A record of the week ending March 15, 2026. No jokes. Just the list.
He said rising gas prices caused by his own war were “a very small price to pay,” and that only fools would disagree
Gas prices rose by more than 50 cents per gallon in a single week as the Strait of Hormuz remained effectively closed, reaching levels not seen since the early days of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Trump dismissed the concern on Truth Social, writing that the surge was “a very small price to pay” and that “ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY.” His energy secretary, Chris Wright, blamed oil traders for “irrationally” bidding up prices. The White House called the surge “a short-term change” that would drop once Operation Epic Fury’s objectives were achieved.
The president started a war that immediately and predictably closed the world’s most important oil chokepoint. When the cost of that decision appeared on every American’s gas gauge within days, he did not acknowledge the connection. He called Americans who noticed it fools. The administration was simultaneously scrambling in private to find any mechanism to bring prices down, including measures it had ruled out entirely a week earlier.
He said he was “surprised” that Iran attacked other countries in response to the war he started
In a wide-ranging phone interview with NBC News, Trump said he was “surprised” that Iran retaliated against Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain after the United States and Israel struck Iran. He described the Iranian retaliation against Gulf states as unexpected.
Iran had telegraphed its strategy of regionalization from the first day of the conflict. Its foreign minister said publicly that Tehran planned to expand the battlefield. Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace noted that Iran’s approach was well known before the first bomb dropped. Being “surprised” by the predictable response to a war you started is not a strategic posture. It is a confession that the war lacked a plan for what would happen next.
He said US forces might hit Iran’s main oil export hub “a few more times, just for fun”
After US forces struck military targets on Kharg Island, Iran’s primary oil export terminal handling roughly 90% of its crude exports, Trump told NBC News that the strikes had “totally demolished” most of the island and that “we may hit it a few more times just for fun.” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi responded on CBS’s Face the Nation: “There are people being killed only because President Trump wants to have ‘fun’. This is what he has said.”
Kharg Island sits at the heart of the global oil market. Its oil infrastructure, if struck, would further savage the energy prices already being driven up by the same war. Trump had said publicly that he spared the island’s oil facilities “for reasons of decency” before floating the idea of hitting them anyway, for entertainment. The president’s stated rationale for a decision that could affect the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people was that it might be fun.
His top envoy said the US should “take Russia at its word” after Putin denied sharing intelligence with Iran, while US officials confirmed Russia was doing exactly that
Multiple US officials confirmed to American news outlets that Russia was actively sharing intelligence with Iran about the locations of American ships, aircraft, and military personnel, information that was enabling Iran to strike US targets more precisely. After a phone call between Trump and Putin, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff appeared on CNBC and said, “We can take them at their word. Let’s hope that they’re not sharing.” He acknowledged he had no independent way to verify the denial. Iran’s own foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, confirmed Russia was helping Iran “in many different directions” on NBC’s Meet the Press the same week.
The US government had confirmed intelligence showing Russia was helping aim Iranian missiles at American service members. The president’s response was to take Putin’s phone denial at face value, ease Russian oil sanctions as a side measure, and dispatch his envoy to vouch for Russian honesty on live television. Days later, Trump himself told Fox News he thought Putin “might be helping them a bit, yeah” — directly contradicting his own envoy’s on-air assurances from the same week.
He said Zelenskyy was “far more difficult to deal with” than Putin, while Russia was helping Iran kill Americans
In the same NBC News interview in which he discussed bombing an oil island for fun, Trump said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was “far more difficult to deal with” than Russian President Vladimir Putin, when asked about Ukraine peace negotiations.
At the moment Trump made this comparison, Russian intelligence was helping Iran locate and strike American military targets, US service members had been killed, and Russia had been at war with Ukraine for four years following an unprovoked invasion. The president of the United States publicly characterized the leader of an invaded democratic ally as harder to work with than the leader of the country helping to kill American soldiers.
Trump’s DOGE cuts left the US with no DHS secretary, no CISA director, and degraded cybersecurity during an active war
As the war entered its second week and Iranian-linked attacks targeted US military assets and regional infrastructure, the United States had no confirmed Secretary of Homeland Security. The agency overseeing domestic cybersecurity and critical infrastructure protection had been without a confirmed CISA director for months. Intelligence sharing between government agencies and private-sector operators of US critical infrastructure had “dangerously slowed,” according to cybersecurity professionals engaged with government threat-sharing groups.
A government that chose to start a war while simultaneously leaving its own domestic security apparatus headless and its critical infrastructure intelligence channels degraded is not a government that planned for the war it started. The acting secretary was confirmed by a single-vote margin at the end of the week. The damage to institutional capacity that preceded the war did not fix itself because a war had started.
He said Iran “wants to make a deal” and declined because the terms weren’t good enough. Iran said it had not asked to negotiate at all.
Trump told NBC News that Iran was seeking a deal but that the terms were not yet acceptable to him. Iran’s Foreign Minister Araghchi said the same day that Tehran had not asked for negotiations or a ceasefire. “There is no good experience talking with Americans,” Araghchi told NBC’s Kristen Welker. “We were talking with them when they decided to attack us.” Iran’s position was that the war needed to end completely, not pause for negotiations.
The administration claimed simultaneously that it was winning decisively, that Iran was desperate to negotiate, and that the US was “winding down.” Iran’s foreign minister publicly denied that any of these claims reflected the actual state of affairs. Neither party can accurately describe the same situation. Only one of them was on the record denying the characterization. The other was the party that started the war.
His administration eased Russian oil sanctions while Russia was helping Iran target American troops
In response to rising oil prices, the administration temporarily lifted sanctions that had barred Indian refineries from purchasing Russian crude oil, allowing Russia to sell more oil into global markets. The measure came in the same week that multiple US officials confirmed Russia was sharing intelligence with Iran to help target American military assets. The administration simultaneously asked Russia not to help Iran and rewarded it with access to the oil market.
The logic requires holding two irreconcilable positions: that Russia is a trustworthy partner whose denial should be accepted, and that Russia needed to be warned to stop doing the thing it denied doing. The financial benefit to Russia from the relaxation of sanctions was immediate and concrete. The deterrent effect of asking a country that was already denying its behavior to please keep denying it was not.
The Pentagon banned mainstream press from briefings, then a federal judge ruled the policy unconstitutional
The Pentagon under Hegseth had implemented a credentialing policy requiring journalists to agree to new rules to access briefings, resulting in a press corps at the Defense Department composed almost entirely of conservative-aligned outlets. Reporters from the Associated Press, the New York Times, and NBC News had been excluded. A federal judge ruled the policy unconstitutional, siding with the New York Times, which had sued the Pentagon, finding that the restrictions violated reporters’ First Amendment and due process rights.
The United States was at war. The Pentagon was excluding the country’s major news organizations from access to the military officials conducting that war. The condition for reinstatement was agreement to rules that the courts ultimately found illegal. A federal judge had to compel the defense establishment to stop telling Americans which journalists were allowed to ask about their war.
Sources: CNN, NBC News, NPR, Al Jazeera, Axios, CNBC, ABC News, The Hill, Radio Free Europe, Heather Cox Richardson/Substack, The Daily Beast, Rachel Maddow Blog/MSNBC