No Relief For Surging Oil Prices Until After Midterms, According to Trump’s Wishful Thinking

Sep 11, 2026 01:16 PM EDT, Fri

As oil prices keep climbing, Trump doesn’t expect relief until after the midterms

There’s a striking contradiction at the heart of the president’s line on gas prices. He hasn’t tried to reconcile the contradiction because he can’t.

By Steve Benen

Sept. 10, 2026, 3:22 PM EDT

Consumers looking for relief at the gas pump will have to wait a while longer. Oil prices spiked yet again on Thursday, and according to AAA, per-gallon averages climbed another 5 cents over the course of 24 hours (and 13 cents over the past seven days). Diesel prices, meanwhile, have climbed to nearly $6 per gallon nationally, which is an all-time high.

With this in mind, a reporter asked Donald Trump during a brief Q&A, “Oil is now back above $100 a barrel. How do you explain this to Americans who are wondering when prices are going to come down?”

“Well, I think it’s very easy to explain to America,” the president said. “All you have to do is say, ‘Will you let Iran have a nuclear weapon?’ And the answer is no.”

This might make more sense if Iran had, or was even close to having, nuclear weapons; but since that isn’t the case, the Republican’s talking points continue to be worthless.

But then the president kept going.

After insisting that Iran “is in shambles right now,” Trump added, “We control the [Strait of Hormuz] and lots of other things. So for a little while. I would say this: Shortly, but right after the election, because they’d like to have it that way, but right after the election, oil prices are going to be tumbling downward. They’re going to be tumbling down, and we’ll get ‘em down.”

The Q&A moved on, but I found myself stuck on the tension between the first part of the answer and the second.

On the one hand, we’re supposed to believe that Iran is in “shambles” and the United States enjoys control over the Strait of Hormuz. On the other hand, we’re also supposed to believe that Iran is continuing to fight the war and has the capacity to keep oil prices high for the next eight weeks.

But which is it? Is Iran a defeated force or not? Do we control the strait or not? If so, why doesn’t the administration simply open it up to international traffic now and lower prices?

Trump hasn’t tried to reconcile the contradiction because he can’t. Instead, the president apparently just wants to keep peddling desperate rhetoric in the hope the public won’t notice how little sense he’s making.

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

Related Posts

Navigation Within