The first day of Donald Trump’s second term was a national emergency, at least according to the president himself. On Jan. 20, 2025, he declared a “national energy emergency,” pledging to tap into America’s oil and gas reserves. As Salon reported at the time, experts said was a false alarm. At the time, the U.S. was doing fine with its fossil fuel production. The bigger problem, one that Trump continues to deny, centers on curbing emissions and addressing our planet’s overheating problem.
Roughly 18 months later, things have clearly changed. The nation is steeped in an energy crisis of Trump’s own making, largely due to his tariff agenda and war of choice with Iran. Despite a flurry of vague timelines and lofty promises, it doesn’t seem like we’ll be out of the woods any time soon. Trump’s kidnapping of Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and the recent announcement that the U.S. will take control of the country’s oil fields to the tune of some 65 billion barrels, smacks of desperation. Yes, ExxonMobil has agreed to go along with the theft, but it may be more lip service to the president, as extracting oil from Venezuela would be extremely costly and risky compared to drilling domestically. At any rate, it will be a long time before we see the effects of those moves on gas prices, ethical and environmental ramifications aside.
Meanwhile, Trump keeps making promises that require more than a little faith. On Wednesday, right before he jetted off to his sad little ego-boosting convention in Dallas, the president stopped to talk to reporters at Joint Base Andrews. They asked him about the still soaring price of oil and a timeline for the end of the Iran war. First, he claimed that the U.S. is winning the war, that Iran is in shambles and its economy had all but collapsed, and that the American military even has control over the Strait of Hormuz. The worst will be over, he said, immediately after the November midterm elections. Or maybe a bit later than that.
“Right after the election, oil prices are going to be tumbling downward,” Trump said on the tarmac. “They’re going to be tumbling down and we’ll get them down. I think for gasoline, we’ll get them below $2 a gallon.”
Don’t get hung up on the timeline, he added. It’ll happen when it happens! Just trust me and vote Republican. That’s his pitch, anyway.
Don’t get hung up on the timeline, he added. It’ll happen when it happens! Just trust me and vote Republican. That’s his pitch, anyway.
The last time gas was $2 a gallon was during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, when demand for oil was destroyed because many people were staying home to avoid spreading a deadly virus. I can still remember how blue the skies in California seemed during that brief interlude. Too bad air quality can’t be like that all the time. I’m not wishing another pandemic on us, mind you. My point is there are always tradeoffs. Trump knows this — he’s only gotten richer as gas prices have jumped, thanks to his investments in the industry. A recent report from Democrats on the Joint Economic Committee found that “President Trump saw his wealth go up by as much as $15.5 million just through stocks he owned in oil and gas companies at the end of 2025.”
It may not surprise you that Trump’s prediction about a sudden drop in gas prices seems unlikely. This week, oil came in at slightly over $104 a barrel, the highest it’s been since July, and on Thursday, diesel hit an average of $6 a gallon — for the first time ever. It goes without saying that the ripple effects this will have on shipping and agriculture, and thus food prices, will be profound. Trump may want to take a page from Europe, where fuel prices are also hitting record highs, leading to widespread protests.
Meanwhile, the U.S. and Iran continue to trade strikes across the Middle East. The Pentagon announced on Tuesday that it had destroyed five Iranian oil tankers in retaliation for attacks on its warships, while Tehran hit back at American targets in Jordan, where at least 18 ballistic missiles were intercepted but no casualties were reported. Given this flare-up in fighting, reporters asked if there would be an end to this war.
“I think the war will end immediately after the election,” Trump said, claiming that Iran “can’t hold out any longer . . . They’re desperate to try and affect the election so that we can get a nice, weak group of people in there and leave them alone and let them have their nuclear weapon. All they want is a nuclear weapon. And if they had a nuclear weapon, the whole world is in deep trouble.”
The immediate followup question was about whether or not there will be a new “nuclear deal” with Iran, something Energy Secretary Chris Wright said earlier this week might not happen any time soon, if at all. “There may not be a nuclear agreement. It may be simply destroying their capabilities to do it. An agreement may await a next administration in Iran. We simply don’t know that,” he told ABC News on Sunday.
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But Trump claimed he’d be “doing much more than a nuclear deal,” before immediately admitting that he wasn’t looking to negotiate at the moment. “Originally, I wanted to make a deal,” he said. “We’re so far down the line they have very little country left right now, so we’re not looking for it. Yes, a negotiation could possibly happen but it’s not something we’re looking at. This war will end immediately after our election.”
Isn’t that convenient? Both the Iran war and high gas prices are extremely unpopular among all voters, which virtually all political analysts predict could swing votes in favor of Democrats. Trump’s blustering response to all this is to keep calm and vote MAGA. It’ll all be resolved immediately after the elections or maybe months later. It’s a coin flip, really. All you have to do is clap your hands and believe!
Despite offering absolutely no evidence for his claims, at least Trump called the Iran conflict a war, something Vice President JD Vance has been strangely reluctant to do. It’s certainly possible that the Iranians are delaying an end to the war in order to hurt Republicans in the midterms, or they could even wait until Trump is out of office entirely before discussing an end to hostilities. But Iran’s position arguably has more to do with Trump’s volatile negotiating strategy than with some nefarious October surprise plot.
What we have here might be an example of the Tinkerbell effect, named for the “Peter Pan” character who could be resurrected from death by audience participation, i.e. belief in fairies. Psychologist Brittany McGeehan described it this way: “If you hold the belief that the power of your belief has an impact on your situation, you will increase your autonomy. Rather than becoming a victim to life, you will begin playing an active role and, therefore, start taking positive steps forward.”
I don’t know if that’s great life advice or not, but it certainly feels germane to the Trump administration’s strategy. Just saying and believing something will happen will make it happen, right? Who would put it past this president to embrace woo-woo manifestation as domestic and foreign policy? There are other conclusions we might draw, of course, such as that the president actually has zero control over the situation, and that things are likely to get more expensive and more explosive before they get better. Maybe if we all hold hands and close our eyes, we can manifest a collective reality check for Donald Trump: He lost this war long ago, and his inability to recognize or admit that truth is what’s really choking the economy.