The average price of a gallon of gasoline is now about $3.88, according to AAA. In eight states, it’s over $4/gallon. Happy Thursday.

What Nobody’s Telling Trump

by William Kristol

I doubt anyone on the inside is willing to tell President Trump the truth about how the war is going. But if some courageous truth-teller were to enter the Oval Office this morning and speak, he’d say this: It ain’t going great, sir. In fact, sir, it’s going pretty badly.

And if the president didn’t have this intrepid soul removed from his presence, and would listen for a minute or two, this is what more he would hear:

• The Iranian regime is surviving.

• The Strait of Hormuz remains closed—except to those ships the Iranians want to allow to go through, delivering Iranian oil to their allies.

• Global energy prices continue to rise and stock markets continue to fall. Inflation is ticking up and the Fed looks more likely to raise than cut interest rates in the near future.

• Iran’s military capabilities aren’t as degraded as we thought. In fact, Iran’s missile and drone launches, which had been declining in number over the first two weeks, have increased this week.

• Some of those missiles and drones are hitting their targets: After Israel attacked Iran’s South Pars gas field yesterday in a strike you pretended we didn’t know about ahead of time, Iran retaliated by hitting Qatar’s Ras Laffan terminal, the world’s largest liquefied natural gas facility.

• As the Economist put it yesterday, “Although President Donald Trump says he has ‘destroyed 100% of Iran’s Military Capability’, the 0% that remains is playing havoc with the global economy.”

• We’re facing a decision about deploying thousands of ground troops to try either to secure the Strait of Hormuz or to seize Kargh Island—and neither operation is assured of success.

• The Defense Department says we need to go to Congress for a supplemental appropriation—as much as $200 billion—to pay for the war and replenishing stocks, and it’s not clear the votes are there to approve the funds.

• Meanwhile, our allies abroad aren’t rallying to us.

• And there’s no sign that the American public is rallying to the administration either.

That’s what an honest analyst would tell the president of the United States.

But that’s surely not happening.

Instead of receiving intelligence briefings, President Trump is watching Fox. And what he heard last night was his most influential aide, Stephen Miller, telling Laura Ingraham that “President Trump has calculated through every permutation and every degree of strategy,” and that we are en route to “an overwhelming victory.”

And so, as we find ourselves in an increasingly dangerous hole of our own making, we will keep on digging.