> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://libertys-lens.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Trump Went to War—and Now Americans Are Paying for It - URL: https://libertys-lens.ghost.io/trump-went-to-warand-now-americans/ - Published: 2026-04-04T15:01:03.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-13T16:49:13.000Z - Description: From the Strait of Hormuz to higher prices and fewer services at home. - Author: Graham Baughman - Tags: Newsletter, #Migrated-1786639647847, #Import 2026-08-13 16:47 **Liberty’s Lens is entirely reader‑supported.** We don’t answer to corporate masters deciding what we say or what we cover. If you find our work valuable, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. You can take **20% off with** [**this coupon**](#/portal/signup) — and support independent media for about the price of a coffee per month. [Get 20% off forever](#/portal/signup) You can also gift a paid subscription to a friend who’d appreciate what we do. Thank you to every reader who shares our work and helps it reach new audiences. We couldn’t do this without you. We love you all. --- ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/da/86/da86ac05-de21-4736-8a14-89823a268247/content/images/2026/08/7ff10501-66e2-4797-815a-b2f00cae1e4a_1536x1024-1.png) In his recent prime‑time address to the nation on the war in Iran, Donald Trump argued that the United States no longer had any real stake in securing the Strait of Hormuz. “We’re now totally independent of the Middle East,” he said. “We don’t need their oil.” Responsibility for keeping the vital shipping lane open, he insisted, belonged to everyone else: *“The countries of the world that do receive oil through the Hormuz Strait must take care of that passage. They must *grab it* and cherish it.”* ([CBS News](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-strait-of-hormuz-iran-control/?ref=libertys-lens.ghost.io)) I’ll save you all having to listen to it—it was as *weird and creepy* a line as it sounds. Honestly, the whole thing feels a little too familiar. Trump moved on the Strait and failed. And the language he uses to describe it—*grab it, cherish it*—is the same sort of language he’s previously employed when power convinces him permission is implied. He’s attracted to “beautiful” territory like a magnet. When you’re president, he seems to believe, they let you do it. This time, they didn’t. And now he’s looking for someone else to hold the bag. In related remarks, Trump told countries he accused of cowardice for refusing to involve themselves in his war of choice that they had two options: **buy U.S. oil**, or “*go to the Strait of Hormuz* *and take it*”—summed up by his line, “*go get your own oil*.” ([Politico](https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/31/trump-strait-of-hormuz-oil-prices-00851611?ref=libertys-lens.ghost.io) | [US News](https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2026-03-31/trump-urges-countries-to-go-to-strait-of-hormuz-and-just-take-it?ref=libertys-lens.ghost.io)) That really floored me. Setting aside the naked endorsement of pillaging, the president is effectively saying that countries affected by the disruption should simply ***buy American oil*** instead. That idea might sound intuitive as a slogan or a meme, but economically it’s completely backwards. [Subscribe now](#/portal/signup) --- ### Why “Buy Our Oil” is the Wrong Message We’re heading into a period of actual shortages. Not just higher prices, not just volatility—real shortages. We’re not fully there yet because a lot of petroleum is already on ships, already moving through the system, and that creates a temporary buffer. But once that inventory gets worked through, people are going to have to change behavior. That’s just how this works. And in that environment, telling the rest of the world to buy American oil is the worst possible response from an American perspective. This is basic supply and demand. If global demand starts piling into U.S. supply at the same time that supply elsewhere is constrained, domestic prices go up. This isn’t a controversial take. Encouraging exports during a shortage doesn’t help Americans; it actively makes things worse for them. If this were actually “America First,” the policy impulse would be the opposite. You wouldn’t be advertising U.S. oil to the world. You’d be hoarding supply. You’d be talking about restricting exports. You’d be trying to shield domestic consumers from the price shock that’s coming, not inviting more demand onto the same limited pool of barrels. What’s striking is how little awareness there seems to be of how serious the economic situation already is. We’ve just experienced the sharpest monthly increase in gas prices in years. The curve went fully vertical while Trump was giving his address. That’s the market reacting. Still, market participants are behaving as if the familiar “Trump Always Chickens Out” cycle will somehow prevail. That looks increasingly unlikely here. [Why the Strait of Hormuz Isn’t a Short‑Term ProblemLiberty’s Lens is entirely reader‑supported. We don’t answer to corporate masters deciding what we say or cover. If you find our work valuable, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription (get 20% off an annual subscription using this coupon)—or![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/da/86/da86ac05-de21-4736-8a14-89823a268247/content/images/2026/08/95b908f6-200b-45db-8675-f9062b74699b_1280x1280-29.png)Liberty's LensLiberty's Lens![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/da/86/da86ac05-de21-4736-8a14-89823a268247/content/images/2026/08/7c702a5c-5138-4903-bd7a-4ef0290959d0_1536x1024.png)](https://libertys-lens.ghost.io/why-the-strait-of-hormuz-isnt-a-shortterm/) When Trump talks about “two or three weeks,” there’s nothing in what he actually says that suggests the Strait will be open at the end of that period. If anything, it sounds like he’s preparing to capitulate and leave the rest of the world to negotiate with Iran for access. Unfortunately for Trump, while he may be fine spiking the ball here, Israel is unlikely to settle for an outcome that empowers a regional rival. Their risk calculus was dramatically altered after October 7th. So the conflict—and the instability keeping shipping from flowing through the Strait—is likely to continue. The only alternative is a ground invasion and a protracted operation to secure the Strait. Which means this isn’t a temporary blip. It’s a sustained supply problem. Encouraging exports right as we transition from a financial shock to a physical one accelerates the pain. It front‑loads inflation at home before the full shortage even hits. That’s how you get higher prices faster. What worries me most is that I can’t tell if they actually buy their own line about not needing the Strait, or if they’re just lying to our faces. In the end, it doesn’t really matter. Talking about how much oil we have while telling the world to buy it is not a scarcity strategy. It’s not even a neutral one. It’s a strategy that guarantees American consumers pay more, sooner, in a moment when they’re already under pressure. If this were being handled with any seriousness at all, the conversation wouldn’t be about selling more oil to line the pocket of the GOP’s wealthy donors. It would be about protecting what we have to keep prices down for consumers. --- ### Paying for the War by Making Life Less Affordable All of this would be bad enough if it were simply the unavoidable economic fallout of a foreign war. But it doesn’t stop there. In remarks made the same week as his address, Trump was explicit about how he thinks the trade‑offs work. “We’re fighting wars,” Trump said. “We can’t take care of daycare… Medicaid, Medicare—all these individual things.” What government *can* do, he explained, is “one thing: military protection.” ([The New Republic](https://newrepublic.com/post/208535/white-house-accidentally-easter-lunch-trump-speech?ref=libertys-lens.ghost.io)) Faced with higher prices and mounting pressure at home, the response now being discussed is to shift even more of the burden onto ordinary Americans—you almost couldn’t design a worse idea if you tried. In those same remarks, Trump openly discussed pushing costs from federal programs like Medicare and Medicaid onto the states, acknowledging that they would inevitably be forced to raise taxes to cover them. And it’s not just Trump. Top Republicans in the House are weighing a roughly $200 billion budget package to fund the war—and ICE—by cutting Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act. While discussions are still in the early stages, House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) has proposed additional reductions to ACA subsidies that would raise premiums and increase the number of uninsured Americans by roughly 300,000, saving $30 billion toward that $200 billion target. ([Axios](https://www.axios.com/2026/03/30/gop-health-care-pay-iran-war?ref=libertys-lens.ghost.io) | [House.gov](https://arrington.house.gov/uploadedfiles/gop%5Fweighs%5Fhealth%5Fcare%5Fcuts%5Fto%5Fpay%5Ffor%5Firan%5Fwar.pdf?ref=libertys-lens.ghost.io)) So that’s the plan. Cut people’s health care to pay for a deeply unpopular war and expanded immigration enforcement, in an election year, at a moment when people are already furious about rising prices. That is about as bad as politics gets. It takes the one issue Republicans are consistently underwater on—health care—and pairs it with a war voters don’t want. It hands the opposition a ready‑made attack line. And it directly contradicts everything Trump ran on. He ran as the peace president. No new wars. He promised to protect entitlements. He promised to lower costs. I hate to say it, but it worked on more voters than I would have guessed. Like it or not, the reality is quickly becoming impossible to ignore: war abroad, higher prices at home, and cuts to people’s health care to pay for it. And there’s no way to obscure responsibility here. There’s no Democratic cover. There’s no bipartisan shield. If this happens, it happens through reconciliation, with Republican votes alone. They own it completely. Even inside their own caucus, the math is brutal. Margins are razor thin. Some members refuse to raise the deficit. Others are already uneasy about the war itself. And the way leadership seems to be trying to square that circle is to do what they’ve done before—go back to health care. Which is especially galling because they already cut roughly a trillion dollars from health care programs not that long ago, using the exact same justification they’re claiming now: “waste, fraud, and abuse.” Apparently, they want us to believe that they somehow missed a huge amount of it the first time and need to go back and try again. At some point, people stop buying that. What’s really happening is that the war is bleeding into everything else. It isn’t staying overseas. It’s poisoning domestic politics. Health care becomes a line item in war financing. Budget fights become war fights. Every downstream decision gets worse. And even if the war ended tomorrow, that damage wouldn’t disappear. Prices linger. Cuts linger. And the consequences of both linger. --- ### Conclusion It is increasingly clear that this administration is in over its head. There were no contingency plans, no second acts, no “break glass in case of emergency.” Like Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, Trump appears never to have seriously considered the possibility that his attempt to break the Iranian regime might fail. But here we are—facing an entrenched Iranian government emboldened by their successes, and a global system now forced to price in that reality. [The Energy Crisis Is Worse Than You ThinkLiberty’s Lens is entirely reader‑supported. We don’t answer to corporate masters deciding what we say or cover. If you find our work valuable, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription (get 20% off an annual subscription using this coupon)—or![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/da/86/da86ac05-de21-4736-8a14-89823a268247/content/images/2026/08/95b908f6-200b-45db-8675-f9062b74699b_1280x1280-30.png)Liberty's LensLiberty's Lens![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/da/86/da86ac05-de21-4736-8a14-89823a268247/content/images/2026/08/a7fd91ce-d2e1-4f35-8340-a5439f44813b_1536x1024.png)](https://libertys-lens.ghost.io/the-energy-crisis-is-worse-than-you/) Unlike Putin, however, Trump does not rule by decree. He may wish otherwise, but he is neither a king nor a dictator. He cannot insulate himself from public opinion forever. The consequences of this war are already arriving at home, and they are increasingly inescapable. So instead, Trump is trying to rewrite reality with rhetoric. He claims the United States doesn’t need the Strait anyway. He insists the objectives have been met—that we can walk away with our heads held high and everything will simply work itself out. And failing that, he suggests we all still win by selling American oil at higher prices, even as he and his party quietly prepare to gut public services to finance this and future foreign entanglements. For as long as Trump has been a political force, we’ve been tempted to ascribe near‑supernatural qualities to his ability to escape the consequences of failure. And it’s true: he has survived scandals and disasters that would have ended the careers of almost anyone else. But the myth of “Teflon Don” has always been incomplete. He lost the 2020 election largely because of his own catastrophic handling of Covid. What’s unfolding now may prove worse—and not only because it is entirely self-inflicted. Like the pandemic, a war in the Middle East does not simply disappear “like a miracle.” The Strait of Hormuz will not “open naturally.” Oil shocks cannot be waved away. And people do not forget—no matter how many speeches are given—when they can’t afford gas, groceries, health care, or rent. That, ultimately, is the constraint Trump cannot escape. Wars do not stay “over there.” They come home. They show up in people’s lives whether you vote for them or not. And once they do, no amount of rhetoric can make them disappear again. [Buy me a coffee!](https://donate.stripe.com/5kQ5kF0iLfTD2ihcPxeIw02?ref=libertys-lens.ghost.io) --- To close out, we wanted to share this poem by another gifted writer here on Substack. I found it quite fitting and I hope you all enjoy it as much as I did. [Marissa’s SubstackMy personal SubstackBy Marissa Purdum](https://marissapurdum.substack.com/?utm%5Fsource=substack&utm%5Fcampaign=publication%5Fembed&utm%5Fmedium=web) # An American Dream ### A vision of a future I see... “I have a dream” someone once said. A name they buried, left for dead. I wish I could remember the rest of that thread. But I don’t have time for those thoughts in my head. \*\*\* In the morning, I feed on the news that drips Red. Then I tread to work, my legs full of lead, I dream of a life that hasn’t been led, Of a life where I don’t dream of a slice of bread, One where the shackles have finally been shed, And I can read the books I might’ve once read. \*\*\* But instead, All the colors have fled, And the Red cancer has spread. The streets have been cut and bled, But nothing was ever said. And the books and truth were torn to shred, The disabled are all dying or dead, The women are just meat to bred, The children are raised to fill their stead, A place for the rule of dick to embed. And the masses learn to just bow their head, To get on their knees as they pled, “When will we be fed?” And the men that have been spoonfed said, “Mandatory curfew at eight and by nine in bed.” \*\*\* So I lie here, unfed, Because I ate the lies they fed me instead. I forget the dreams I once held in my head, As I lie here awake, still dreaming of bread. \*\*\* “I have a dream,” someone once said. --- ### Support Independent Journalism! ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/da/86/da86ac05-de21-4736-8a14-89823a268247/content/images/2026/08/96a6ab8b-95e6-44f3-b45e-2cf5602699c3_1536x1024-3.png) Look around: media consolidation isn’t subtle anymore. A single ideological camp is amassing platforms—social networks, news outlets, streaming services—all under its banner. One by one, spaces for open dialogue are being converted into echo chambers. But not independent media. **Liberty’s Lens** is part of a growing movement of independent progressive voices refusing to be absorbed, censored, or silenced. We publish what powerful interests would prefer you *not* see. We ask the questions their platforms no longer allow. We stay independent because independence is the last defense against narrative control. 👉 **Join the resistance to media monopolization:** [Support Independent Media: Get 20% Off!](https://libertys-lens.ghost.io/5d3eb5d6/) **20% OFF for life when you upgrade to paid!** They can buy platforms. They can’t buy us. --- ### For readers who want the receipts - Trump’s prime‑time address claiming U.S. “independence” from Middle East oil and urging other countries to “take care” of the Strait — ([CBS News](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-strait-of-hormuz-iran-control/?ref=libertys-lens.ghost.io)) - Trump remarks encouraging allies to “buy U.S. oil” or “go to the Strait and take it” — ([Politico](https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/31/trump-strait-of-hormuz-oil-prices-00851611?ref=libertys-lens.ghost.io) | [US News](https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2026-03-31/trump-urges-countries-to-go-to-strait-of-hormuz-and-just-take-it?ref=libertys-lens.ghost.io)) - Trump comments explicitly contrasting “military protection” with daycare, Medicaid, and Medicare — ([The New Republic](https://newrepublic.com/post/208535/white-house-accidentally-easter-lunch-trump-speech?ref=libertys-lens.ghost.io)) - House Republicans exploring \~$200 billion in war and immigration funding offsets through Medicare, Medicaid, and ACA cuts — ([Axios](https://www.axios.com/2026/03/30/gop-health-care-pay-iran-war?ref=libertys-lens.ghost.io) | [House.gov](https://arrington.house.gov/uploadedfiles/gop%5Fweighs%5Fhealth%5Fcare%5Fcuts%5Fto%5Fpay%5Ffor%5Firan%5Fwar.pdf?ref=libertys-lens.ghost.io)) - **Trump’s Access Hollywood tape (2016)** — transcript of remarks illustrating the same permission‑through‑power logic used here ([BBC](https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37595321?ref=libertys-lens.ghost.io)) --- [Subscribe now](#/portal/signup) [Leave a comment](#ghost-comments-root) > — Liberty’s Lens > > This article is provided for public interest reporting and analysis. 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