This stuff actually happened:

Trump revives Epstein scandal. Melania Trump, that is. The First Lady gave a six-minute statement to reporters at the White House on April 9 to clarify that “numerous fake images and statement about Epstein and me … are completely false.”

Huh? It’s well known that Donald Trump was an Epstein pal for years, and that he and Melania socialized with Epstein in the early 2000s. But of all the people linked with the dead pedophile’s crimes and depredations, Melania Trump isn’t one of them.

Or is she? What don’t we know?

The rumors Melania is referring to might be social-media speculation that Epstein somehow procured Melania Knauss, as she was known when she came to the United States in 1996, for Trump. But if so, who cares. Knauss was 26 when she moved from Slovenia to New York. She couldn’t have been one of Epstein’s underage victims, unless it was abroad in the 1980s, and there’s no evidence of that.

Trump, the president, told a reporter after Melania’s performance that he didn’t know she was planning to make such a statement. Do they ever speak? Bounce things off each other, like old married couples typically do?

Epstein sleuths think Melania might know that some Epstein publicity bomb is about to drop, and be preemptively distancing herself from her husband to escape the damage. She might also just be loony or paranoid. Or insulted to be likened to a prostitute on social media. Who knows.

It’s still the case, however, that Donald Trump’s name is conspicuously absent in the Epstein documents, and it’s pretty obvious that a politically compromised Justice Dept. run by Trump cronies has airbrushed his name from the public files. There are probably still some Epstein secrets and Melania may have an inkling what they are.

Iran trolls Trump. After Trump announced an April 7 ceasefire with Iran, Iranian media posted an AI-generated video on social media showing Trump descending the steps of Air Force One sheepishly bearing a white surrender flag. Conciliatory, huh?

The ceasefire looks very shaky, largely because it’s not clear Iran will agree to any kind of concession. Instead, it’s asserting what could be permanent control over tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz, which would be an astonishing degree of new leverage gained by a nation that survived 39 days of bombing by two of the world’s most powerful militaries. The Iranian regime took a beating and may be cowed privately, but its public stance toward the United States is still, up yours, Trump.

[See 5 huge problems with the Iran war ceasefire]

War Bunny. Trump addressed the Iran war on April 5 while emceeing the annual White House Easter Egg roll from a balcony at the White House, with the Easter Bunny standing to his left. The audience below was mostly kids there for the egg event. “I don’t think it gets more hostile than Iran,” Trump told the kids, while the Easter Bunny looked out with a reassuring permagrin. “You don’t mind when the enemy is weak, but that enemy is strong, not so strong like they were about a month ago,” Trump explained to the captivated egg rollers. Like a good soldier, the Easter Bunny remained inscrutable.

Vance touts poverty and corruption. Vice President JD Vance took time out of his busy schedule (?) to fly to Hungary and campaign for Europe’s worst leader, Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who looks likely to lose an April 12 reelection bid. “Trump loves you, and so do I,” Vance told Orban in a public meeting on April 7.

[See the economic toll of the Iran war, in 8 charts]

During 20 years in power, Orban has transformed Hungary from a fragile democracy into a corrupt autocracy that is Europe’s poorest country. Among his claims to shame, Orban is widely viewed as a lapdog for Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. Bloomberg recently published a transcript of a phone call in which Orban said to Putin, “In any matter where I can be of assistance, I am at your service.” So of course the American president sent his lackey to gush over Orban.

If Orban loses the April 12 vote, it’s not clear he’ll relinquish power. That could put Trump and Vance in the position of supporting a crook trying to overturn a legitimate election. Vance and Trump might be backing Orban so that if he loses, they can call it a rigged election and use it as a template for overturning any results that might go against them in US elections this year or in 2028. God bless America.

Vance’s other crappy job. Trump also assigned Vance to head the ceasefire negotiations with Iran. The starting point for that is the US and Iran have each listed a separate set of demands, with almost no common ground. Iran thinks it has the upper hand because Trump can’t stand the pain of US gasoline prices heading toward $5 per gallon. The Iranians think they’ve won by merely surviving the US assault, so Trump may be setting Vance up for failure.

[Trump’s inflation immolation]

Iran’s new leverage over oil shipments is unnerving, but Vance’s comeuppance is entertaining for anybody disgusted by his transmogrification from the insightful author of “Hillbilly Elegy” to a rage-baiting culture warrior who cozies up to some of the world’s most loathsome people.

Easter miracle in Islamic country. While describing the rescue of a downed aviator in Iran on Easter Day, April 5, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said, “Flown out of Iran as the sun was rising on Easter Sunday, a pilot reborn. All home and accounted for. A nation rejoicing. God is good.”

At least 13 other Americans have died in the Iran war. God has not been so good to them, if survival is the measure of goodness. Hegseth’s divine accounting seems woefully incomplete.

Hegseth is a weirdo who laces war briefings with biblical verse and seems to think God intervenes in wars that humans wage on each other. During a March prayer breakfast, he asked God for “overwhelming violence” against Iran. He later made a public plea to all Americans to pray for victory “every day, on bended knee … in the name of Jesus Christ.”

Jesus Christ hasn’t said how he feels about this, but Pope Leo said in a recent homily that that some so-called Christian causes are “distorted by a desire for domination, entirely foreign to the way of Jesus Christ.” But what does the pope know.

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The inflation rate jumped from 2.4% in February to 3.3% in March. It will almost certainly be higher in April.

The jump in prices is entirely due to soaring energy costs caused by the war against Iran that President Trump launched on February 28, 2026. The biggest gain in any major category was in energy, where prices jumped 12.5% year-over-year. Gasoline prices rose 18.9%, and as every driver knows, that is old news. The official government numbers come from mid-March. The average pump price as of April 10 is $4.15 per gallon, a 40% increase over pre-war prices.

Before the war, inflation was close to becoming a non-issue. The inflation rate of 2.4% was close to the Federal Reserve’s goal of 2%. The court-ordered repeal of Trump’s emergency tariffs lowered import taxes, easing price pressures. Once the Fed feels inflation is under control, it has newfound freedom to cut interest rates, if the economy needs a boost.

The Fed will not cut rates while an energy shock is sending inflation higher. It may have to raise rates, to keep inflation from getting worse. Trump has been imploring the Fed to cut rates, yet his own decisions—first, to impose massive tariffs, and then, to launch a war on Iran—are the biggest factors preventing the Fed from doing the very thing he wants.

[Here’s the economic toll of the Iran war (so far)]

Trump ignored decades of war planning when he launched the Iran war, clearly dismissing the obvious possibility that Iran would respond by blocking oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint 20% of the world’s oil exports must pass through. Iran’s closure of the strait sent oil prices soaring from about $65 per barrel before the war to as high as $109. Stocks fell, a lot of businesses put investments on hold, and the world waited to see if Trump could solve the problem he created.

So far, he hasn’t. Trump declared a ceasefire on April 7, but there’s no agreement on terms between Trump and the Iranian regime. Iran, meanwhile, now has total control of the Strait of Hormuz. More than 100 cargo ships per day passed freely before the war. Now, Iran charges a “toll” of up to $2 million per ship. And it is only allowing around 15 ships per day through the strait. The outcome of the war, so far, is that Iran is using newfound leverage over the strait to create a global oil shortage and jack up prices.

After Trump announced the ceasefire, oil prices dropped from $109 per barrel to around $95. They’ll likely stay in that range for as long as Iran puts strict limits on transit volumes through the strait. Trump has complained about Iran’s stranglehold on the strait, but he’s also desperate for a way out of a war that was starting to look open-ended, in a year with midterm elections less than seven months away.

[5 huge problems with the US-Iran ceasefire]

With oil prices still 45% higher than they were before the war, and other energy costs surging as well, higher inflation is basically guaranteed for the next several months. Producers now bearing the higher cost of energy will pass that increase onto consumers. Since many producers bank inventories, higher input costs may not show up in final prices for three or four months. So consumers paying more for gasoline and other energy products today will get hit later with higher costs for many other products, including food.

How could a president be this stupid? Trump explicitly campaigned for president in 2024 by telling voters he would lower costs. His “drill, baby, drill” mantra is supposed to connote abundant, cheap energy, not shortages and spiking prices.

Trump fancies himself a gut-level dealmaker whose intuition eclipses expert analysis. The Iran war and its aftermath show Trump to be a reckless and impulsive bumbler whose terrible decision-making has made life harder for literally billions of people. It’s hard to think of an American president who has done more to mock voters by blatantly violating his own campaign promises.

But we’re not going back to pre-war norms any time soon. Nearly six weeks of fighting caused massive disruption to energy markets and ground some economic activity to a halt. Some economic losses won’t be recovered. Other things will take weeks or months to return to pre-war levels. Some things may change permanently.

Here’s where we stand:

Oil prices fell from around $110 before the ceasefire to about $98 after. That triggered a robust stock rally on April 8. But oil prices are still 50% higher than they were before the war. And they may stay there for a while. While a ceasefire may set the stage for shipping to resume through the Strait of Hormuz, where 20% of the world’s oil exports must pass, conditions are different now.

Before the war, ships passed freely. Now Iran is exerting control over the strait, deciding who sails through and charging a “toll” of around $2 million per ship, or about $1 per barrel. Iran is also throttling traffic. In the first days after the ceasefire, tanker traffic through the strait was only about 10% of pre-war volume. Oil prices may stay near current levels for the indefinite future, especially if Iran’s new controls over the strait look to be permanent.

[See 5 huge problems with the Iran war ceasefire]

Gas prices have risen by about $1.20 per gallon since the war started, to a national average of about $4.17. Diesel prices have risen by more, to about $5.70 per gallon. If oil prices stay in the $90s, gas and diesel prices are unlikely to drop by much. A $1 jump in gas prices costs a typical driver about $40 a month in higher costs. The total hit to drivers from the jump in gas prices is $8 billion and rising.

Stocks enjoyed a strong rally after the ceasefire, but the S&P 500 index is still about 2% lower than pre-war levels. Trump bragged repeatedly when the Dow Jones index hit 50,000 for the first time on February 6. The Dow is now below 48,000.

GDP growth will probably end up lower because of the war. In late February, right before the war began, the Atlanta Federal Reserve’s GDP Now model estimated that first-quarter GDP growth was 3.1%. The estimate has since fallen to just 1.3% growth in the first quarter. Some of that might be delayed spending or investment that will take place later in the year. But some of that lower growth comes from canceled spending that won’t get made up.

Inflation will go higher than it would have without the war. The spike in energy costs makes it more expensive to produce and transport almost every type of good. The war also disrupted shipments of many industrial chemicals from the Gulf region, causing soaring prices for products such as fertilizer. That will also raise costs throughout the supply chain, all the way to consumers.

Before the war, the Cleveland Federal Reserve’s inflation “nowcast” was 2.4%. That’s an estimate of the real-time inflation rate, rather than the dated, backward-looking number that comes out monthly in official price reports. The inflation nowcast has since jumped to 3.4%, a full point higher.

On the prediction market Kalshi, the odds of inflation hitting 4% in 2026 have jumped from just 10% before the war to 54% now.

Higher inflation usually means higher interest rates, because investors buying bonds demand a higher return to compensate for the eroding value of money. And sure enough, rates have marched upward right along with rising inflation expectations.

The average 30-year mortgage rate has jumped from about 6% before the war to nearly 6.4%. That’s enough to raise the monthly payment on a typical home by about $100.

The outlook for interest rates is upward. Before the war, the odds of mortgage rates rising above 6.5% this year was just 21%, according to Kalshi. Now the odds of rates above 6.5% are 73%. Rates on most other loans will rise by about the same amount as mortgage rates.

The ceasefire has led to slight improvements in the economic outlook. Inflation expectations have dipped slightly since April 7, for example. But high levels of uncertainty will remain as the world watches to see whether Iran is able to exploit what appears to be newfound leverage over Persian Gulf energy exports. The uncertainty alone will be destabilizing, possibly for a long time.

But the two-week ceasefire Trump says the Iranian regime has agreed to is fraught with trouble. For starters, there’s no actual agreement. Each side has a list of demands they’ll begin negotiating over on April 11. Iran does not think it lost, and may actually think it won by surviving an intense US-Israeli bombing campaign. The theocratic government is not likely to make steep concessions, and could end up a more malign influence in the future than it was before Trump started the war on February 28.

Here’s a short list of what’s wrong with the ceasefire:

1. Iran has far more control over the Strait of Hormuz now than it did before the war. Tankers passed freely through the strait before the war. Iran now decides which tankers pass, while charging a “toll” of up to $2 million per ship, which it says it will split with Oman, on the southern side of the strait. If this arrangement stands, Iran will suddenly have an alarming degree of control over shipments of oil, natural gas, and many vital industrial products exported by nations such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE—now Iran’s hostile wartime enemies.

“A failure to demonstrate the will and ability to deny Iran the ability to disrupt traffic in the Strait of Hormuz will make it much harder to deter Iran from future disruptions,” the Institute for the Study of War contends. “Stopping the war in current conditions would thus represent a major strategic challenge that the United States or Israel would need to contend with in future rounds of conflict with a regime that will continue to be a committed adversary.”

Read more

President Trump has a different timeline, borne of the dreadfully poor preparations he and his civilian advisers—including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth—made for an ugly war. From the beginning of the war he launched on February 28, Trump has set laughably unrealistic goals for what he expects military action against Iran to accomplish. Trump also badly misjudged the risks and blew off the many experts who predicted for decades that Iran, if attacked, would shut the Strait of Hormuz, causing a global energy shock. That’s exactly what it did.

With oil prices now well over $100 per barrel and his approval rating sinking, Trump is suddenly in a hurry to end the war. So we get desperate threats, such as “a whole civilization will die tonight,” his April 7 social-media post warning of … well, who knows what, if Iran doesn’t fully open the Strait of Hormuz by 8 pm, Washington DC time on that day.

[See the economic costs of the Iran war, in 11 charts]

Why April 7? Why 8 pm? No reason, except Trump’s impatience. But it probably won’t actually be April 7. This deadline will most likely come and go like a bunch of others, with no decisive action at all, and more deadlines to follow. The whole Iran war, in fact, is becoming a farcical effort by an increasingly shrill Trump to threaten his way out of one of the worst jams he ever put himself in.

Let’s review Trump’s Strait of Hormuz ultimatums, so far. The first one came on March 21, when Trump gave Iran 48 hours to reopen the strait or else US forces would “obliterate” the country’s power plants. As the March 23 deadline drew near, Trump delayed for another five days, saying there were “productive talks” with Iran. That was probably a lie. There’s no evidence there have been any meaningful negotiations with Iran.

On March 26, Trump delayed his ultimatum again, this time until April 6. Then on April 5, Trump moved his deadline to April 7. Trump’s threats, meanwhile, are becoming increasingly hysterical, as if Iran will fold once Trump just screams loud enough on social media.

[Why Trump should fire Hegseth]

Trump’s threats and ultimatums are never going to be the thing that reopens the Strait of Hormuz. In fact, they’re giving Iran leverage. Iran is betting that the longer it controls the strait, and the higher oil prices go, the more desperate Trump will get, and the more likely he will be to make a cease-fire deal they can live with. Trump’s manic demands play right into the enemy’s strategy.

Here’s how a more competent president would have approached this war: Start by meshing public statements with the military timeline. If it’s going to take the military two or three months—or even six—to root out all the threats to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, then set that as a public expectation.

Next: Understand the enemy better. As numerous experts continually remind us, the Iranian regime cares about one thing above everything else: its own survival. They will always call Trump’s bluff when the alternative is agreeing to terms that could bring about their own demise.

Finally: STFU. Trump’s panicky bleats are a demonstration of weakness, not strength. And every time Trump sets a deadline that Iran fails to meet, his credibility drops by a notch, making the next deadline even sillier.

[See what it will really take to reopen the Strait of Hormuz]

Trump, of course, is an incurable loudmouth who actually thinks he’s a great dealmaker. So the media has to treat every Trump deadline like it’s the story of the century, with something decisive really about to happen, over and over and over. Traders fixate on Trump’s shifting deadlines as if every one of them is a huge market-moving event. All of it contributes to a false construct in which the outcome of the war will be determined by whether Iran caves to Trump at a moment of Trump’s choosing.

The military timeline is the one that really matters. We don’t know exactly what it is, except that it’s longer than Trump’s. At some point, the two timelines might merge. But that will probably be many more unmet Trump deadlines into the future.

Gasoline prices have followed oil prices higher, as they always do. US pump prices have risen by more than $1.10 per gallon since the war began.

Diesel prices, as you can see in the chart above, have jumped by more than gasoline prices. That means the cost of producing and transporting goods, including food, is going up. Those higher costs will hit consumers.

Mortgage rates have jumped because investors now expect higher inflation than they did before the war. When bond buyers think inflation is going higher, they demand a higher return to buy bonds, to compensate for the eroding value of money. A half-point increase in mortgage rates raises the monthly payment on a typical home by about $110 per month.

Stock values have declined since the war started, as investors struggle to price in how long the war will last, how high energy prices will go, and how much that will affect corporate profits. Some analysts think it’s surprising stocks haven’t fallen further.

The United States isn’t as vulnerable to a foreign energy shock as it was during the energy crises of the 1970s. That’s largely because of huge efficiency gains. The “energy intensity” of the US economy has dropped by 68% since 1970, according to Dept. of Energy data. That means energy costs are a much smaller factor in everything the nation produces. Many factors account for that, including more efficient cars and other types of transportation, better building insulation, and many technological breakthroughs that save energy.

For the same reasons, ordinary Americans spend a lot less on energy than they used to, as a portion of their overall outlays. So higher energy prices don’t hurt as much as they did during the energy crises of the 1970s.

To understand the severity of the current energyshock, it helps to look at oil and gasoline prices adjusted for inflation. In “real,” inflation-adjusted terms, prices are high but not stratospheric.

But rising gas prices are still a burden for millions of American drivers. A $1 increase in pump prices costs the average driver about $35 a month in higher costs. Trump has repeatedly insisted the war will end soon, clearly trying to talk energy prices down. Yet the war obviously hasn’t ended—and gas prices continue to rise.

Not dead yet. President Trump has said repeatedly that Iran is essentially defeated. But Iran is not behaving that way. During the last few days, it shot down an F-15 Air Force fighter jet and a Navy A-10 Warthog attack plane. The A-10 pilot and one of the two F-15 pilots are safe. The Pentagon hasn’t said anything about the other F-15 pilot, which is worrisome. The plane went down over Iran, so presumably the pilot is on the ground there.

Pentagon officials told members of Congress that two rescue helicopters involved in the F-15 pilot rescue took fire and had to retreat. That’s ominous. If the Iranians capture the pilot, everybody will know right away because they’ll try to exploit it for propaganda value. The pilot could also be dead, injured or hiding. Pilot rescues in hostile terrain can be dangerous and dramatic. Fingers crossed.

Those two types of jets are older, non-stealthy models, and the A-10 is particularly slow and vulnerable. They must have been flying over areas where the US military thought the air-defense threat was minimal. That means the Iranians mostly likely got off a couple of lucky shots with missile launchers that were hidden and mobile, rolling them out to shoot, then rushing them back into hiding.

[The Weekly WTF: God mulls US request for “overwhelming violence”]

There could be a lot more of this as American pilots fly lower to root out weapons one by one, especially along the coast, as part of the effort to clear threats to ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

Read more

One way out is to fire Pete Hegseth, the preening Defense Secretary who is the most vocal champion of the war among Trump’s sycophantic appointees.

As Defense Secretary, Hegseth is second in the military chain of command. Other than Trump, he’s the person most responsible for any decision about going to war and how to prosecute a war once it’s underway.

As Trump threatened to attack Iran and ordered the buildup of US forces in the Persian Gulf region in January and February, Hegseth had to be the main cheerleader either goading Trump on or telling him what he wanted to hear. The Iran war belongs to Hegseth as much as it belongs to Trump.

[The Weekly WTF: Hegseth asks God for “overwhelming violence”]

There’s a lot of reporting on the warnings raised in the runup to the war by Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Caine reportedly warned Trump that a war could bring US casualties and become an open-ended political mess. He also downplayed the ease of overthrowing the Iranian regime. And the Pentagon’s war planners have known for decades that Iran’s ability to close the Strait of Hormuz to oil shipments is a dangerous asymmetric capability, no matter how undermatched Iran might be militarily. By all available evidence, Caine—who is not in the chain of command—did his job, which is to make sure the president understood the pros and cons of any military operation.

The two civilians who give military orders—Trump and Hegseth—disregarded the threats their military advisors pointed out. And now, many of those threats have materialized just as predicted, as Iran wreaks havoc with world energy supplies and the United States is short on solutions.

By military standards, the Iran war isn’t going badly. US and Israeli forces are steadily and seriously degrading Iran’s military capabilities and curtailing its ability to cause trouble throughout the Middle East.

By the standards Trump set, however, the war is going terribly. That falls on Hegseth, a civilian appointee whose job is to communicate his department’s activities to the public and to Congress in a way that engenders widespread support. Grade: F.

When Trump announced the start of the war on February 28, he basically said the theocratic Iranian regime would be gone in short order. Five weeks later, it’s still there, with no sign of losing power.

[Trump pranks financial markets, again]

A few days later, on March 3, Trump said “we expect a very swift conclusion.” He didn’t define “swift,” but markets interpreted that as a few weeks, which is why the price of oil and other commodities rose only modestly at first.

Trump’s biggest failing, so far, has been total obliviousness to Iran’s domination of the Strait of Hormuz. That has shut in about 20% of the world’s oil supply. Trump did absolutely nothing to prepare anybody for this, and it’s blazingly apparent now that he didn’t know what he was doing. Oil prices have jumped from $80 per barrel during the first few days of the war to nearly $110, as Trump’s stupidity sinks in and traders realize Trump’s promises of a short war were magical thinking.

Trump should blame himself for this, but as we know, Trump never accepts blame for anything or admits a mistake.

That leaves Hegseth. The “secretary or war,” as the overcompensating Hegseth fancies himself, was right there with Trump, downplaying the threat assessments and imagining the oil would somehow keep flowing. Firing him would give Trump the opportunity to say it was his defense secretary who made these terrible miscalculations. With Hegseth gone, Trump could install somebody he characterizes as less crazy, and make a cease-fire deal with Iran, saying that’s what he wanted all along. Only the bellicose Hegseth temporarily steered him in the wrong direction.

[Trump’s 6 craziest Iran war statements]

The uniformed military would certainly cheer (silently). Hegseth is a tyrant who has been firing accomplished admirals and generals for no stated reason, probably for the unstated reason that he wants principled professionals out of the way so he can run the Pentagon like a squad of brownshirts.

Hegseth is already becoming the Robert McNamara of the Iran war, the guy who sold an easy war that turned out to be nothing of the sort. And he’s doing it with about half of McNamara’s intelligence. If the Iran war doesn’t become a debacle, something else will, because Hegseth is a child playing with a flamethrower.

Trump recently fired two Cabinet member, Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem. Politico reports that he may soon fire others, including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer. Hegseth, alas, is not known to be on the list of Trump’s endangered aides.

Trump’s own hubris may prevent him from seeing the risk Hegseth poses to his legacy and political standing. After all, they are Brothers in Buffoonery. But Hegseth has already brought Trump down, or at least enabled Trump to bring himself down. It’s going to get worse.

Bimbofication. Will that be the Merriam-Webster word of the year? It’s off to a strong start now that the Daily Mail has caught Kristi Noem’s husband Byron posing in front of a webcam in absurd mockups of female anatomy, including what appear to be balloons that are supposed to mimic giant breasts squeezed beneath a salmon-colored Spandexy top. I dunno. AI slop looks more realistic. One of the nipples is in the wrong place. The hot pink leggings at the lower half of the getup look uncomfortably tight. Maybe I’m a prude, but bimbofication doesn’t seem very enjoyable.

So many questions. How did the Daily Mail get this “story?” The tabloid reported that Noem paid money to sex workers on the other end of the camera, so maybe one of them figured out he was the spouse of a Trump cabinet member—sorry, former Trump cabinet member—and sold the tip to the Daily Mail. (Unlike most American news organizations, the Daily Mail pays for some tips.)

Is this a news story? Man, if I had the material, I’m not sure what I’d do. Byron Noem is a public figure, but only by connection to his prominent and problematic wife. The Daily Mail claims it’s newsworthy because a foreign government could blackmail the spouse of a US government official if it had compromising information on him. In this case, it feels like a stretch. At any rate, icky.

Is Byron Noem as loathsome as his wife? This certainly doesn’t prove it. Kristi Noem defended the killing of two nonviolent civilians in Minnesota by government thugs belonging to the agency she used to run. She also faces allegations of corruption and possible misuse of millions of dollars of taxpayer money. There are open rumors of an affair with an aide who is also under investigation for possibly defrauding taxpayers.

Byron Noem is a South Dakota farm boy who runs an insurance agency in Bryant, South Dakota, population 471. He married Kristi Arnold in 1992 while he was still in college. They have three grown children. I’m not ready to dunk on Byron. I cropped his face out of the bimbo photo above. There’s no evidence he committed any crime, and as far as we know he spent his own money, not taxpayer dollars, on his unusual habit. I kinda wish we never had to find out. Of course, like everybody else, I assume Kristi will cut him loose, as if he’s the one who has unseemly baggage. Maybe she already has, and this is part of the drama.

Lord, please grant us overwhelming violence. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth hosted a Christian prayer service at the Pentagon on March 25. What do you think he prayed for? That God would make him an instrument of peace? That where there is hatred, he could sow love?

HA! That’s the kind of feminist cosplay prayer you might have heard from the woke Biden administration. The Trump Christians are some mean mother-fers and they come to slay!

“Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness,” Hegseth beseeched the Lord. “Give them wisdom in every decision, endurance for the trial ahead, unbreakable unity, and overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.”

Hegseth pulled some quotes from the Old Testament, which is the go-to place for zealots seeking religious texts that justify violence. The OT is rife with mass killings, human sacrifice, enslavement, and all manner of smiting and savagery. You can find just about any quote you want in there, to justify any act of depravity. That’s why many scholars consider the OT to be best understood as parable, like the myths of the ancient Greek and Romans.

Jesus, when he came along, was a lot mellower. In the Beatitudes (Matthew 5: 3-10), Jesus said, “Blessed are the meek … blessed are the merciful … blessed are the peacemakers,” and so on. Jesus didn’t leave any good warfighting quotes for Hegseth to bastardize.

Maybe Hegseth could simplify his prayer down to this: “Death to Iran.” It has the medieval feel the man who calls himself “secretary of war” seems to be looking for.

Strait dope. Speaking of biblical events, Trump said during his April Fools’ Day speech updating the nation on the Iran war that the Strait of Hormuz “will open up naturally” once the war winds down. It sounds like Moses parting the Red Sea, which come to think of it, would be nice, if it meant we could open up another land route for oil to get from the Arabian peninsula to the Mediterranean and out to the rest of the world.

The April Fools’ Day speech had to be one of the most ridiculous wartime updates delivered by any president. In the days before the speech, Trump had suggested a deal might be in the works to end the war, which pushed oil prices down and stocks up. But he didn’t say anything about a deal in the prime-time speech, while threatening to escalate the war instead of winding it down.

Trump tried to counsel patience by pointing out that most wars last longer than the five weeks US and Israeli forces have been bombing Iran. He even pointed out that the Vietnam War lasted 19 years, as if we could wage the Iran war for another 17 years and it would still be shorter than the Vietnam ordeal. This is the same Trump who said on March 3, “we expect a very swift conclusion.” He must have meant swift in the biblical sense, like, years or decades.

China trumps America. America’s reputation stinks, according to Gallup survey data from more than 130 countries. Every year, Gallup logs approval ratings for the leaders of the United States, China, Germany and Russia. And for the first time, approval of the United States has dropped below that of China. Just 31% of global residents approve of the United States under President Trump, while 36% approve of China under President Xi Jinping. The only time the US rating was lower was in 2020, the last year of Trump’s first term, and the year of the Covid outbreak.

The United States under Trump ranks just five points above Russia and the tyrannical warlord Vladimir Putin. And this was before Trump started the Iran war. By next year, the land of the free may very well be in last place.

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Instead, Trump is falling back on a playbook he thinks has served him well during a long career in real estate, celebrification, hucksterism, and populist politics: Brag. Threaten. Browbeat. And if that doesn’t work, bail out while declaring victory.

Trump’s playbook has been remarkably effective when applied to gullible humans. But financial markets have built-in bullshit detectors, because of all the money at stake. You can fool markets temporarily, but as Trump ought to be learning, you can’t fool them for long.

Trump tried to swindle financial markets during the April Fools’ Day speech in which he insisted the Iran war is going great while unwittingly demonstrating that it is not. He never should have given the speech. By hyping it as Trump’s first prime-time public address since the war started, the White House created the expectation of some breakthrough announcement. What Trump delivered instead was more like a desperate effort to repeat the lies he has been telling about the war, except for a much larger audience.

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President Trump mocks green energy as a scam and rails against fuel-economy standards as “hidden taxes.” Presidents George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan rolled back conservation efforts put in place by their predecessors. Even President Jimmy Carter, a devoted environmentalist, provoked mockery back in 1977 when he beseeched Americans to turn down their thermostats, in his infamous “sweater speech.”

For all the fits and starts, however, American efforts to boost energy-efficiency since the oil crises of the 1970s are paying a huge dividend now. Americans are feeling some pain from the war with Iran that Trump kicked off on February 28. Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz has produced the biggest disruption to global oil supplies in history, according to the International Energy Agency. Oil prices have jumped by more than 50% and now hover above $100 per barrel. Gasoline prices have followed oil prices upward, with pump prices now above $4 per gallon.

Yet the effect on the US economy has been tame compared with the soaring prices, gas lines and recessions that accompanied the oil shocks of the 1970s. Few economists think the Iran war will cause a recession, and investors generally expect a bull market in stocks to resume once the war ends. Unless the war drags on for months, it will be little more than an economic speed bump in 2026.

[See Trump’s 6 craziest Iran war statements]

Energy efficiency is a major reason why. Vehicles, buildings, appliances, factories and many other things use far less energy than they used to, thanks to a combination of regulations, government incentives, and technology breakthroughs. Household spending on energy is just 3.7% of all spending today, the lowest on record except during the anomalous Covid pandemic in 2020. That’s down from a peak of 9.2% in 1982.

For all the attention gasoline prices get, they account for just 2% of consumer spending today. That’s just one-third of the spending devoted to motor fuel in the early 1980s.

The sharp decline in energy spending is an important economic cushion. “Energy goods and services (including utilities) account for just 3.7% of the consumer wallet,” Bank of America explained in a March 31 research note. “While we remain vigilant to downside risks from the Iran war, it helps that the economy has become much more energy-efficient over time, making it more resilient to energy shocks.”

[$4 gas hurts, but not like it used to]

It also helps that renewable energy is gradually replacing fossil fuels. Since 2000, the portion of American energy coming from renewables has grown from 3.3% to about 12%. Adding nuclear power brings the share of energy from non-carbon sources to about 20%. That’s a crucial hedge during an oil crisis, because renewables and nuclear power are domestic and can’t be disrupted by any other country acting outside US borders.

Green-energy advocates can overstate the benefits of renewables, such as claiming they’re cheaper without accounting for infrastructure costs or government (taxpayer) subsidies. But it’s undeniable that domestically produced wind, solar and hydro power are more secure than oil subject to geopolitical anomalies.

Trump seems to think that the United States should be immune to an oil price spike related to his Iran war, because America produces about as much oil as it consumes. That’s an amateurish misread of how global markets work. Since oil is easily transportable, producers can sell wherever they can get the highest price, which basically sets one global oil price everybody has to pay. Renewables, by contrast, are not very transportable, which means they can help lower costs and boost energy security, but only where they are available.

[See what it will take to reopen the Strait of Hormuz]

Trump has killed many incentives for green energy and electric vehicles established during the Biden administration, while redirecting federal support toward fossil fuels. Yet the business case for renewables remains compelling in many industries and regions. The Iran war probably makes it more so. Trump may not notice, but ongoing efficiency gains and more renewables are the best energy policy the nation can have.

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Well, that’s the way it used to be. Donald Trump is a different kind of president, so the Iran war he launched on February 28 includes the same dissembling and incoherence that characterize the rest of the Trump presidency. If it wasn’t a war, it would be funny.

Since it is a war, Trump’s lies and dodges affect trillions of dollars’ worth of assets every day, with investors parsing Trump proclamations for clues on whether the war will end soon or drag on. Asset prices soar and plunge on Trump pronouncements that turn out to be feints.

A majority of Americans opposed the war from the outset, probably because Trump did nothing to explain why it was necessary or worth any sacrifice. Opposition seems likely to grow as gas prices pass $4 per gallon, a stock slump persists and the costs of the war seep deeper into everyday life.

As the war enters its second month, it’s obvious Trump didn’t anticipate or plan for the trouble Iran would be able to cause. These six statements capture Trump’s shoddy handling of the war, and hint at the messy outcome that might be coming:

Imminent threat: “Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.”

This was the second sentence of Trump’s February 28 statement announcing that the war had begun. It puzzled analysts at the time because Iran has no weapons that can reach the United States and there was no reason to think a terrorist attack was in the offing.

[$4 gas hurts, but not like it used to]

It’s clear now that this was a bogus justification for attacking Iran. Joe Kent, a top Trump counterterrorism official, resigned in mid-March in opposition to the war, writing in a statement, “Iran posed no immediate threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel.”

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The war Trump launched on February 28 has sent pump prices soaring by more than a dollar per gallon in a single month. At the end of February, gas prices averaged $2.98 per gallon, according to AAA. They’ve now hit $4 per gallon and will probably go higher. The spike is entirely due to Iran’s de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz, transit point for 20% of the world’s oil.

Gas prices have an outsized effect on consumer psyches, probably because filling stations display them in foot-high numbers and drivers pay for 10 or 20 gallons all at once. But $4 gas in 2026 isn’t as painful as it was in 2008, the first time prices passed that eye-popping threshold. And it’s possible that $5 per gallon, not $4, is the real pain point Trump has to worry about.

This chart shows gas prices during the last 20 years, adjusted for inflation and reflected in 2026 dollars. Many people forget, but the most severe gas-price shock in recent times occurred in 2008, when there was a brief speculative bubble in oil markets that sent the nominal price of gasoline to a peak of $4.16 per gallon. That would be more than $6 per gallon today. That spike was very short-lived, however. The financial crash occurred later that year and the Great Recession sent prices plummeting.

By the middle of the 2010s, the shale-fracking revolution was supercharging US oil production. The boost to world supply kept oil and gasoline prices relatively low. When the Covid pandemic hit in 2020 and economic activity collapsed, there was so much oil that storage became a problem. That produced the lowest gas prices in modern times: Nominal prices fell below $2 per gallon, or $2.35 in today’s dollars.

[More: Shaky wartime president sinks stocks]

US and global energy firms tightened production after Covid, and prices gradually rose. Then came Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which led to widespread sanctions on Russian energy. Oil prices jumped and gasoline hit $5 per gallon for the first time in June of 2022. That would be about $5.50 in 2026 dollars.

By the time Trump began his second presidential term in 2025, gasoline prices had retreated to around $3.10. They dropped a bit more during the following year, and right before Trump ordered the attacks on Iran at the end of February, gas prices were at a five-year low. Trump bragged often about cheap gas.

Those days are gone, at least for a while. While the US and Israeli attacks have devastated Iran’s military capabilities, they haven’t eliminated its ability to strike oil tankers with drones or missiles, or mine the Strait of Hormuz. The only oil tankers Iran allows through the strait are its own or those belonging to friendly countries. The hit to oil supply has sent prices up by 50%.

A majority of Americans oppose Trump’s war with Iran, and $4 gas could stiffen the opposition. But the real danger point for Trump may be $5 gas. Henrietta Treyz of Veda Partners has developed a “gas price anxiety index” that characterizes gas between $4 and $4.50 “uncomfortable.” Gas prices closer to $5 would be “painful,” while prices above $5 would be “excruciating.”

[See what it will take to reopen the Strait of Hormuz]

“We continue to view [a] main lever of political pressure to be $5 per gallon gasoline (up from $4 prior to the pandemic),” Treyz explained in a March 30 analysis. “This points to weeks if not months of continued war in Iran.”

However American consumers react, Trump can’t be happy about the surge in gasoline prices, and numerous press reports suggest he’s looking for a way to end the war and lower energy prices. The question is whether he can. Iran’s war strategy is to force energy prices higher and test how much discomfort the American president and his constituents can tolerate. It might be working.

Trump bombs. President Trump, it turns out, is a dreadful wartime president, lying repeatedly about the progress of the Iran war, dismissing the turmoil it’s causing, and doing less than nothing to steel the nation for sacrifice.

Trump’s flailing is evident, for example, in his empty threat to bomb Iran’s electrical infrastructure, which would be a war crime and probably accomplish nothing, militarily. Trump first threatened to do this on March 21. Then he “postponed” the attack until March 27. Then he “postponed” it again until April 6, and as April 6 approaches, he is sure to “postpone” it again. There is no grid attack. If there were, it would probably trigger a number of resignations in the military chain of command by people who felt they were being asked to carry out an illegal order. Amateurism doesn’t get much ranker than this.

Oh wait, it does! Trump also demonstrated total ignorance of global energy markets by saying “we don’t need the Strait of Hormuz,” as if America can fence off its oil from the rest of the world and make itself immune to global price hikes. It can’t. The United States actually does need the Strait of Hormuz, and the worst possible time to learn this lesson is after you’ve launched a war that effectively closed it and pushed the price of oil above $110 per barrel.

There’s more, because Trump always goes lower. But try not to despair. The good news is that the military commanders and the troops seem to be doing an excellent job managing the Iran war at the operational level, even as the civilian bosses bungle. Adm. Brad Cooper, the Central Command officer running the war, is the anti-Trump, a calm professional who explains military progress in the war with zero braggadocio in occasional video updates . If things were going badly, Cooper probably wouldn’t tell us, yet his steady focus suggests yes, there are some adults in the room, somewhere.

Trump has done a comically bad job explaining what this war is about. Unlike Trump, however, military plans are methodical, phased, and layered, and there’s a logic to the course of the Iran war if you listen to retired military officers and knowledgeable strategists.

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Trojan tankers. President Trump said Iran gave the United States a “present” by allowing 10 oil tankers registered in Pakistan to pass through the Strait of Hormuz so they can eventually deliver their cargo to customers.

You might be thinking: How nice! Where do I go to claim some Pakistani oil?! I don’t need a whole tanker, but a few barrels of oil might hold me over for a month or two until the war’s over.

Well, Trump hasn’t told Americans how to claim their oil just yet, and it’s possible that Iran didn’t really give America any gift at all, but just let some ships from a friendly nation sail through the strait, as it has been doing in recent weeks. Iran may also be charging “tolls” as high as $2 million per ship, and therefore profiting handsomely from the presents Trump thinks he’s getting.

It’s possible the Iranians are pranking Trump and there’s nobody in his administration smart enough to figure it out. It’s possible that an aide told Trump the Iranians gave him a present, because Trump was in a bad mood and needed something to cheer him up. It’s possible Trump doesn’t even remember that he started a war with Iran and is regressing to a childlike state in which he imagines every day is Christmas morning.

[See when the Hormuz Strait might actually open]

But presents from Iran? If you ever get one, check it for booby traps.

Aya-told-you-so. If you want to know how the Iran-war ceasefire negotiations are going, you’ll get a straighter answer from the extremist ayatollahs in Tehran than from the president of the United States. Trump has constructed an alternate reality in which Iran is “begging” for an end to the war, which keeps not ending because …? Iran, meanwhile, says there are no peace talks, with one regime mouthpiece mocking Trump for “negotiating with yourself.”

Whom to believe? Well, Trump is obviously deploying that old huckster tactic, fake it till everybody knows you’re bullshitting. Iranian spokesterrorists seem more trustworthy at this point.

How do we know? Because of what we can see with our own eyes: Iran’s strategy of causing financial pain and political turmoil for their American enemy seems to be working, as US gasoline prices close in on $4 per gallon, inflation worsens, stocks tank, interest rates spike and Trump looks like an idiot. If the Iranians presented any opening for a deal at this point, Trump would jump at it. Trump’s peace negotiations are as imaginary as gifts from Iran.

[Are you better off than you were one year ago? Our Better-Off Index has the answer]

Rigged! Trump used a mail-in ballot this week to vote in a Florida House race in the district that includes his Mar-a-Lago residence. If this sounds fishy, it might be because Trump has railed against mail-in voting for years, calling it “cheating” and “a disaster.” He’s pushing hard for Congress to pass a voter-suppression law called the SAVE Act that would sharply restrict mail-in voting. (The SAVE Act doesn’t have the votes and won’t pass, as we told you recently.)

So why would Trump vote in this dubious method himself? “Because I’m president.” That’s literally how he explained himself. Trump gets special privileges, see, like a king. Mail-in for me, not for thee.

[Check out the outlook for stocks one the Iran war is over]

Oh, Trump’s preferred Republican candidate lost. Trump won the district by 11 percentage points in 2024, but Democrat Emily Gregory beat Trump’s guy by 2.4 points, for a 13-point swing away from Trump in his own voting district. Gregory ran on affordability and vows to do something about $4 gas (caused by Trump’s war!).

Back of the line. Delta Air Lines suspended a VIP program for members of Congress due to the obscene congressional funding impasse for TSA agents that has snarled airports across the country. The VIP service includes airport escorts, expedited screening, a dedicated customer-service line and other perks.

Once Congress finally gets around to paying TSA agents, here’s the new special program Delta and all the airlines should institute for members of Congress: Last boarding group, middle seats only, no carry-on bags, and special seating areas in the terminal where other passengers can throw fruit at them. If they want to complain, let them mail a letter to company HQ.

My fellow Americans, our country is a mess. Here’s a cartoon to make you feel better:

You can order cartoons by this artist👆 or merch featuring the cartoons at CartoonStock. And you should!

That’s because President Trump, since launching the war with Iran on February 28, has repeatedly sent the message that the conflict will be short, and reopening the strait a snap. Trump himself created the expectation that disruptions will be temporary and relatively small, with everything back to normal before long.

In reality, Trump unleashed a maelstrom that challenges even the world’s most powerful military. Yet US forces are working the problem, and making progress toward reopening the strait. If Trump had set a two- or three-month timeframe for getting the oil flowing again, it might have calmed jittery markets and given everybody a realistic sense of what to expect.

The Strait of Hormuz, which is normally a passageway for 20% of global oil supplies, is just 21 miles wide at its narrowest point. The shipping lanes able to handle huge oil tankers are narrower still. Iran has numerous weapons able to damage or sink ships, including missiles, drones, rockets, attack boats and waterborne mines. It has already struck more than a dozen ships in and around the gulf, and threatened more attacks, effectively stopping most oil shipment out of the region. Oil prices have jumped 40% since the war began.

Navy warships have many defenses against the type of threats Iran poses, but they’re not an impenetrable shield. And it would only take one lucky shot by Iran to hit a tanker and possibly cause more turmoil in energy markets are already under stress.

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Before President Trump started the Iran war on February 28, markets were trying to navigate the artificial-intelligence boom and determine whether it was a bubble about to burst. Trump’s hot and cold trade wars posed another obstacle for investors.

The Iran war will end at some point, so I chatted recently with Sam Ro, founder of the TKer newsletter, about where markets are likely to be headed if—well, let’s be optimistic and say when—things get back to normal.

The full video is near the bottom, with a few snippets below. Takeaways:

Don’t try to trade the war. “What’s particularly unusual and fraught in this current situation is there’s no predicting what the president or the people around him are going to say,” Sam says. “We’ve seen this in recent days and recent weeks, where in the morning, it sounds like this is going to be a prolonged conflict. And then in the afternoon, they try to say it’s over.”

Don’t try to trade the war! 👇

Don’t sell America! “Two areas where the U.S. dominates the world is profit margins and earnings growth,” Sam reminds us. “Earnings have been growing faster in the US than most of the world for years. And that explains why these companies have been outperforming.”

Don’t give up on US stocks. 👇

Big US firms are remarkably adaptive. The “Magnificent 7” US companies—Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla—are not monolithic, plying one trade forever. They’re remarkably adaptive, continually updating their business models. “There’s a pretty good chance, in five or 10 years, data centers won’t be the big market story, but Alphabet is still number one because they are in a completely different industry that we’re not thinking about right now,” Sam says.

The bottom might be in. 👇

“Sell America” can be misleading. “The S&P 500 gets somewhere between 30 and 40% of their revenue outside of the US, which is a lot,” Sam says. So if you own an S&P index fund, you’re already geographically diversified.

Full interview with Sam Ro. 👇

Market pressures could help end the war. “The way I think of it is, eventually there are greater forces than the people who are sort of making the decisions on whether or not to escalate or de-escalate the war or any conflict. If it does become the case that oil supply becomes severely constrained, then maybe more parties get involved to de-escalate this thing.”

And the future might look pretty good. “There’s a decent chance that the bottom in the stock market might already be in.”

All of these possibilities and many others seem to be in play as President Donald Trump’s manic war strategy careens from one extreme to another. Investors are desperately trying to trade the Iran war Trump started on February 28, buying when Trump suggests the war might end soon, and selling when hostilities worsen. But these gigantic all-or-nothing trades, all pegged to one megalomaniac’s impulses, have plunged financial markets into a state of temporary insanity.

The latest Trump-driven gyration is a March 23 plunge in oil prices and surge in stock values, based on one de-escalatory social-media post. But that was nothing more than Trump backing down from his own escalatory threat of two days earlier.

[See 7 ways Iran can stop oil shipments]

Let’s examine the timing. On Saturday, March 21 at 7:44 pm, Trump said on social media that the United States would “obliterate” Iran’s power plants if it didn’t allow all ships safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours. So his deadline would have been 7:44 pm on Monday, March 23.

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