A prominent ally of President Donald Trump endorsed a wild idea to aid in the president’s war on Iran: nuking a new shipping lane.
Newt Gingrich, 82, shared an article by the ChinaTalk Substack on Sunday that proposed detonating thermonuclear bombs to open up a new lane, eliminating the need for the Strait of Hormuz.
The former Speaker of the House shared the story to his 2.5 million followers on X with a quoted passage, which read: “Instead of fighting over a 21-mile-wide bottleneck forever, we cut a new channel through friendly territory. A dozen thermonuclear detonations and you’ve got a waterway wider than the Panama Canal, deeper than the Suez, and safe from Iranian attacks.”
The problem is, it appears Gingrich didn’t know it was satire.
“The views expressed above do not necessarily represent those of anyone with brain cells,” a note at the bottom of the story read.
A community note was later added to the former Republican congressman’s X post that read: “The open letter ends with: ‘The views expressed above do not necessarily represent those of anyone with brain cells’.”
Gingrich has been a trusted unofficial advisor to Trump, 79, since before his first presidential term, and nearly ran as his running mate.
The former GOP lawmaker, who has written more than five books about Trump since 2016, paved the way for the president’s tribalistic approach to bipartisan politics.
Gingrich’s mistress-turned-third wife, now 60, was Trump’s ambassador to the Holy See during his first term. She is currently his U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein.
Gingrich called out the Strait of Hormuz as an essential factor in Trump’s war on Iran during a TV appearance last week.
“I don’t care what it costs,” Gingrich told Fox Business host Larry Kudlow on March 9. “If they can’t keep it open, this war will in fact be an American defeat before very long.”
“If we can get the Strait open, then the world will calm down, the price of oil will collapse, and everything will be fine,” he continued. “So I think the president probably has two or three weeks—every day he can hold open the Strait of Hormuz."
Since Iran closed down the Strait of Hormuz on March 2, the passageway’s daily shipping traffic has come to a halt, down to two ships per day from its normal average of 60 ships per day, according to hormuzstraitmonitor.com.
Americans have felt the toll of Trump’s war at home at the pump, as the average price for a gallon of gas nationwide has risen to around $3.70, more than 22 percent higher than it was a month ago at $2.94.
Gingrich did not immediately return a request for comment.
