Trump Admits He Wrecked the Economy

It’s a bold strategy. Let’s see if it works out for him.

Donald Trump’s quest to get a bunch of taxpayer money for his White House ballroom project isn’t going great, with plenty of Republicans in both the House and the Senate still sounding highly skeptical. “It was one thing when private dollars were doing it,” Sen. John Curtis of Utah told Politico yesterday. “If you’re asking me for a billion dollars, I have some really hard questions.” Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) was even more unequivocal: “Not happening here,” he said yesterday. Happy Wednesday.

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(Photo Illustration by The Bulwark / Photos Getty)

Take It From Him

by Will Saletan

Donald Trump always finds a scapegoat. When the economy does well under other presidents, he takes the credit. And when the economy suffers under him, he finds someone else to blame. In his first term, it was the “China virus.” In his second term, it’s the Fed.

But now he’s in a jam. Official numbers released on Tuesday show that energy prices, grocery prices, core inflation, and the Consumer Price Index are all surging, thanks to Trump’s war in Iran. And this time, he can’t escape responsibility.

Why? Because he has repeatedly admitted, on camera, that he foresaw the war’s economic damage and started it anyway.

At least fifteen times in the past five weeks, Trump has recounted the story of how he told his economic team about the war. Here’s one version, delivered in Florida on May 1:

I called in Scott Bessent and all of my people, mostly my financial people. And I said, “Alright, 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 [per barrel]. They were buying [gas] for $2 and even less. . . . In Iowa, it was $1.85 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, and we have to make sure that they don’t have a nuclear weapon.” We stopped them with the B-2 bombers. If we didn’t do that, we would’ve had a nuclear weapon.

Every time Trump tells this story, the gist is the same: The war was his decision, and he knew it would upend the economy. Often, he quotes the pre-war price of gas, boasting that in some states it was under $2 per gallon. On average, it’s now about $4.50.

The first time Trump told this story, in an interview with Maria Bartiromo on April 12, he said oil and gas might be even more expensive by November. Bartiromo’s eyebrows went up in shock.

Three days later, Trump boasted that oil was only $92 a barrel, up from $65 before the war. “I’m very happy,” he said. On May 6, he bragged that it was only $100.

In February, before the war, the Dow stood above 50,000. In the war’s first month, it fell almost to 45,000. Since then, it has recovered, but not completely. And Trump says he expected much worse. “When I did this, I thought the market would go down 25 percent,” he told reporters on May 5. “I thought that was a great deal if it did. If it went down 25 percent, I was satisfied. . . . I also thought oil would go up to 200, 250, maybe 300.”

For context, the Dow fell slightly less than 25 percent in the first two days of the 1929 market crash. Trump thought an equivalent fall, percentage-wise, would be great.

And what are Americans getting for this?

Sometimes Trump says the cost was worth it to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. But in his next sentence, he often adds—as he did in that May 1 speech—that we wiped out Iran’s nuclear program last year.

“Those beautiful B-2 bombers totally obliterated their three sites,” he gloated on April 12. But four days later, he said of the current war, “We had to take this journey to the Middle East in order to get rid of a nuclear weapon.”

Get rid of a nuclear weapon? Eight months after the B-2 strike? Either Trump can’t remember his own words, or he’s trying to sell you the same war twice.

In fact, he’s trying to sell it to you three times. The first time was last year, when he said the B-2s “obliterated” the nuclear sites. The second was on February 28, when he said we had to go back in to “ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon.” On April 15, after six more weeks of bombing, he said we had achieved that objective again. “I could leave tomorrow. They would never be able to have a nuclear weapon,” he told Bartiromo. “For years they wouldn’t, because their country is devastated.”

But Trump didn’t end the war. He moved on to a third phase, wrestling with Iran over the Strait of Hormuz. On April 23, a reporter asked him whether “Americans should anticipate spending more on gasoline for the foreseeable future.” Trump said yes, and he insisted the cost was worth it: “You know what they get for that? Iran without a nuclear weapon.”

It never ends. He keeps finding new reasons why you have to shell out for more war, always in the name of preventing a nuclear Iran.

The main reason you’re paying more for gas, groceries, and other necessities lately is that the strait is choked off. But guess who’s choking it? Three weeks ago, Trump declared:

We have it closed. We have total control of the strait. . . . They [Iran] 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.

Having jacked up inflation, Trump now lies about it. On April 16, a reporter asked him, “How much longer will Americans continue to see these high gas prices?”

“They’re not very high,” Trump replied. He dismissed recent price hikes as “fake inflation.”

On May 1, he insisted, “Grocery prices are way down.” Later that day, he added, “Outside of the gasoline, prices are way down.”

Lying about people’s everyday expenses, bragging about cutting off the world’s oil supply, admitting he chose to derail the economy—it’s hard to imagine a more self-incriminating performance. But on Tuesday, Trump outdid himself. On the White House lawn, a reporter asked him about Iran: “To what extent are Americans’ financial situations motivating you to make a deal?”

“Not even a little bit,” said Trump. “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.”

That’s the only video clip Democrats will need this fall.

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AROUND THE BULWARK

• We Can’t Trust the DOJ… On the flagship pod, JAMES COMEY joins TIM MILLER to discuss why Donald Trump has so thoroughly hijacked the Department of Justice, the public can no longer be confident that a criminal investigation or indictment is legitimate.

• RFK Jr.’s War on Science Is Really a War on Scientists… In The Breakdown, JONATHAN COHN offers a unified theory that makes sense of MAHA’s contradictions—and Kennedy’s place in the Trump administration.

• We Need An Investigation Into The U.S. Strike on The Iranian Girl’s School… On Bulwark+ Takes, REP. ADAM SMITH joins SAM STEIN to discuss his plans to investigate the strike that killed over 100 people.

San Diego here we come! We’re thrilled to announce our lineup for this Bulwark Live featuring special guest San Diego Mayor TODD GLORIA. Plus our very own MAGA culture expert WILL SOMMER.

Join Sam, Tim, and Sarah for this one-night live show at the Balboa Theatre on May 20. Grab your seats today.

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Quick Hits

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST: Donald Trump didn’t fire many of his appointees last year, but the heads are rolling much more freely in 2026. The latest victim: Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary, who until yesterday was one of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s top lieutenants at the Department of Health and Human Services. Here’s the AP:

Makary faced a unique challenge in balancing calls by Trump and other Republicans to cut red tape at the FDA, while also tending to Kennedy’s interest in scrutinizing the safety of vaccines, drugs and food additives. The decision to get rid of Makary was made by Kennedy, and then the White House signed off on it, according to an administration official who was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to describe internal dynamics.

Virtually all of the FDA’s senior career officials resigned, retired or were forced out in the first year of the second-term Trump administration, leading to a steady stream of leaks and negative stories in the media cataloging low morale, dysfunction and frustration among staff.

In recent weeks, Trump seemed to find new reasons to want Makary gone. The commissioner risked the president’s wrath by dragging his feet on new rules authorizing flavored vape pens, something Trump had declared he wanted done. Meanwhile, Makary’s slow-walking of a long-promised FDA review of the safety of the abortion drug mifepristone—while politically useful for Trump, who wanted new abortion-policy headlines before the midterms like he wanted a hole in the head—became a long-running gripe for pro-life groups, some of whom lost patience last week and started sniping at Trump in public. Firing Makary is a useful way for Trump to buy some time with these groups without actually committing to a speedy resolution to the abortion-pill matter.

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BIG JOHN, BIG KISS-ASS: Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who is fighting desperately to stave off an insurgent MAGA primary challenge from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton ahead of their May 26 runoff, knows his only hope of survival is to somehow land Trump’s endorsement down the stretch. And he’s not too proud to do some truly wretched pandering to try to get it. On Monday, Cornyn introduced legislation to upgrade a Texas highway, US-287, to a future interstate—specifically, Interstate 47, “named in honor of our 47th President.”

“My bill will upgrade one of our nation’s longest highways to a future interstate and save more than $5 BILLION in travel costs,” Cornyn wrote on X, “all while honoring the most effective and influential president of our lifetime.”

Cornyn might be feeling more motivated than usual to pander. Last week, he kicked off one of the silliest minor candidate scandals in recorded history by retweeting a post from an account called Republicans Against Trump—ironclad proof, to the online MAGA hivemind, of his deep-seated RINO leanings. Meanwhile, Trump himself seems to be enjoying letting Cornyn twist in the wind. It’s been almost two months since said he would “be making an Endorsement soon,” and he seems no nearer to a final decision: He’ll “make a decision,” he said again this weekend, “maybe relatively soon.”

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