Higher Prices, Greater Instability
That Is Not Successful Leadership
As the war of choice Donald started with Iran continues to spiral outward, he insists everything is under control. He points to oil production, praises the American military, and congratulates himself while the ceasefire he touted as a victory has collapsed, regional instability continues to spread, and the economic consequences of his decisions ripple across the globe. Donald continues to treat every setback as a public relations opportunity instead of acknowledging the damage his decisions have caused.
Unsurprisingly, given how feckless and indecisive Donald has been throughout this unnecessary, illegal, and unconstitutional war, the ceasefire between the United States and Iran has now collapsed. Over the weekend of July 11, Iran struck tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz, prompting the United States to respond with strikes against Iranian targets. On July 14, the United States reinstated its naval blockade on ships traveling to and from Iranian ports, signaling that whatever brief pause existed has now given way to another dangerous escalation.
Rather than addressing the renewed fighting or explaining how the Trump regime intended to restore stability, Donald once again declared victory. Posting on his failing social media platform that same day, he wrote:
Oil is flowing like never before, thanks to the awesome power of the United States military.
The reality changed almost immediately. Within hours, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned that it would move to close additional export routes beyond the Strait of Hormuz, declaring that regional energy exports are either shared by all or denied to all. That threat completely undermined Donald’s triumphant narrative. If anything, it demonstrated that Iran remains capable of disrupting global energy markets despite Donald’s repeated insistence that its military has been completely obliterated. Every new attack, every new threat, and every additional escalation makes it increasingly obvious that Donald is not controlling events. He is reacting to them.
The conflict has already expanded far beyond the narrow military objectives Donald initially claimed would bring peace to the region. Iran has also struck the Ras Laffan LNG terminal in Qatar, the Yanbu oil terminal in Saudi Arabia, and the Fujairah oil terminal in the United Arab Emirates. These are all critical pieces of regional energy infrastructure that will take months, and in some cases years, to repair. These are not symbolic targets. They are critical pieces of regional energy infrastructure.
Meanwhile, the Houthis in Yemen continue threatening retaliation should Saudi Arabia expand its military operations, making it increasingly clear that this is no longer simply a conflict between the United States and Iran. Donald has helped transform it into a broader regional crisis.
As the conflict widens, the economic consequences continue to mount. Because the peace process has effectively collapsed, oil prices have climbed for a fourth consecutive trading session. By July 15, Brent crude had risen above $85 per barrel while West Texas Intermediate crude exceeded $80 per barrel. Both benchmarks are now approximately twelve percent higher than they were before the ceasefire collapsed, marking the sharpest sustained increase since the fighting resumed. These numbers are not simply market fluctuations. They are direct consequences of a war Donald chose to start and now appears incapable of containing.
Those consequences extend well beyond the price Americans pay at the gas station. The World Food Programme estimates that forty-five million additional people could be pushed into acute food insecurity this year if the conflict continues.
The World Bank projects fertilizer prices will increase by thirty-one percent during 2026, driven largely by a sixty percent jump in the cost of urea. Fertilizer affordability has now reached its worst level since 2022, creating enormous pressure on farmers already struggling with rising production costs and increasing uncertainty.
This is not the first time Donald has celebrated rising oil prices as though they somehow represent an American victory. He consistently evaluates economic events through a single question: does this make wealthy people like him richer? If the answer is yes, then he considers the outcome a success regardless of how much pain it causes everyone else.
Months before this latest escalation, on March 12, Donald posted on social media:
The United States is the largest oil producer in the world by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money.
That single word, we, reveals exactly how Donald views the presidency. He is not talking about American families paying more to fill their gas tanks. He is not talking about farmers facing soaring fertilizer costs or consumers watching grocery prices continue to climb. He is talking about himself and the extraordinarily wealthy oil executives whose profits increase as energy prices rise. They benefit from higher prices while everyone else bears the cost.
Ordinary Americans do not make more money when oil prices increase. They spend more money. Farmers pay more for fertilizer, transportation becomes more expensive, food production costs rise, and families ultimately pay higher prices at the grocery store. Donald’s wealthy donors and corporate allies may celebrate higher oil prices because they improve quarterly profits, but working Americans experience those same price increases as another financial burden. Once again, Donald’s policies reward the people who need help the least while shifting the costs onto everyone else.
The disruption extends well beyond the United States. Roughly eleven million barrels of crude oil per day have effectively disappeared from global markets compared to the approximately twenty million barrels that moved through the Strait of Hormuz before this conflict began. Before Donald launched this unnecessary war, the Strait remained open and global energy markets continued to function. Nearly all of the world’s spare oil production capacity sits in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, both of which depend on that narrow waterway to export most of their oil. As long as the conflict continues, those supplies remain vulnerable.
As energy prices continue climbing, agricultural production becomes more expensive across the globe. Asia has already borne much of that burden because most Persian Gulf oil is exported there. Pakistan has closed schools in an effort to conserve energy, while India has experienced shortages of liquefied petroleum gas used for cooking. These are the real-world consequences of Donald’s decisions. A reckless war launched without constitutional authority has made it more difficult for families thousands of miles away to cook meals, for farmers to grow crops, and for millions of people to afford food.
Donald continues to boast about military strength and rising oil production as though those numbers alone define success. The rest of the world is left confronting the far more meaningful measure of his presidency: higher prices, greater instability, a widening regional war, and a growing humanitarian crisis that becomes more severe with each passing day.
The political consequences of this war have become just as difficult for Donald to ignore as the economic consequences. Americans were promised that Donald would end wars, lower prices, and restore stability. Instead, they have watched him launch an unnecessary conflict that has driven up the cost of living, destabilized an already volatile region, and weakened America’s standing abroad. Unsurprisingly, the public is beginning to respond.
A new Economist/YouGov poll conducted between July 3 and July 6 found Donald’s job approval at its lowest level on record, matching the worst numbers of both of his presidencies and even the lowest point of Joe Biden’s administration. A separate poll released by Focaldata that same week described Donald’s standing as an all-time low, placing him twenty-three points underwater with voters. Those numbers are not simply a reflection of dissatisfaction with one policy decision. They represent growing frustration with an administration that has repeatedly demonstrated incompetence while insisting everything is proceeding exactly according to plan.
CNN’s Harry Enten recently explained just how dramatically public opinion has shifted on Donald’s handling of foreign policy.
This is what Harry Enten reported:
Bad. Bad. I mean, he came into office during the campaign saying, “I’m going to end the wars.” Well, the wars aren’t ending and, if anything, we’re adding to them. Trump and foreign policy in 2024 versus Kamala Harris—foreign policy was a strength for this president. He was trusted more on foreign policy than Kamala Harris by a ten-point margin. Among independents, he was trusted more by fourteen points. Now look at his net approval on foreign policy in 2026. Down he goes right into the negative direction. Look at this. Twenty-two points in the negative, a minus twenty-two net approval rating. That’s a drop of over thirty points.
The idea that anybody ever believed Donald Trump would be better on foreign policy than almost anyone else has always been astonishing to me. Somehow, millions of people convinced themselves that an ignorant, ill-informed man with no understanding of history, diplomacy, or international alliances would excel at managing the most complicated geopolitical crises in the world. The fact that he was trusted more than his opponent on foreign policy says far more about the success of his political mythology than it does about his actual competence. Unfortunately, mythology has a way of collapsing when confronted with reality, and the reality of Donald’s foreign policy has been catastrophic.
Despite those polling numbers, the White House continues insisting that Donald’s presidency has been an unparalleled success. A White House spokesman recently told Newsweek that no president in American history has accomplished more for the American people than Donald, pointing to job creation and efforts to cool inflation as evidence of his success.
Oddly enough, I agree with the first part of that statement.
Donald has accomplished more than almost any president in American history, depending entirely on how you define accomplishment.
He has enriched himself more than any president in American history. He has shattered democratic norms more aggressively than any president in American history. He has demonstrated an extraordinary willingness to place his own interests above those of the country. And he has managed to inflict extraordinary damage on the American economy with remarkable speed and breathtaking efficiency.
If those are accomplishments, then yes, Donald stands alone.
The polling suggests that more Americans are beginning to recognize exactly what this war has cost them. Earlier surveys tied the decline in Donald’s approval directly to the conflict with Iran and the resulting spike in gasoline prices. A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in May found that Donald’s approval rating had failed to rise above thirty-six percent after the United States and Israel attacked Iran on February 28. Only a year earlier, that number had hovered around forty percent.
Even more revealing, three-quarters of respondents—including roughly half of all Republicans—said Donald’s administration was at least partly responsible for soaring gasoline prices, which had increased dramatically since the war began. That should alarm Republicans far more than any overall approval number. General election voters can be persuaded. Members of your own party are much harder to convince once they begin abandoning you.
The economic concerns extend well beyond energy prices. An Associated Press-NORC poll conducted in mid-May found Republican dissatisfaction with Donald’s handling of the economy had reached a new high, while only one-third of Americans approved of his stewardship of the economy overall. Those numbers reflect something much larger than temporary frustration. They suggest that Americans are beginning to connect the consequences they experience in their daily lives with the decisions Donald continues making in the White House.
That connection matters because Donald has always depended on one central political myth: that he is uniquely competent on the economy. Throughout his political career, he has cultivated the image of a brilliant businessman capable of solving complex problems simply through instinct and force of personality. That myth has survived repeated bankruptcies, failed businesses, criminal convictions, and endless evidence of financial incompetence because enough people continued believing the fiction. But higher gas prices, rising grocery bills, increasing costs for farmers, and an expanding war are much harder to explain away.
Americans can see those consequences every time they fill their gas tanks, buy groceries, or hear reports of yet another escalation in the Middle East. They do not need economists to explain that their lives have become more expensive. They are living it.
These numbers should be a political death knell, or at least they should be. If I were a Republican running for office this year, I would be doing everything possible to distance myself from this increasingly destructive lame duck president. Every week this war continues, every additional rise in energy prices, and every new escalation further ties Republican candidates to an administration that has become synonymous with instability, higher costs, and failed leadership.
Donald promised strength. He promised peace. He promised prosperity.
Instead, he delivered a war that has destabilized an entire region, driven up the global cost of energy, increased the price of food, damaged America’s credibility abroad, and left millions of people paying for a conflict that never needed to happen in the first place.
That is not successful leadership.
It is simply the latest reminder that Donald continues measuring success by what benefits him personally while the rest of the world bears the consequences.
And may I just say that I don’t think a President should own a social media platform and post things as they fly into his head that more than likely should be discussed and vetted by experienced government people first……..and eventually posted in official messaging from the White House.
Great piece, Mary❤️.
The biggest scam in politics (besides Donald and his entire family—not you, Mary😉) is convincing people to ignore what they’re actually living through. It’s amazing how “I’ll fix everything on day one” somehow turned into “None of this is his fault.” You can’t take credit for every success and dodge responsibility for every failure. Americans are paying more, allies are questioning us, and the world is way less stable because of this entitled global menace. People who had their head in the sand are finally getting pissed because his empty promises don’t match their reality.