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Gas is expensive, and diesel is even pricier. Per AAA, the average gallon of gas in the U.S. costs $4.29, while a gallon of diesel is $6.35. Groceries are expensive, too, and so are new cars. And unless you unionize, good luck convincing your boss to give you a meaningful raise. With so many regular people struggling, you'd think Republicans would be saying things like "I feel your pain" and "We're ending the war that made gas expensive." Instead, CBS News reports that President Donald Trump bragged at a recent event about how much money the oil and gas companies are raking in thanks to his war.
The fact that oil and gas companies are getting rich off Republicans' war with Iran isn't exactly news. At the end of the second quarter of 2026, oil giants like Shell and Chevron reported billions of dollars in additional windfall profits they made off the regular Americans being forced to buy pricier gas. Axios reports that consumer sentiment is lower than it's been at any point in the last three decades. But Trump didn't say he was going to tax the oil companies and return their windfall profits to the American people. No, he told the crowd we should all be happy a bunch of millionaires are getting wealthier while we all struggle.
"And while oil prices are temporarily high and will be falling dramatically in a short period of time, as soon as that war's over, because there's so much oil," CBS reports Trump told the crowd. "All in the Hormuz Strait, there are ships waiting to come, we're getting them out so fast. The United States oil and gas business is making hundreds of billions of dollars. ... Our country is making hundreds of billions of dollars because of what's happened in the Middle East."
Trump gets richer
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Comments like those from Trump and other Republicans are so callous and out of touch, you have to wonder how the president could have thought they were a good idea. But he's also just wrong. The federal government and the private oil industry are not the same thing. The government isn't supposed to own and control private companies, and "America" is the people who live here, not a bunch of faceless corporations.
"Our country" is not "making hundreds of billions of dollars" because Republicans started a war with Iran. Oil and gas executives are getting rich, their wealthy shareholders are getting rich, but America as a country is not any better off. There's somebody else making money off this war with Iran, though: Trump. CBS reports, based on information from Democrats on Congress' Joint Economic Committe, that "the president's personal holdings in oil and gas are now worth between $22.5 million and $81.6 million, compared with $12.6 million to $46 million at the end of 2025." Why a president has personal holdings in the first place, I have no idea. That shouldn't be a thing. Presidents' assets should be placed in a true blind trust.
CBS also writes that "[t]he stocks the president holds have increased in value by an average of 43% since the end of 2025," and he "purchased between $4.7 million and $17.5 million in oil and gas stocks between March, after the war began, and the end of August, which is the most recently available data. He also sold between $2 million and $5.4 million in oil and gas stocks in the same timeframe."
Is Trump guilty of insider trading? Getting to the bottom of it would require a congressional investigation, and that is only likely to happen if Democrats win the upcoming midterms. But if Trump really is enriching himself off a war he started, that's even worse than bragging about how many billions of dollars the oil and gas industry is taking out of the pockets of normal everyday people.