Bulwark Takes - BREAKING: Massive Oil Price Increases

Episode Date: March 9, 2026

Tim Miller and JVL are going live to cover the massive increase in oil prices roiling markets right now.

Hey, everybody. I'm Tim Miller of the Bullwark here with my buddy Jonathan Vlas, author of the Triad Newsletters. You can get at the Borg.com. We are live right now Sunday, March 8th at 630 central time. Yeah. Look, JBL is eating dinner. Is that the stock market? No.

Is that the stock market going up? That is not the stock market going up. No. That is my 401K going up. That is crude oil. That is not your 401k going up. That is the price of crude oil. oil by barrel, which has an impact on gas price, you might imagine. Anyway, we are sitting around,

JVLs have a dinner, and I text me, like, have you seen the, have you seen the gas futures? Is the oil and gas futures yet? He hadn't. And I was like, it's like, I mean, I've never seen a chart like it. It's like a full erection. It's like a full tent in one second. The future is open for tomorrow. And we've gone from what, what is that? Like 70 or something? 70, 80. My eyes are struggling. No, 90. Yeah, 90, all the way up over 100. Pete, around 111 now. We're settling down around 106. We'll explain to you guys

why that matters and what those numbers mean if you're not a futures trader. But at the top level, JVL, it seems like the street, the market, the investors, not thrilled with the fallout from the Iran war. I should mention

also Dow futures are down about 2% right now, just a little under 2%. as we're talking right now. So, well, that good. Man, this seems pretty bad. Trump has responded to that. You know this is bad because Trump has already sent a panic bleed about it. But before we get to that, well, let's do that.

We'll show Trump and then we'll give him his opening words. Short-term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of Iran nuclear threat is over. Are we sure about that? Is a very small price to pay for USA and world safety and peace, only to be. fools will think differently. Call me a fool, JVL. What do you think? We'll go back to the oil price thing. I want it kind of a ticker up so we can all watch it together. You know, just sort of watch the money go out of our pockets together as the prices sort of pop up and down here. But JVL, thoughts on the implication of this and whether Mr. Trump's spin is going to land for people.

Well, I mean, the good news is the Iranian nuclear threat was already completely and totally obliterated. So, I mean, these short-term prices will go down any minute. The bad news is that because it can go from completely obliterated to imminent in five months, even if we eliminate it totally again, I mean, who can say what could happen five months from now, Tim? For good point. They could just spin it right back up. It's a, I don't know. I want this. I want this more than I've wanted anything maybe in my entire life, Tim. I guess that's for people? Yes.

Yes. Yeah, okay. Great. This is like avian flu driving the price of eggs up to $9 a dozen or something, except it's like that if Trump had said, I want to make an avian flu. Can you do an avian flu for me? Trump had given the air of the flu. If Trump was patient zero of the avian flu.

If he had said to RFK, I want you to make. Make a flu. I want the eggs to be priced a million. And I, this is what America wanted. This is what America voted for. Now, because it's me, the way my life works, because I'm sure that we will get America looking at this and then just going, eh.

In the way they, again, because the price of eggs went up, America decided we should try giving the presidency back to the guy who attempted a coup because eggs are so expensive. It's the most important thing ever. And I just think that, I mean, who knows what people might be willing to do looking at a chart like this? Because it's a real kitchen table issue. I disagree with you. I think that Trump is in a world of hurt right now. And I think his panic, I think his panic bleat emphasizes that Chris Wright, his energy secretary said on Fox today that these prices are a small price to pay to get a world where energy prices are returned. turned back to where they were. And I'm talking weeks.

He's talking weeks, not months. I don't, I, we're setting a pretty high bar for Trump. I'm only about the back on the Trump episode, I'm just going to read it. He once again, he said it's a small price to pay for USA World and World Safety and Peace. Is World Peace our objective right now? I thought that we weren't going to be the world's police. I was sure we were not care about that anymore. Yeah.

that doesn't do us any good. So now we're to be the world's policeman and in exchange for that, a small price to pay. Let's go back to the chart. Let's see. I like to see the little chart go up. Okay.

Whoop. A little pencil dick. Pop, we're straight up. I mean, it's truly an astonishing amount. I said at the top, like what the just kind of contextualize this. Are you a watcher of the show Landman?

I don't believe you are. I am not. I'm sorry. I don't do serious television, Timothy. I know you don't. And Landman, they're oil. They're oil people. And the main character, that's fucking main character's name? It's a Sunday night. I was about to call him Tommy Lee Jones. Three names. Billy Bob Thornton. It's telling the young lawyer who's cutting her teeth about the oil business. And he says to her, you know, 60 to 90, that's our sweet spot.

Because at 90 bucks, we're still making money. People are starting to feel a little bit of pain. If you go up over 90, if you get up into the 100s, that means the cost, everything goes up, not just gas prices, but food prices go up because guess what? We transport the food on trucks, plastics. Like everything starts to go up. Everybody starts to feel pain. And then even the oil guys start to feel pain because consumers buy less, et cetera, et cetera, Adam Smith, you know, supply and demand. So the number there is not great at 105. And we're already seeing prices of the pump go up a little bit.

But it's going to keep going. Nate Silver, not a big, you know, not a big apologist for Trump. Or not, excuse me, not a big apologies for the Democrats, rather, Freudian slip. He said this never started a bombing campaign. They'll completely halt the straight of Hormuz is a classic blunder. But when he gets into the math, he says that gas prices are up about 40%. And he thinks this is going to get worse for weeks now. He does this big newsletter analysis of it where it's like, you can't just turn this stuff back on.

They've increased about 50% or excuse me, 50 cents since we went to war with Iran. But they're expected to spike much, much further. You know, we're looking at gas, according to his chart, up close to five bucks. again, a gallon. Yeah, I think that's where we're headed. Important to underscore this. The reason prices are up is because you have a massive logistical disruption, right? You can't, the normal flow of petroleum from one place to another has been disrupted. And because of that, you then have refineries that are stopping producing. And everything gets backed up then because they don't have anywhere to put the oil.

Once you block up the supply chain like this, it doesn't wreck it for forever. But even if the Strait of Horm moves was totally opened tomorrow, it would take some amount of time for everything to unwork itself, right? For the system to unkink itself. And so you would be feeling this for some days or weeks. The longer it goes on, the longer you'll feel the effects of the supply chain disruption, even once it stops. And, I mean, I got a, Catherine Rampel and I talked about this on Friday, Tim. This is the stupidest thing I think I've ever seen from an American president. So he planned this war.

And the assumption was we won't have to worry about oil prices because we can prevent the Iranians from mining the strait of Hormuz. So the idea was, like, we know that our gun. can stop them from getting their Navy out and mining the strait, which means traffic will be fine. And nobody in this operation said, actually, sir, excuse me, sir. You see, all of these companies that send large ships through, they need what's called maritime insurance, because the ships themselves are very expensive,

and then the cargoes they're holding are really quite precious. And they can't assume that sort of really, you know, risk without being insured and then the insurers are reinsured. And so if insurers decide that they can't shoulder that risk, then it might as well be mined. Nobody said, I just, Tim, it's the dumbest fucking thing I've ever seen in my life. We're going to get back to being the dumbest thing you've ever seen in your life. We're going to put a pin in that for a second.

I just want to talk a little bit more about the brass tax here. In addition to what you just said, even if he quit or even if they somehow successful, cured the straight of form is tomorrow or he quit the war whatever like they cut some deal tomorrow you know it's still it would still it would take weeks as you said uh but that's like not what's happening i mean it was it's raining oil in iran today uh because the israelis hit i guess 30 different uh targets uh related to uh oil production and containment etc in iran um there's an axiose story tonight about how about how the trunk guys were like Like, ooh, you didn't get our approval for that.

Sorry. Yeah, maybe a little attention. I wonder who's the junior partner and who's the senior partner in this war, Tim? Seems like the senior partner to me is Israel. But, you know, and I have a pretty good sense for kind of who's the top and who's the bottom in a very, in a situation like this. And so there's that. So, I mean, again, Iranian production, that doesn't really affect us because we're not taking Iranian a little bit. As far as the global oil is concerned, that now is going to take a.

really long time. The Iranians are like Kuwait's, they've hit Kuwait, you know, Kuwait is not, and Qatar, cutter, rather, excuse me, Qatar not Kuwait, it's not, their natural gas, you know, has been hit. You know, they've been hitting targets in Saudi, UAE. And so like, you know, it is liable to get actually much worse, not, not get secured tomorrow. Yeah, I just want to put this in some historical perspective. And so, let's bring up this chart. Okay. So are we putting this up or am I just going to talk? Yeah, put it up. Yeah.

Okay. So, you know, we have an Iranian revolution, which people who are older than, you know, 40 might remember people in line for gas, everything went crazy. Five million barrels, 5.6 million barrels per day of production was lost. Now, global production is higher because global demand is higher. It's not really apples to apples. But we're now looking at like 20 million barrels per day. shut off. And I, you know, I see people saying, well, it doesn't matter because America's

energy independent. We, we pump all the oil we need. It is a global commodities market. Do you motherfuckers not understand how these things work? If you are an American oil producer and the price of oil is $106 per barrel everywhere else, you are not going to say, well, we'll only sell it to American customers for $60 per barrel. Right. You, that's how commodities prices work. Right. The other thing to flag on this like, this history, I'm just showing you like the impact that Iran in particular has here.

The second largest one was Iranian Revolution. Then we have the fifth one is Iran-Iraq War, right? You know, this is. It's because they sit on the straight, Tim. It's because of the transit. Like this is, again, it's just, it's geography. And so for the people who sat there, well, you know, they only do about. 4% of the global total production,

as if the only thing that matters is production. It is the most we're playing checkers while everybody else plays chess thing I've ever said. We're not even doing that. Checkers and Hegseth and Trump are just like sitting around eating the pieces. It's insane. The most incompetent governance I've ever seen in my life.

Except for maybe how the president handled the COVID response. Like if you now think about, two of the worst failures of the federal government. Many of us have ever seen both under Trump. The Hague Seth on SNL last night said, you guys are playing chess. We're playing Grand Theft Auto, which I thought that's pretty good.

Can we pull back out of the chart? I want to pull back the gas prices chart one more time and take us back out. I want to show us a week and then show us 10 years to give everybody a little bit of perspective. So here's a week. Boy, it seems like once we started that war, it didn't go so good, huh?

So, yeah. Uh, prices were going up immediately with this huge jump today. Now, just to give us a like a broader context, let's go back 10, like, let's look at the 10 year here. Yeah, click on the 10 year. Thank you. Um, okay. So now, what? Like five years basically of, of, of, you know, going the right direction, just completely wiped out in one hour tonight.

Yeah. Like, you know, prices were going down, down, down, basically, you know, like up and down, but down, basically for the last. half decade and it spikes up entirely at one hour. And if you see that other spike there, 2022, the only point where it's higher than it is right now, that is the post-COVID inflation and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Those are happening simultaneously. And so we're having some supply chain issues, you know, in addition to geopolitical issues. And JVL, like, to your point, politically, that last spike, quite damaging for Joe Biden. So I know you're skeptical that this could hurt Trump, but it seems like a bad strategy

to do something that would make the charts go right back to the area that caused a lot of political problems for your predecessor. And Trump chose this. This is, again, like, this is a thing that nobody except for BB Netanyahu asked for. Nobody. Really? right and I I I there are a couple of you know pro israel's pro israel advocates in America commentators were they asking for like war right now like I just you know what I mean like look I'm all

for you know losing the Iranian regime in some way isn't this moment I I have questions for you though because I don't understand and Trump is surprising me a little bit here same that's what I to talk about. I would assume based on the way tariffs went, where the tariffs were always, they're on, they're huge, and then a day and a half later, they're off or they're delayed, or, you know, like, everything was, you know, one of the reasons inflation from tariffs was less than people expected was because the tariffs almost, like only a fifth of the tariffs went into effect or something. Bloomberg did a big count on this. But a very small minority of proposed tariffs wherever actually it would in place.

I would have thought that Trump would see this and just say, great news, we won. It was the strongest victory anybody has ever achieved. Many people said it couldn't be done. It was historic. But we now have complete and total peace everywhere. And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's over and just walks away. I'm shocked.

He is not only not doing that, but he seems to, he seems like he's doubling down on stuff in ways that, again, likening it to tariffs are not the way he approached bad outcomes. I'm also surprised. We talked with this. It took us a little bit with Derek Thompson on Thursday's show. And he was comparing him to kind of a hot gambler. Like he thinks that he's on tilt was the phrase,

the gambling phrase, you know, where he's just like, you know, he went all in on the poker table a few times and he kept winning. And so now he's just like throwing chips around. that's as good as a guess as any

because I have to tell you our friend over at Ponce of America John Fabro put it this way let's get this right he just tweeted this right before he came on seven dead Americans

hundred bucks a barrel oil billions of dollars a day being spent on a massive war that so far replaced an 86 year old tyrant with his son and that's a good summary and I looked at that

and I was like I gotta tell you one of the favorite things for people to comment on pot shows like this is how could you be surprised by this? Everybody likes to say, I saw this coming. Why are you guys surprised?

I'm not usually surprised. And sometimes like the nature of way things happen are surprising, like the details, but like the general thrust of what we've seen from the Trump administration in Trump 2.0, maybe I'm an outlier on this, but it's been like a hair better than I expected. And like I was in, I have Trump Drainjment syndrome. I was in catastrophic territory. Like I assumed, I assumed that they would have been,

to jail one of their political foes by now, for starters, right? Like, the bad stuff that's happened, the tariffs, guys in mass shooting people on the streets, they're horrible, but like, that was all in my kind of personal mental threat. Yeah, that was like my mental threat profile. This is fucking stupider than even I expected. Like, I have TDS. I think that Trump is a moron. Like, I think that he is one of the stupidest people that I've ever encountered, that his judgment is

horrible. I assume that the administration was going to be a shit show. And yet he's managed to do something that is like below what like the TDS line, like below what my expectations were. I don't get it. I really don't. And then sometimes what you're healed for people is what they'll say is like, well, this is an Epstein distraction.

It's like there's literally nothing in the Epstein files that could possibly be worse than what he's doing right now. Like literally if he was a serial rape politically. Politically. Yeah, politically. If it was a serial rapist of 13-year-olds, I think that his poll numbers would end up being higher than if gas goes to 150 and people keep dying in the Middle East. Like, I just, I think that it's extremely politically stupid and risky. And I'm like kind of blown away by how dumb it is. Like, it's truly unbelievable.

All right. So let me, let me play devil's out of it. Please do. I think I agree with you. So I'm proposing this only for the sake of argument. Yeah, sure. That's what we should hash it out. Right. Sure.

The midterms look catastrophically bad for Republicans from what we can tell right now. Yeah. Just all of the signs that you see, like the tremors that come before the earthquake, with retirements and special elections and whatnot, it looks very, very bad. having a hostile Congress does slightly endanger Trump in terms of accountability. It doesn't stop him from things he can do that he wants because he doesn't need or want Congress for passing anything. He's not a legislator. What if this is all part and parcel with establishing preconditions for an emergency in order to try to,

to blunt the right, like, hey, like, how much worse could it get for me in November? If I was already going to lose 60 seats in the House, who cares if I lose 75? Maybe if I shake up the etch-a-sketched like this and we put in some emergency provisions and we try to do this or that, who knows, maybe we can draw to an inside straight and hold on to the Senate and have the House be much more manageable. It's a theory worth discussing because that's at least rational. I mean, it's crazy, but it's rational from the perspective of Donald Trump, right? That's something I could see Stephen Miller coming up with.

That's Trump. Okay. But like, again, I just think that if you're going to try to create an emergency that would give you a pretext to fuck with the elections, the list of things I would try. I mean, what about, for him to start bombing people? like what about bombing Mexican gangs on the border or something? You know what I mean? Not to give them any ideas, but like I could come up with some other things

that would be more politically interest, salient, possibly at least perceivably popular. This is to me just absolutely, like it's madness. It's the actions of a madman. Are you surprised that he tried to do Iran before Cuba? Yeah. I am too.

Why not just go to Cuba next and then like have Iran be the capstone. Well, this is this is what goes back to being the junior partner. Right. And like what this comes down to is that BB basically said, hey, we know where the Iatollah is on Saturday. And like that, that the most credible reporting about credible, I mean that the reporters that have the best sources inside this White House. That's what they say. And basically that's the report. But like, Bibi is like, hey, let's roll on Saturday because we know where Hermione is.

and he's going to be with his other top guys and shock and awe and fuck it, Yolo, let's be legends. I just, I think that that's what happened. There is weirdness, though. So Trump hates hates other people getting rich off of him. Right.

Like this was the Christine Olmson. This was Brad, what's his face? We got exiled. Parscale. Right. If you go out and start getting rich without giving him a taste, that's when he loses his shit. That's kind of,

of what the Israelis have done here. Like, they have come in and they've used Trump to accomplish their aims. And I don't know, has Israel given him a $300 billion, a $300 million jet? No, he's getting way more to Qatar and UAE and. And I, it is weird to me that Trump doesn't seem to have any, like, he's just ride or die with Netanyahu in ways that I don't fully understand. And I'm not trying to be coy here I'm not trying to apply that I you know well you know

because no I don't think that that's what's happening I think that he's been made for a mark 10744 look at For people who come on to the live stream late JBL is the one maybe you tell us in the comments if he's not the only one the one person in America cheering

the gas price. I'm the joker I'm the joker here with a big pile of money, and I just want to set it on fire. And I want to rub America's nose in it. And I, because it's the only way anybody wants it doesn't really leave the house that much, you know, you keep things close to the home ranch. So, you know, you can cut the idea. I'm going to drive kids to practices and stuff. Like, I'm going to pay for the gas.

I just don't feel the fuck. Like, it's a small price to pay in order to get the mouth breathers who made this happen to America to experience some consequences. I do you think he pulls the do you think he pulls the plug and just like walks away because because that would fuck Israel that's the problem right like him just leaving mid-war and saying I don't know I know I don't think so I here's the other thing here's the thing okay we're looking at this through kind of ironically the America first lens like we're looking at this through a political lens, through an economic lens, what is the impact of this on our people? If you look at this through like a video game lens, like I'm playing a military

video game. We're crushing them. It's been pretty, if you're grading this just on like, you know, video game. On explosion maxing. Yeah. We're crushing them on explosion maxing. And, And, you know, the, and I think that what is in Axis, again, I just have to keep going to the people that seem to have the best sources, is that they are looking at that island in the Persian Gulf, what's called Ghent or whatever. They're looking at potentially seizing that and trying to secure it and then seizing some of the oil assets inside. I think that before ducking tail, they're going to try to take control of the street. Let me give you one more piece of evidence on that. Charlie Gasparino, you know that guy? Yeah.

He's a total hack over at Fox Business. But people talk to them. Say this all the time. It's like men in black. You got to read the tabloids. That's for the news. It's where the news is. Okay.

Here's Gasparino. Commodity. Coming up on 108, Tim. Okay. Gasperino says don't care. Commodity traders. are imbecils. They trade off headlines, totally myopic, short-term thinking.

They always screw up, never seeing around corners. You like to see around corners. It was the case in the run up to 2008, and there was more than a few market rallies before the whole thing blew up. This oil price spike has the same feel to it. It's not considering that within days, we will 100% control the supply of oil coming out of the Straits of Hermuz, spelled wrong, or that Iran will be 100 decapitated.

typo Decaptu doesn't know what decapitated means as a military force and financier of terror there'll be peace dividend to all of that meanwhile buckle up as the Cairns who control oil prices have their say at least for now that's Gasparino

I think that's what they think though Is suburban white women control oil prices? I don't know but we're not dealing with rational actors and I think that right now they think okay, our military guys have been great. Let's try to take control of the Persian Gulf and the strait. And we'll use American troops to protect the tankers as they come through.

I think that's what they're going to try before they try leaving. I think. It's hard to predict because this is all so stupid. But that's where I'm at. Did anybody pay attention to what happened when the Ukrainians sunk the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, right? It was the Musco, Musco, I think it was.

And they did it with a drone. You know, they sunk this very expensive, heavy cruiser with something that costs a few thousand dollars. That's the problem is the asymmetry here, which is that the Iranians don't need to drop sea mines. They don't need to have capital ships. They just need to create an. enough of a threat with drones to make it not economically viable for individuals who own these ships or own the cargo to take the risk.

I mean, again, it's just it's just economics. It's just economics. Well, it's also just like where we're at like militarily. But again, it's not good. They don't sure. We are doing great on the scoreboard of like missiles taken out. You know, like we have taken out a lot of their ballistic missiles. It seems like, you know, if you're looking at the assent,

like you know, you're reading the, you know, the military dork, social media feeds and blogs. Like, we've taken out of the missiles. But as Ukraine showed, this day and age, you know, like these small drones, I can do a ton of damage. So here's my, again, I just go back to it, right? So it is the case that America does have a great deal of leverage over the Iranian regime. And if Trump were to go to Iran and give them something, like something of real material benefit to them, for instance,

in eight to ten months, we'll begin easing sanctions on, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, on oil or something. Or we'll find a pathway to you for you to enrich uranium for, and we'll just say it's all for energy production. If he would have given the Iranian something, I think a new regime there with a new Ayatola would probably

be pretty willing to let him save face. And to say, you know, we're seeking his peacefire. He can say it's a tremendous victory. They gave us everything we wanted, even if that's not the case, right? I just understand why he

wouldn't do that. Because that's the Trumpian way to do it, right? Yeah. That is, that is typically how he doesn't actually care about the Iranian people. So you don't need to make sure. Yeah. It doesn't make, you don't need to find somebody that.

Yeah. And so that's the weirdest thing about this, which is that every hour this war goes on, the only reason it's going on is because he wants it to. Or because Israel wants it to pick one. I mean, when we say war of choice, like he really does have the power to probably,

to shut the thing down whenever he wants to. And it's just wild to me. Yeah. Well, if you think that we're just a bunch of TDS-Addle Damby-Pambis, you know, kind of panicking, we're panicking out here. Here's the Wall Street Journal. Just popped. The long-feared Persian Gulf oil squeezes upon us.

Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has ground to a virtual halt unleashing the most severe energy crisis since the 1970s and threatening the global economy. Yeah, well, they must be stupid over there too with their TDS. I, you know, this is again, I just want to find all the silver linings here, Tim. Sure. Wouldn't it be funny if the misadventure in Iran made it so that Marco never got to do regime change in Cuba? If this went so sideways and the fallout from this was so bad, that Trump was like

yeah fuck it we're not doing that again while we're doing shot in Cuba which his entire life Marco gave up his entire life because he decided I'm going to play the long game this is and and we're going to get free Cuba love it I've got a different type of into my veins

Chaudenvoidre. JD Vance the vice president it's going to be pretty tough for him to make the case that he was the nationalist. He was the America first one in there.

You know, what do you do? He is in a massive bind. And this is honestly a worst case scenario for him, I think, politically speaking, for protecting his brand and like that. He's been pretty deft at navigating the MAGA, nationalist, corporate, Republican divide. Very tough for him.

He's been nowhere. You might notice that he was supposed to have a CBS town hall, I believe next week, this coming week, with Barry. Oh, Barry's going to let him be heard. Well, he was she was going to, but that was canceled. And I was thinking to my mind, I was like, who do we think canceled that? Barry, because she doesn't want anyone on the network that is not a full or on war propagandist or JD because he couldn't defend his own administration's war.

Either way, kind of delicious. So coming up on 10850, fingers crossed. I will say this about JD. I think he's in a stronger position than maybe you're suggesting here. Okay. Because he is personally close to the most likely true America First challengers, right? I mean, he and Tucker are like this. And I am sure that J.D. is repping to all of the America First people in their signal chats that, guys, you've got no idea how bad it is.

I'm in there fighting every minute of every day to try to get Lindsey Graham out of here and try to turn the old man around and you have no idea how bad it would be if I wasn't a tough sell to the podcast bros though that's going to be a tough sell to the bait which ones though like the you know the rogans the rogans but not the type of podcasters who are going to determine the next nominee maybe right and if you're jd all you really care about is who holds the nomination because you want to control the party whether you become president or not as immaterial now I do wonder do you think any of this augurs more towards Trump feeling like he needs to demand a third term?

Hannity said it. Hannity said it this weekend. Who else has been saying it, Tim? Who else has been saying it for six years? This guy. Okay. We'll go through for folks who missed, we'll take your comments,

your questions, if you're on YouTube, your super chats, and the substack folks comments as well. If you're here, me and JVL popped on because I've never really seen a chart like that. Like you might, If you're not a chart reader, you might think this straight up line there was like denoting, you know, something, like maybe where the day began or something.

No, that's the price of oil in like one minute as soon as futures open today. An unbelievable spike up there. And so, Jamie Nelson, we wanted to chat about it a little bit. Can I throw you one more before you move on? Can I throw you one more idea? Just while we're spitball. What if the real responsibility for this? this goes to the Nobel

committee. And had they only given him the stupid prize, he wouldn't have felt the need to do that. But what if all of this is him acting out after being denied his Nobel Peace Prize? If we had simply all just given him what he demanded, in the same way, like,

you know, he wouldn't have had to do a coup if he had just been reelected and he wouldn't have had to, he could have been reelected if we'd all just let him do all the stuff. Yeah, there's something about that. It's like your child. Like, you know, sometimes it's kind of a

I have different parenting strategies with my husband. You know, when she's having a tantrum. Sometimes I'm like, just give it, just go, who cares? Let's just give her what she wants so we can move on and enjoy our dinner. He is more on the spite and principal side of things, which is correct. By the way, his way is correct. But if the Norwegians had acted a little more like me, maybe we wouldn't be here. It's a good point.

Well, actually had one other thing I forgot to mention before you had to your chats and questions and comments. there's one other news item tonight which is out of Saudi things are bad everywhere I guess there was a bomb threat at the Kansas City airport at every other airport there

they're very long lines because we're still on a DHS shutdown so an addition of things going bad here there was also a terrorist effort I guess I was an attempted terrorist I guess you'd say outside of Gracie Mansion and New York So, you know, the homeland threats are spiking.

In addition to that, New York Times reporting that American employees at the U.S. embassy in Saudi Arabia have been told to leave the country under mandatory departure orders issued by the State Department, I guess because they don't think that they can protect the embassy, which has already been a target from Iran. So not great. Saudi, I guess, supposed to be our ally there. Not great that they're so in danger in Saudi Arabia that we have, you know, it's mandatory. you must leave if you worked there um let you want to you want nightburner fuel yeah think about what happens if there is a domestic terror attack here yeah in the near future or else or us like i was so i got myself so mad today i almost sent us a a tweet but i i listened to the inner jvl and i just you know went up moved on but i was like think about all the people in this administration in support

of this administration who kept being like old man biden's doing world war three because he's giving ukraine some defensive weapons. Like what we have done in the last week, I'm not the one here to be like World War III's imminent, but if you had to have a threat meter for a likelihood of World War III, the needles moved up quite a bit more in the last week than it did when Joe Biden gave defensive weapons to Ukraine. Anyway, fuck these people. To the question, Shambolic asked, can the Buller-Celsom?

I did that Trump vance stickers so I can cover the Biden ones at the gas station. Somebody should do. Yes, they are actually already on sale. I've seen them on Etsy and eBay, and I am not encouraging vandalism in any way. So I hope they are easily peel offable stickers. Me too. Robert Ward offered another theory.

Could Trump be doing this to save Putin's cash flow? Again, it's so stupid I'm open to kind of, like, what he's doing is so stupid. I'm open to totally crazy theories. I did note that when Shuzzi Wiles was like, hey, we need to do something to help with gas prices this week. The very first thing they did was ease sanctions, in Russia. It's like that's idea one.

Yeah. Well, we gotta help them out so that maybe Russia will stop giving targeting intelligence to the Iranians and helping them kill American soldiers. JBL, will this force Trump or anyone else in his regime to rethink renewables? That's an optimistic take, model lawyer. No. Jason agrees with JBL. He's waiting for all Americans needed to tell. No. I'm waiting for all Americans need to tighten their belts for freedom. Spiel. That's the spiel he wants come. Freedom from what? It's a good question. I don't know. Karen Pfecher. It'll be like

you know, like they don't need 18 dolls. A little girl needs like one doll, two dolls. You need a gallon of gas. What do you need a full tank for? Karen Fletcher, trust me, the name is Karen, and I have no control over oil prices. Thank you, Karen. I'm saving it. The next one

I have, I'm saving it for very last. It's going to be like a little dessert for JVL. Tie, let me just tell you. Ty, the question you asked is very JVL bait. Ferees spelled like my mother's trees. Not a lot of people spelled like that T-H-E-R-E-E-S-E. So that's you, Mom, hey.

Trump is more maniacal by the day. Will he dismiss the market reaction or taco? That's what we've been talking about. Historically, the signs of point to taco, but I don't think so right now. I don't think he's going to soon. That's my take. Over here on to Substack, folks. Jeff wants to know if we're great again yet.

Not me. Alicia wants to know how many of Congress or invest. in oil futures. It's the only way to be making money in the market right now if you're invested in oil futures. So it's something to look into. Alph brings up. So all of this is just return to energy prices where they were, not cheaper, like $60 oil barrels. And that's why we showed you the 10 year. And it's taking oil prices back basically where we were during the 2022 inflation spike. But it's much higher than kind of baseline. And it'll work itself out. That's the other thing. Like it should be a short-term thing because, again, there is no

structural problem here. This is a man-made catastrophe. Trump literally did this. It isn't like, oh, there's a new war happening and we can't make Putin stop attacking Ukraine and that's messing up the pipeline. This is just Trump could declare victory tomorrow and four weeks or two months later, everything would be back to normal because we'd work through the supply chain jam ups. It's just by choice. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I guess I would caveat that, that he could try that. And in theory, things could get back to normal in about a month. But Iran would have a say in it. You know, yeah, we'd have to bribe them. Yeah, right. Right. I mean, he'd have to offer Iran. And Iran would have to, Iran would then exit. And this is like sort of what I have thought. And the,

all right, can I just have 30 seconds here, Tim? You can have 30 seconds. And then we're going to go to you for the final comment. Okay. So I believe that this war was likely to happen starting like the day I first got a text from my buddy who said, hey, I'm down in Tennessee and a bunch of my friends who are Air National Guard are just getting called up. And what they do is they do long range refueling. And they're being told to be prepared to be away for some time.

That says to me Iran. And I think I put this in slack. I said, do you guys? It's like early ones. And the reason. I thought it was likely it would go was because all three parties to this were incentivized to fight. Israel had something it wants to do. Trump has something he wants to do because he now thinks that he is the king of the world and can just reach in and change things.

And the Iranians, from their perspective, believed that they could absorb a bunch of body blows, but that in the short term to medium term, Trump would be so. incentivized to get out that he'd be willing to cut a deal with them, which is kind of what happened after the 12-day war, right? You remember that? And so they felt like they were in a bad position negotiation-wise and that they could be in a better position by absorbing some pain. Yeah. And I mean, I got to say that looks about right to me. And I think they are still likely, if you were Iran, you're more likely to exit this in a stronger position than you went in. You'll have absorbed a bunch of pain, you have lost a bunch of munitions, et cetera, et cetera.

But you will have a framework of something that will make the regime stronger. Well, that's exciting. The final comment question is from Thai, TAI. And J.V. and I were talking about this in the green room or getting a live stream set up for everybody. And he was just on one about this. And I wouldn't have expected it to come up in the comments because we're not talking about Venezuela, but here it is. We'll close with this question from Ty to Jonathan V. I asked, where is Machado these days?

Oh, you know, it's such a great question, Ty. The Wall Street Journal had a piece about her this weekend, and she is trying to get back into Venezuela, having some trouble getting back into Venezuela. She has been... For people who don't know, can you just remind people to players here? Marie Machado is the Venezuelan Democracy Avatar who bravely stood against the Maduro regime,

and really was pushing on Trump and the neocons in his administration to do something about Maduro. And then after Maduro got kidnapped and Del Sier Griskez got put in, she went to the White House and gave her Nobel Peace Prize to Donald Trump while in a frame with testament about Simon Bolivar and the great, this amazing man, Donald Trump, will be a hero to Venezuela forever. And Donald Trump yonked her Nobel Peace Prize from. her and gave her a little, literally a little gift bag with his name on it and sent her out the door and has had nothing to do with her ever since. And she has been made completely and totally

irrelevant. And it is very clear that this administration views her as nothing but a liability and an annoyance. They are very happy with Delci Rodriguez, who has decided to trade her hold on power for doing whatever errands the Trump administration needs her to do. And how does that make you feel? It makes me feel so good. I love it. It makes me feel like I need a cigarette, Tim. And let me tell you why. I understand that when you are attempting to lead a movement or you are a head of state or an aspiring head of state,

you often have to deal with unsavory people. And you have to say things, which otherwise you might not be willing to say or want to say. You are doing a lot of taking one for the team. I get that. We see Valorimir Zelensky when he comes to America. He often says nice things about Trump that you can tell you are killing him to do, but he feels like I have to say this and humiliate myself from my people. I understand that.

All I ask is that you live not by lies. And what this woman, Maria Machado did, was come into America and lie to Americans about their president and attempt to make this man who was in the process of having American citizens shot in the street by his masked secret police trying to present him to Americans

as a great lover of freedom and democracy. You know what? Maria Machado, fuck off. Go back to Venezuela. Enjoy irrelevance. And I hope nothing bad happens to you while you're there. But to come in and to try to aid

Donald Trump's authoritarian project in America in the hopes that he will help you end the Maduro and Chavismo authoritarian project in Venezuela, having it turn out that authoritarian

are going to authoritarian is delicious. I love it. Live not by lies, baby. Boom. Well, that's wonderful. All right, we'll take us out. So one more time for you. This is the gas price chart, the oil price chart, which obviously relate to the gas. prices. You'll see that in the pump. Big spike up. It's kind of around even. It's going up a little more.

And back now, we'll see how it goes in the morning. Can we see just for counter? What does the Dow features look? Oh, that seems to be going the other way. That seems like oil prices. That just says by the dip. By the dip. It just means you're getting a discount, Tim. We do seem to be below. It's hard for me to see I'll teleprone to there. We seem to be quite a bit below but 50,000. So, The good news is we can care about the Epstein files, though, which is nice. Wouldn't it be amazing if Pam Bondi called the top of the market? It's too much to hope for.

I understand it's too much to hope for. But if it turns out that she was calling the top. Oh, baby. Oh, top of market. Oh, I see what you do there. We'll leave it there. That's JVL. I'll be back tomorrow.

Go to the blog.com. set up or the newsletter. Give us a like. Tell your friends. And good luck. Go get gas right now, probably. As soon as this feed is over, go to your local gas station, fill up the tank. It's going to cost more tomorrow. We'll see y'all later.