Trump Celebrates High Gas Prices

What It Covers

Jon Favreau and Dan Pfeiffer analyze the U.S. war with Iran after two weeks of conflict, covering $11.3 billion in costs, oil hitting $100 per barrel, Trump claiming high gas prices benefit America, Republican messaging failures on deportation ahead of midterms, DOGE accountability hearings, and anti-Muslim statements from Republican lawmakers going unchallenged.

Key Questions Answered

• •War cost vs. domestic spending: The first week of the Iran conflict cost $11.3 billion — more than one-third of what extending Obamacare subsidies would have cost to prevent 22 million Americans from seeing their premiums double. U.S. intelligence agencies confirm Iran's leadership remains largely intact despite the expenditure, meaning the stated objective of neutralizing nuclear capability remains unachieved after billions spent.
• •Oil price trajectory and economic risk: With the Strait of Hormuz closed and Iran actively mining the waterway, analysts project oil reaching $140 per barrel if the closure extends through April, and the IRGC threatens $200 per barrel. Even a strategic petroleum reserve release — described as the largest ever — failed to prevent oil crossing $100. Shipping companies, not governments, ultimately control tanker movement through mined waters.
• •Information failure inside the White House: A New York Times report reveals senior aides believe the Iran war is going poorly but fear telling Trump because he publicly insists it is succeeding. When a president operates from a sealed information environment reinforced by right-wing media, course corrections become structurally impossible — a dynamic that compounds risk in any fast-moving military or economic crisis.
• •Young male voters abandoning Trump on war: Focus groups of young men, including 2024 Trump voters, show strong opposition to the Iran war. The three core promises that drove Trump's 2024 gains with this demographic — lower prices, border-focused immigration, and no foreign wars — have all been broken simultaneously. Polling shows young men are the fastest-departing group from Trump's coalition, driven primarily by affordability concerns compounded now by military escalation.
• •Democrats need an explicit anti-war posture: The hosts argue Democrats repeatedly conflate toughness with hawkish rhetoric, a pattern that dates to post-Vietnam positioning and contributed to Iraq War votes. Obama's 2008 success came from opposing the Iraq War as an act of strength, not weakness. Future Democratic candidates should explicitly frame military restraint as strategic competence rather than defaulting to bellicose language to pass a perceived commander-in-chief test.
• •DOGE used ChatGPT to cancel $100M in NEH grants: Deposition testimony reveals DOGE staffers fed National Endowment for the Humanities grants into ChatGPT with a prompt asking whether each "relates at all to DEI" — resulting in cancellation of $100 million in congressionally appropriated funding and termination of 65% of NEH staff. One staffer classified a Holocaust survivors documentary as DEI because it focused on women, demonstrating the methodology's fundamental incoherence.