March 15, 2026 – The USA Potato

Today, as the country enters its third week of war against Iran, President Donald J. Trump was on the golf course, illustrating the observation of journalist E.J. Dionne in the New York Times that “from the very beginning of this war, we got a sense that there wasn’t a great deal of serious thought put into it by the president of the United States about how it might end, what our objectives were, what needed to be done to protect Americans who are in the Middle East, what might happen to oil in the Strait of Hormuz.”

Although the administration appears to be trying to convince Americans that the U.S. military’s destruction of the Iranian military means the U.S. has won the war, Iranian leadership needed simply to continue in power to declare victory. Then, blocking the 20% of the world’s oil that flows through the Strait of Hormuz would give them leverage over the war’s outcome.

On March 10, Helene Cooper and Eric Schmitt of the New York Times reported that senior defense officials told them the Iranian military is adjusting its tactics to strike at the communications and defense systems protecting U.S. troops. Those tactics include drone strikes. The same day, Marc Caputo, Barak Ravid, and Colin Demarest of Axios reported that Ukrainian officials had tried several months ago to sell the U.S. anti-drone technology for downing Iran-made drones as a sign of thanks for U.S. support and as a way to strengthen ties between the U.S. and Ukraine, but the U.S. did not pursue the offer.

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly responded: “This characterization made by these cowardly unnamed sources is not accurate and proves that they are simply outside looking in. [Defense] Secretary [Pete] Hegseth and the armed forces did an incredible job planning for all possible responses by the Iranian regime, and the undisputed success of Operation Epic Fury speaks for itself.”

And yet the fallout from the strikes on Iran by the U.S. and Israel appears to have caught the administration by surprise. Trump told Kristen Welker and Alexandra Marquez of NBC News yesterday that he was “surprised” that Iran attacked other countries after the U.S. and Israeli strikes. He also said strikes on Saturday on Kharg Island, which is about fifteen miles off the Iranian coast and is home to Iran’s primary oil export terminal, “totally demolished” most of the island but that “we may hit it a few more times just for fun.”

President Donald J. Trump posted on social media Saturday morning: “Many Countries, especially those who are affected by Iran’s attempted closure of the Hormuz Strait, will be sending War Ships, in conjunction with the United States of America, to keep the Strait open and safe. We have already destroyed 100% of Iran’s Military capability, but it’s easy for them to send a drone or two, drop a mine, or deliver a close range missile somewhere along, or in, this Waterway, no matter how badly defeated they are.”

Despite what Trump claimed was the utter destruction of Iran’s military, he asked other countries to contribute to the effort to reopen the strait. “Hopefully China, France, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and others, that are affected by this artificial constraint, will send Ships to the area so that the Hormuz Strait will no longer be a threat by a Nation that has been totally decapitated. In the meantime the United States will be bombing the hell out of the shoreline, and continually shooting Iranian Boats and Ships out of the water. One way or the other, we will soon get the Hormuz Strait OPEN, SAFE, and FREE!”

Since he took office more than a year ago, Trump has gone out of his way to antagonize our allies and partners, warning them that the United States will act alone and working to undermine the international alliances the U.S. has shaped since World War II. Now, having sparked a regional war in the Middle East after ignoring what virtually everyone said would be the result of attacking Iran a second time, Trump is begging other countries to come to his aid.

In yesterday’s NBC News interview, Trump told Welker and Marquez that several countries have committed to helping reopen the strait, but he declined to name them. “They’ve not only committed, but they think it’s a great idea,” he said. He also said that “Iran wants to make a deal,” but he has declined “because the terms aren’t good enough yet.” Today Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said Tehran had not even asked for negotiations, let alone a ceasefire.

That the White House is in turmoil showed this morning first of all in the fact that one of the people making the administration’s case on the talk shows was U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz, the man who added Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg to the Signal messaging app on which members of the administration were making plans to strike Houthi militants in Yemen, a chat that would hide administration discussions from the record-keeping required by public records laws.

On CNN’s State of the Union this morning, over a chyron that read, “OIL PRICES SKYROCKET AS IRAN THROTTLES TRAFFIC IN STRAIT OF HORMUZ,” Jake Tapper noted that while the U.S. has said it would soon send naval escorts through the strait, shipping executives have told CNN “that all their requests for escorts have…been rebuffed. Tapper asked Waltz if Trump is simply hoping other countries will send naval escorts through the Strait of Hormuz or if they had committed to it.

Waltz answered that “we have the energy dominance in place,” then noted that in the past, other countries had worked alongside the U.S. to keep energy flowing through the strait, and Trump is calling on the world to do the same thing again. Waltz said: “We certainly welcome, encourage, and even demand their participation to help their own economies.”

On Face the Nation, another odd salesperson for Trump’s war, National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett, told host Margaret Brennan that “you have to understand that America is not going to have its economy harmed by what the Iranians are doing.” Hassett implied that because the U.S. produces more oil now than it did in the 1970s, it doesn’t really need oil from the Persian Gulf. The Iranians “think that they’re gonna harm the U.S. economy and get President Trump to back down,” he said. “There couldn’t be anything that was a stupider thing to say. ‘Cause the bottom line is that our economy has got all this momentum in the world, and we’ve got lots and lots of oil.”

The U.S. does indeed produce more oil and natural gas than it consumes, but it cannot use much of what it produces. The key is prices and refineries. The U.S. tends to produce light, sweet crude oil, a term for oil that flows easily and has low sulfur content. Because it is easy to refine and more valuable than heavy, sour crude, U.S. producers have an incentive to sell it on the open market. Even if they wanted to keep it at home, U.S. refineries are set up to refine the cheaper heavy crude oil, so the U.S. does not have the refining capacity to process the oil it currently produces and must buy what it needs from elsewhere. This means the U.S. is inextricably tied to the international oil markets.

The administration appears to be taking the position that the problem is not Trump’s launching an ill-thought-out war, but rather the media outlets’ reporting on that war. Although Trump has been conversing freely with reporters by cell phone since the war broke out, yesterday morning he posted on social media: “The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal (in particular), and other Lowlife “Papers” and Media actually want us to lose the War. Their terrible reporting is the exact opposite of the actual facts! They are truly sick and demented people that have no idea the damage they cause the United States of America. Fortunately, as proven by our Great and Conclusive Election Win in 2024, the People of our Country understand what is happening far better than the Fake News Media!”

Less than two hours later, Trump posted an image titled “PRESIDENT TRUMP IS RESHAPING THE MEDIA,” with three categories: “GONE,” “REFORMS,” and “WINNING.” Under “gone” was the defunding of PBS and NPR, as well as a list of reporters who have been fired since Trump took office in 2025. Under “reforms,” the image claimed Trump was the “Most Accessible POTUS Ever,” boasted that under CBS’s new ownership by Trump ally David Ellison the station has a “News Bias Ombudsman,” and suggested that CNN would soon be under “New Ownership” as well. Under “winning” was a quotation from The Guardian that “Trump is waging war against the media—and winning.”

Hours later, Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr threatened the broadcast licenses of media stations. He quoted Trump when he posted: “Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions—also known as the fake news—have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up. The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not…. It is very important to bring trust back into media, which has earned itself the label of fake news.” Then Carr slipped in his own fake news, suggesting that Trump won “a landslide election victory” when in fact he received less than 50% of the vote, and concluded: “Time for change!”

The Framers of the U.S. Constitution understood that a free press is imperative for a democracy. They established the right to a free press in the First Amendment that begins the Bill of Rights. Silencing critics is the refuge of those who know what they are doing is unpopular and unjustifiable.

Jim Acosta, who left CNN, noted that while the administration is attempting to establish a state media, the American people increasingly have the option of reading independent journalism. “Yes,” Acosta wrote, “Trump put me on his media hit list. I regret to report to the notoriously thin-skinned, twice elected, yet soon to be thrice-impeached president that I am still here, loving the freedom of independent media…. Living rent free in the mind of the president of the United States is indeed liberating, especially when you are coloring outside the lines of corporate media.”

Yesterday evening, the official White House social media account on X tried to reassure Americans that Trump knows what he’s doing. It posted an image of the American flag over a stealth bomber with the words “PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH” and “NO PANICANS!”

And yet, in what seemed to be panicked comments tonight, Trump on social media appeared to take on the rifts showing up among MAGA leaders over the Iran war, saying of isolationist America First MAGAs: “THEY ARE NOT MAGA, I AM, and MAGA includes not allowing Iran, a Sick, Demented, and Violent Terrorist Regime, to have a Nuclear Weapon to blow up the United States of America, the Middle East and, ultimately, the rest of the World.”

Another post blamed Iranian AI and disinformation for stories that he said are “FAKE and, in a certain way, you can say those Media Outlets that generated it should be brought up on Charges for TREASON for the dissemination of false information.” He reiterated support for Carr’s attack on the media and insisted he won the presidential election “IN A LANDSLIDE.”

In yet another post, the president’s account attacked the U.S. Supreme Court for declaring his tariffs unconstitutional, then blamed the justices for ruining the nation by permitting Democrat Joe Biden to be inaugurated rather than “call out The Rigged Presidential Election of 2020.”

In an interview with Financial Times published this evening, Trump warned that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) would have a “very bad” future if allies don’t help open the Strait of Hormuz. And tonight, on Air Force One, Trump told reporters: “Really, I’m demanding that these countries come in and protect their own territory, because it is their territory. It’s the place from which they get their energy, and they should come and they should help us protect it. You could make the case that maybe we shouldn’t even be there at all, because we don’t need it. We have a lot of oil.”

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Notes:

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/13/oil-iran-trump-price-messaging-00826428

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=54199

https://www.fuelstreamservices.com/why-the-u-s-cant-use-the-oil-it-produces/

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/14/opinion/trump-iran-war-midterms-voters.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/10/us/politics/iran-military-tactics.html

https://www.axios.com/2026/03/10/us-ukraine-anti-drone-offer

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/iran-negotiate-ceasefire-deal-trump-kharg-hormuz-oil-rcna263474

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2026/mar/15/iran-war-news-live-updates-us-israel-middle-east-crisis-latest-kharg-island