U.S. President Donald Trump gestures at the end of an event during a visit to Coosa Steel Corporation, in Rome, Georgia. REUTERS Kevin Lamarque
Bulwark writer Will Saletan says it’s beginning to look more and more like Democrats are paying President Donald Trump to cut their ads, considering how hard Trump is working to put Dems in charge of Congress.
“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,” said Saletan on a Saturday Bulwark podcast. “Seriously, for weeks, this guy has been publicly admitting that he deliberately started the Iran war, knowing [that] he knew that it would screw the economy.”
Saletan replayed footage of Trump claiming he was expecting — and was fine with — destroying even more American voters’ wealth than he already has to wage his war on Iran.
“So, when I did this, I thought the market would go down 25 percent. And I think I thought that was a great deal of it. If it went down 25 percent, I was satisfied. I said, because we cannot let these people have a nuclear weapon. They'll use it. We can't,” Trump said. “I also thought oil would go up to $200, $250, maybe $300 [a barrel].”
“Okay. Just for context, 25 percent is basically the 1929 Stock Market Crash,” Saletan pointed out. “Trump is saying that he thought doing that would be a ‘great deal.’ And he thought $300 for a barrel of oil would have been fine. That is more than four times what oil cost before the war.”
Saletan added that gas prices in the United States are currently about $4.50 a gallon. But doing the math on a $300 barrel of oil, Trump is basically admitting ‘he'd be fine if gas went above $10 a gallon.’
Saetan then played footage of Trump bragging that foreign nations are having to buy U.S. oil after Iran shut down oil transport in the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for the U.S./Israeli joint strikes. But Trump is not telling us that when other countries buy up our oil, that leaves less oil for Americans, which drives up U.S. prices.
“Now, either he's too stupid to understand that or he thinks you're too stupid to figure out that he's helping American oil companies by screwing you,” Saletan said, before citing a quote from Navy Federal Credit Union Chief Economist Heather Long saying “for the first time in three years, [Trump’s] inflation is wiping out all wage gains.”
“What a great message for the midterms,” said Saletan, while adding that even as U.S. households are getting drained dry Trump is requesting a 50 percent increase defense budget, from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion — which amounts to an extra “$4,000 from every man, woman, and child in America.”
“He’s already got your vote. He got to be president,” said Saletan, and then added that it now falls to America voters to “make sure that his party Loses control of Congress and maybe, just maybe, you'll start to get a government that actually cares about you.”