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- [00:00]
A
Hey, it's Will Salatan from the Bulwark. So the midterm elections are coming up, and there's one person who's working really, really hard to make sure that Donald Trump and the Republicans lose, and that person is Donald Trump. Seriously, for weeks, this guy has been publicly admitting that he deliberately started the Iran war, knowing, he says, he knew that it would screw the economy. In fact, I'm going to show you the video of Trump telling voters how little he cares about their financial situation. It's. It's like he's making ads for the Democratic Party. So here's the story Trump has been telling about how he started the war.
- [00:46]
B
I called in Scott Bassett and all of my people, mostly my financial people, and I said, all right, folks, congratulations. We just hit the highest price in the history of the stock market. Oil prices were very low. They were 60 and 70. You were buying oil for $2 and even less. Remember, just a couple of months ago, you were at $2 and $185. In Iowa, it was 185 a gallon. I said, congratulations. Now I'm going to upset the apple cart for you because we have to take a little journey down to a beautiful country known as Iran.
- [01:20]
A
So that was the situation. He says oil was under $70 a barrel and gas was under $2 a gallon. And he decided, he says, to upset the apple cart. So what happened? Well, the first thing is the price of oil went way up.
- [01:40]
B
Oil prices are up 50%. If you told me that we were going to be at only 92 a barrel, $92 a barrel, I would have been very surprised. All right? And you know what? I'm very happy. And it's going to come dropping down very big as soon as it's over.
- [01:55]
A
So oil prices went up 50%. 50%. And Trump said he was very happy with that because it could have been a lot worse. In fact, he says when he started the war, he thought he was going to take the stock market down 25%.
- [02:15]
B
So when I did this, I thought the market would go down 25%. And I think I thought that was a great deal if it did. If it went down 25%, I was satisfied. I said, because we cannot let these people have a nuclear weapon. They'll use it. We can't. I also thought oil would go up to 200, 250, maybe 300.
- [02:32]
A
Okay, just for context, 25%. 25% is basically the 1929 stock market crash. Trump is saying that he thought doing that again would be a great Deal. And he thought $300. $300 for a barrel of oil would have been fine. That is more than four times what oil cost before the war. Right now, on average, gas prices in the United states are about $4.50 a gallon. If you do the math on a barrel of oil, Trump is basically saying he'd be fine if gas went above $10. Above $10 a gallon. Now, why is the price of gas so high? Well, the main reason is that the Strait of Hormuz, where oil comes out from the Middle east to the rest of the world, is closed. And who closed it? Let's ask Donald Trump.
- [03:31]
B
Right now. We have it closed. We have total control of the strait. And the fact that it's closed, you know, they would have opened it up three days ago. They came to us and they said, we will agree to open the strait. And all my people were happy. Everybody was happy except me. I said, wait a minute. If we open the strait, that means they're going to make 500 million a day. I don't want them to make $500 million a day until they settle this thing. So I'm the one that kept it closed. We have total control of it.
- [03:57]
A
Oh. So he closed it. He wanted to make sure Iran would lose money. And they are losing money. They're losing a lot of money. And you know who else is losing money? You and me and all of us. But Trump thinks that's okay. Here's what he said in the oval office on April 23.
- [04:18]
B
Does that mean Americans should anticipate spending more on gasoline for the foreseeable future for a little while? And you know what they get? You know what they get for that? Iran without a nuclear weapon that's going to try and blow up one of our cities or blow up the entire Middle East.
- [04:33]
A
So that's his argument. You need to keep paying more for gas and everything else, since the price of energy affects everything else, to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. But here's what he said a week before that, on April 15th, we knocked
- [04:51]
B
the hell out of Iran. We stopped them from having. They're not going to have a nuclear weapon regardless, by the way, I could leave tomorrow. They would never be able to have a nuclear weapon. For years they would, because their country is devastated.
- [05:05]
A
So on April 15, Trump said he could end the war immediately and Iran would never have a nuclear weapon because we wiped them out with. With all of our bombing. But then a week later, on April 23, he said, you still. You still have to pay more for gas because we still need to stop them from getting a nuclear weapon. Do you get the feeling maybe he's lying to you? In fact, here's what he said about Iran's nuclear program even earlier. On April 12th, as you know, we
- [05:40]
B
knocked out with the B2 bombers. Had we not knocked that out, they would have had a nuclear weapon within one month after we knocked out. In other words, that the B2s, those beautiful B2 bombers, totally obliterated their three sides.
- [05:54]
A
You notice he keeps talking about the B2 bombers. That was last year. Last year he sent the B2s to destroy Iran's nuclear sites, and they did. He says we totally obliterated the sites. So that's twice last year, and then this year that he claims.