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Trump Gloats about “Making a Fortune” While Americans Suffer

As his war in Iran wreaks havoc, Trump is fixated on personal glory and enrichment.

Donald Trump speaks to reporters aboard Air Force One after his departure from Beijing Capital Airport on May 15, 2026.

Donald Trump is annoyed that he can’t celebrate the massive profits oil companies are making due to the war he launched in the Middle East. Left to his own druthers, Trump would be exalting in the hundreds of billions of dollars produced by skyrocketing oil prices if it weren’t for the pesky fact that it comes at the expense of ordinary Americans, who are now paying roughly 40% more every time they fill up the gas tank than they were before Trump started bombing Iran nearly three months ago.

We know this thanks to Trump’s endless dedication to saying the quiet part loud. Speaking with Sean Hannity of Fox News on Thursday, Trump chortled that because far less oil was coming out of the Middle East, “people are finding other places to buy oil, like Texas.” Trump added, “So I don’t want to say we’re making a fortune, you understand that? Because if I say that, they’re going to say ‘oh, he forgets about the little man with the $4 gasoline.’”

The juxtaposition between “making a fortune” and the “little man” suffering at the gas station underscores just how obtuse Trump and his allies have become in their economic message. Their response to the harm caused by Trump’s policies is not to reverse those policies, or even to appear sympathetic about their effects. It’s to express their total indifference to the suffering of the American people.  At the same time, Trump is obsessively focused on his real priorities: enriching himself and his family, and creating gaudy monuments to himself such as a new White House ballroom and a Triumphal Arch that will squat in the middle of Washington, DC. In response to a reporter’s query as to who the arch would celebrate, Trump pointed to himself and said “me.” 

Trump twice won the White House on a message of economic populism, promising in his 2025 inauguration that he would “bring prices down.” Today he sings a very different tune, with a message that amounts to the apocryphal words misattributed to the French Queen Marie Antoinette: “Let them eat cake.” 

Speaking to reporters last Monday, Trump said, “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about........

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