He did: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/27/trump-strait-of-hormuz-iran-war.html

Can you imagine the screeching of Fox News, if Obama had done that even in jest? And Trump is not joking, Trump never “jokes”.

Yup. 79% of Republicans approve of how Trump is handling the Iran War. No reasonable and informed person can hold that opinion - we are not dealing with serious people here.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3w384px52no

Cluster bombs hitting civilians is good news to you, I guess?

One common fertilizer is literally shit. So I guess I did worry more about the Iranians hitting literal shit, than the Iranians hitting US Marines… /s

So fuck the US, but this is not good. This can create a huge economic crisis and food instability, which would create untold suffering among innocent poor people across the world.

You are allowed to rightfully criticize the US for this war, without applauding Iran sinking ships with fertilizer the world desperately needs to not starve.

How about neither?

if Iran hit it, it’s because they got a tip Israel or the US’ dickhead billionaires were involved,

Iran’s proxy the Houthis made a promise to also only hit enemy ships. And then shot at everything that moved - ships were sunk where people could see no connection.

It is quite reasonable to doubt how precise Iran is here…

You know that Hamas entered Israel and took lots of innocent civilian hostages, right? Which Israel enetered Gaza to get back. Hence, Israel had an extremely good reason to enter Gaza.

How is that relevant?

Often it is the case (and documented) that Hamas deliberately used hospitals and residential buildings to shoot from, or for other military purposes. In that case, by the laws of war, Israel is actually allowed to level those buildings - and Hamas are the ones who committed a war crime. A fact that often seems utterly lost in social media posts. Often in war, a party will retreat from or surrender a city, rather than shoot from the buildings, if the defending party is not a death cult.

Power plants can be military targets, and as such valid to bomb. But… Trump has pretty much stated here that he is bombing them as terror against civilians, which is a war crime. So Trump is arguably behaving worse than Israel.

You surely need a lot of oil tankers to sail oil across the Pacific Ocean - because each voyage takes so long. And there needs to be export oil terminals in the US towards Asia, which I assume there isn’t currently, because Asia was supplied by the Middle East.

So a priory doesn’t seem too surprising to me, that there is a price spread.

Does lifting sanctions on a country that you’re at war with the smart thing to do? Literally helps to fund their enemy.

It is not a zero sum game. Letting the oil through, and thereby preventing the world market from a total tail spin, probably helps the US more than it helps Iran. So is on the surface surprising, but surprisingly rational on second look.

I’m pretty sure he thinks allies of the US are beta males that follow the US alpha male…

Vance said Trump was “America’s Hitler”. Before Vance realized that he could get power by supporting Trump.

You seem to be using “he thinks” in the sense “Vance genuinely believes”. I am not convinced Vance believes anything, his actions look like pure opportunism.

I actually don’t understand what Carlin is saying, then. “The wars I don’t like are bad”?

An overbroad and often false generalization is not a good joke. So yes, it isn’t much of a joke.

Asia is $60/bbl higher.

Asia get their oil through the Hormuz straight. Of course their oil price is higher.

There probably isn’t oil tankers enough in the world to equalize the supply between the US and Asia. Hence you should not expect the price to be perfectly equalized between the US and Asia.

We have tons of untapped oil fields

But that is likely irrelevant for the timescale of this conflict, right? Surely the lead time for bringing new oil fields online is measured in years.

Oil prices are pretty global. If you look at the prices for European oil (Brent crude) and US oil (West Texas Intermediate), then they are $14 apart. Which is not nothing, but WTI is still up by 63% from pre-war. That is still going to hurt the US economy, a lot.

Also, in the US the oil price windfall is privatized, while the oil price pain is socialized. So the US will still feel almost the full pain.

It is not just at the pump. The whole supply chain depends on oil. Industrial processes, plastics, fertilizer.

The price rise at the pump is often masked by taxes. The percentage jump for industry will be larger.

But isn’t lifting sanctions on Iranian oil actually the smart thing to do? Get all the oil to market, to ameliorate the supply shock. Even though it looks horrible from a PR angle.

It truly should be a learning experience. But I genuinely don’t think Republicans in the US are capable of learning anything, especially not something as narratively inconvenient as this.