Trump speech on Iran war, recent remarks on oil, NATO, daycare costs land with a thud
President Trump’s meandering speech on the Iran war late Wednesday — pairing escalating bombing threats with promises of a quick exit and denying responsibility for the Strait of Hormuz — did little to calm U.S. allies and world markets worried about the conflict’s ongoing disruptions to global oil supplies.
Stocks fell and oil prices rose after markets opened on Thursday, with the price of U.S. crude rising more than 10% to above $110.
Following the speech, diplomats from more than 40 countries excluding the United States met to strategize on how to remove Iran’s continued pressure on the strait, a vital oil corridor that the U.S.-Israeli war has forced Iran to restrict but which Trump said on Wednesday was not his problem.
Meanwhile, Trump’s comments early Wednesday about leaving NATO drew nuanced rebukes from both international and domestic allies, including French President Emmanuel Macron and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., while the president’s comments that the United States was unable to focus on social services like Medicare or other domestic needs like child care while waging its foreign war sparked outrage at home.
Far from calling for a united push with allies to end the war, Trump’s speech – his first official address to the nation since the war began a month ago – further isolated the United States and the Trump administration on the global stage.
In his speech, Trump firmly stated that the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to oil tanker traffic, despite causing war, is not the responsibility of the United States, because it receives less oil from the corridor than other countries.
Trump said, “Countries of the world that receive oil from the Strait of Hormuz must pay attention to this transition. They must value it. They must seize it and value it. They can do this easily. We will help, but they must take the lead in protecting the oil on which they are so desperately dependent.”
“To the countries that can’t get fuel and many of whom refuse to be involved in decapitating Iran – we had to do it ourselves – I have a suggestion: No. 1, buy oil from the United States. We have a lot of it. There is so much of it,” Trump continued. “And No. 2, develop some belated courage.”
He said these countries already needed to better assist the United States in its war effort, but now they must “go to the strait and take it, preserve it, and use it for yourselves.”
“A large part of Iran has been destroyed,” he said. “The hard part is done, so it should be easy.”
Of course, Trump has consistently downplayed the threat Iran continues to pose in the region. And securing the strait along Iran’s mountainous coast, which is dotted with strategic locations where Iranian forces can threaten shipping traffic, is no easy task, as acknowledged at a meeting of foreign diplomats on Thursday to resolve the issue without the United States.
“We have seen Iran hijack an international shipping route to hold the global economy hostage,” British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said.
Meanwhile, speaking in South Korea, Macron said that “it is unlikely that the United States will later complain that they were not supported in an operation that they chose to undertake alone.”
“This is not our operation,” he said. “What we want is for peace to be achieved as soon as possible.”
Macron also harshly criticized Trump’s criticism of NATO.paper tigerHe made statements before his speech on Wednesday.
“When you commit to an alliance, you fulfill these commitments,” Macron said. “You don’t comment on them every morning.”
Trump has argued for weeks that NATO allies who refuse to join the U.S. war are failing to meet their treaty obligations and that staying in the alliance may not be worth it for U.S. progress. But he made no mention of NATO in his speech on Wednesday evening.
Trump does not have the authority to unilaterally withdraw the United States from NATO. This power is in the hands of Congress; Trump’s own allies have downplayed the idea.
“There are a lot of people who think that NATO was a very critical and incredibly successful post-World War II alliance,” Thune said. “I think you need allies in the world today.”
Trump’s official speech at the White House appeared to be directed at least in part at his own allies at home, including his MAGA base, where frustrations with the war were growing; especially among Trump supporters who defend his “America First” message and campaign promises to save the United States from foreign turmoil rather than start new ones.
In his speech, Trump said that since he first stepped into politics in 2015, he had promised that he would never allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons. He told Americans listening that the war was “a real investment in the future of your children and grandchildren” because it made the world a safer place.
But Trump further fueled his frustrations with the war’s distraction from domestic priorities with separate comments he made at a private Easter dinner at the White House early Wednesday, which the White House posted video of online and then deleted.
In those remarks, Trump said U.S. military needs should take priority over social services and other major costs like child care that are vital to average Americans.
“We can’t possibly take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare and all that individual stuff,” Trump said. “They can do it state-by-state. You can’t do it federally. We have to watch out for one thing: military protection. We have to protect the country.”
The president’s political opponents were quick to pounce on these remarks as irrelevant.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) wrote of
Democrats also criticized Trump’s framing of the war more broadly on Wednesday.
About “He’s trying to cut and run while he can. This unauthorized war, which has no clear and consistent justification, and the consequences of his choices will not go away when he walks away.”
In addition to defending NATO on Thursday, Macron and other French politicians also reacted to Trump’s mocking of Macron in his statement on Wednesday. He mimicked his French accent as he accused Macron of only wanting to help the US war effort when the war was “won” and referred to a video from last year in which Brigitte Macron was caught pushing her husband’s face, saying it was because they were joking with each other.
“There is a lot of talk and it is everywhere,” Macron said. French newspaper Le Monde. “We all need stability, tranquility and a return to peace; this is not a show!”
“To be honest, it’s not on equal footing,” Yaël Braun-Pivet, speaker of the lower house of the French parliament, told French broadcaster franceinfo. “We’re discussing the future of the world right now. In Iran right now, this is affecting the lives of millions of people, people are dying on the battlefield, and we have a president who laughs and makes fun of others.”
