Florida fishermen are criticizing the Trump administration as fuel costs soar following the president’s war with Iran.
As President Donald Trump’s military operation in the Middle East drags on, and as the Strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of global oil supplies normally flow, remains shuttered, the president is facing growing criticism as soaring oil costs exacerbate the cost-of-living crisis for Americans.
The vital waterway was closed by Iran after the U.S. and Israel launched coordinated strikes last month. Trump, 79, was repeatedly warned of the likelihood of the strait getting shut down before he decided to launch the war. Oil prices have soared more than 40 percent since the war with Iran began on February 28.
“Look, the Trump Administration can gaslight all they want about how this war is going, but they’re not fooling anybody,” MSNBC host and former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said on her show, The Briefing, on Thursday.
Psaki, who served as press secretary in the Biden White House, said many of Trump’s own supporters are angry with the president as oil prices continue to rise while Americans struggle with high prices.
She aired interviews conducted by an MS NOW reporter with Florida fishermen who said they were unhappy with the Trump administration.
“I’m really scratching my head because I voted Republican, and most of us in the fishing industry did, and we’re not seeing the positives come out of it, why we voted that way,” one fisherman said.
Another fisherman urged the president to “think about the people.”
“Think about the people, the working class people like us,” he said. “My wife said she paid almost over $4 a gallon for regular gas. That’s unheard of. I mean, add the cost of living. And then you add that on top. It’s terrible. Just, please think about the people, man. What are we really doing there besides raising our prices?”
“That’s a guy who voted for Trump,” Psaki said, adding that the war is “growing less and less popular by the day.”
White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told the Daily Beast that Trump “has been clear that these are short-term disruptions.”
“Ultimately, once the military objectives are completed and the Iranian terrorist regime is neutralized, oil and gas prices will drop rapidly again, potentially even lower than before the strikes began,” Rogers said.
She added: “As a result, American families will benefit greatly in the long-term.”
Trump ordered the launch of “major combat operations” against Iran in what was initially presented as a regime-change operation but has since morphed into a rapidly expanding war for which the White House seems to have been unprepared.
The president has offered shifting explanations for his decision to strike Iran. He initially said Tehran was preparing to strike U.S. bases. However, Trump administration officials later told congressional staffers in closed-door briefings that there was no intelligence pointing toward imminent Iranian strikes.
The MS NOW host added: “Even Trump’s own supporters are not buying his spin.”
Joe Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned on Tuesday, claiming in a letter that “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”
Psaki referenced his departure, saying: “As you just saw, we’ve already seen the first MAGA diehard resign from the Trump administration over this war.”
