworking and talented students and professionals.”

“This significant milestone of paying White House interns will help remove barriers to equal opportunity for low-income students and first-generation professionals at the beginnings of their careers and help to ensure that those who receive internships at the White House—and who will be a significant part of the leadership pipeline across the entire federal government—reflect the diversity of America,” the press release said.

The White House’s apparent move back to unpaid internships is a pretty bad look considering the fact that Trump has laid waste to the U.S. job market and decimated the federal workforce. If these kids are looking for full-time jobs, they’ll probably have to look elsewhere.