Potty Mouth

Trump's early morning Easter Sunday Truth Social tirade has backfired spectacularly. At 8 a.m. on Sunday, the president posted an expletive-laden rant featuring a warning for Iran that the county would be "living in hell" if it did not open the Strait of Hormuz:

If the president intended for his incendiary post to calm the markets, it has had the opposite effect, instead sending oil prices even higher on Sunday. Gas prices are at their highest since June 2022, having risen by over 38 percent since the war began to a national average of $4.11 on Sunday. Meanwhile, stock fell on Sunday with Dow futures down 0.69 percent, S&P futures down 0.76, and Nasdaq futures down 0.91 percent.

An Iranian official responded to Trump's Truth Social post by asserting that the strait will remain closed until the country is "fully compensated" for the damage it has suffered during Trump's war. He also dismissed Trump's threats as a sign that the U.S. has "resorted to obscenities and nonsense out of sheer desperation and anger."

The renewed threats came less than a week after the president claimed that the U.S. did not need the Strait of Hormuz in his Wednesday address to the nation. "The United States imports almost no oil through the Hormuz Strait and won't be taking any in the future. We don't need it," Trump said.

The president has repeatedly leveled threats at Iran in an attempt to force it to reopen the strait, including threatening to strike vital infrastructure, despite warnings that such acts could constitute war crimes. "International law protects from attack objects indispensable to the survival of civilians, and the attacks threatened by Trump, if implemented, could entail war crimes," the international law experts wrote in response to the president's initial threats against Iran's power plants.

-- The Daily Beast