Trump speech on Iran war, recent remarks on oil, NATO, daycare costs land with a thud

President Trump’s meandering speech on the Iran war Wednesday night — in which he paired promises of a rapid exit with new threats of escalating bombing and denied responsibility for the Strait of Hormuz — did little to placate U.S. allies and global markets concerned about the conflict’s ongoing disruptions over global oil supplies.

Stocks fell after markets opened Thursday and oil prices soared, with the price of U.S. crude jumping more than 10 percent, above $110.

Following that speech, diplomats from more than 40 countries — not including the United States — met to strategize on how to lift Iran’s lingering grip on the strait, the vital oil corridor that the U.S.-Israeli war has pushed Iran to restrict but which Trump said Wednesday was not its problem.

Meanwhile, Trump’s remarks earlier Wednesday about leaving NATO drew subtle rebukes from his international and domestic allies, including French President Emmanuel Macron and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R.S.D.), while the president’s comments about the United States’ failure to focus on social services like Medicare or other domestic needs such as child care as it wages its foreign war sparked outrage in their country.

Far from being a call for unified action to end the war alongside its allies, Trump’s speech – his first official address to the nation since the war began a month ago – further isolated the United States and the Trump administration on the world stage.

Trump firmly asserted in his speech that reopening the Strait of Hormuz to tanker traffic was not the responsibility of the United States, although it caused the war, because it receives less oil from the corridor than other countries.

“The countries of the world that receive oil through the Strait of Hormuz must take care of this passage. They must cherish it. They must own it and cherish it. They could do it easily. We will be helpful to them, but they should take the lead in protecting the oil that they so desperately depend on,” Trump said.

“To the countries that can’t get fuel, many of whom refuse to get involved in decapitating Iran – we had to do it ourselves – I have a suggestion: First, buy oil from the United States of America. We have a lot of it. We have so much of it,” Trump continued. “And No. 2, muster up some delayed courage.”

He said those nations should have already done a better job of helping the United States in its war effort, but now they should “go into the strait and just take it, protect it, use it for yourselves.”

“Iran has been virtually decimated,” he said. “The hardest part is done, so it should be easy.”

Of course, Trump has consistently downplayed the threat that Iran continues to pose in the region. And securing the strait — which runs along Iran’s mountainous coast and is full of strategic locations from which Iranian forces can threaten maritime traffic — is no easy task, as foreign diplomats gathered to resolve the issue without the United States acknowledged Thursday.

“We have seen Iran hijack an international shipping route to hold the global economy hostage,” British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said.

Separately, Macron, speaking in South Korea, said the United States “can hardly subsequently complain of not being supported in an operation that it chose to undertake alone.”

“This is not our operation,” he said. “What we want is for peace to be restored as quickly as possible.”

Macron also criticized Trump’s criticism of NATO, which Trump called a “paper tiger” in remarks before his speech on Wednesday.

“When you commit to an alliance, you respect these commitments,” Macron said. “You don’t comment on them every morning.”

Trump has been suggesting for weeks that NATO allies who refused to join America’s war have failed to live up to their treaty obligations and that staying in the alliance may not be worth it for the future of the United States. However, he made no mention of NATO in his speech on Wednesday evening.

Trump does not have the power to unilaterally withdraw the United States from NATO. That power lies with Congress — where Trump’s own allies have downplayed the idea.

“We have an awful lot of people who think NATO is a very important and incredibly successful alliance after World War II,” Thune said. “I think in today’s world you need allies.”

Trump’s official speech from the White House appeared to be geared at least in part toward his own allies at home, including his MAGA base, where frustrations with the war have been growing — particularly among the cohort of Trump supporters who had championed his “America First” message and his campaign promises to extricate the United States from foreign entanglements, not create new ones.

In his speech, Trump said he had promised since his first foray into politics in 2015 that he would never let Iran develop a nuclear weapon. He told listening Americans that war “is a real investment in the future of your children and your grandchildren” because it makes the world a safer place.

However, Trump only exacerbated frustrations over the war’s distraction from domestic priorities with separate comments he made earlier Wednesday at a private White House Easter luncheon, a video of which the White House posted — then deleted — online.

In those remarks, Trump said U.S. military needs must take priority over vital social services and other costs important to the average American, like child care.

“It’s not possible for us to take care of child care, Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things,” Trump said. “They can do it at the state level. You can’t do it at the federal level. We have to take care of one thing: military protection. We have to guard the country.”

The president’s political opponents immediately greeted the remarks as out of touch with reality.

“Trump says we can pay for the war in Iran but we can’t afford to keep our kids,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) wrote on

On Wednesday, Democrats also criticized Trump’s view of the war more broadly.

“Donald Trump’s month-long war against Iran has cost taxpayers dearly and tragically cost the lives of 13 U.S. service members. He has dragged our country into a conflict that has shaken markets, driven up gas prices, strained working families, and further destabilized the Middle East,” Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) wrote on X. without clear or consistent justification and the consequences of his choices will not go away when he leaves.

In addition to defending NATO, Macron and other French politicians also responded Thursday to Trump’s mockery in his Wednesday remarks. He imitated a French accent while accusing Macron of wanting to help the US war effort once the battle was “won” and referenced a moment last year when Brigitte Macron was filmed pushing her husband’s face, which he said was a joke between them.

“We talk too much and it’s everywhere,” Macron said, according to French newspaper Le Monde. “We all need stability, calm, a return to peace. It’s not a spectacle!”

“Honestly, it’s not up to par,” Yaël Braun-Pivet, president of the lower house of the French Parliament, told French channel franceinfo. “We are currently discussing the future of the world. In Iran, this is affecting the lives of millions of people, people are dying on the battlefields and we have a president who laughs, who makes fun of others.”