God Mode, Gas Prices, and the Gathering Recession

Trump and Hegseth are treating war like a video game while oil surges, the labor market weakens, allies scramble, and the global bill keeps climbing.

Good morning! Well, good morning to everyone except the men who keep treating a regional war like they’re speedrunning a first-person shooter campaign on their Pentagon gaming consoles. Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth would like you to believe they are in firm control of events. Trump is still posturing like a man who thinks every bombing run is a victory screen, and Hegseth, the former Fox host somehow cosplaying as a wartime strategist, is out there bragging about “death and destruction from the sky all day long,” declaring Iran’s leaders “toast,” and generally talking like the Pentagon has been rebranded into a Twitch stream for Christian nationalist nihilists. Critics from veterans’ groups, former officials and military watchdogs are not exactly reassured. They are openly warning that Hegseth’s swagger is juvenile, dangerous and wildly ill-suited to the job, while lawmakers are now pushing for an investigation into reports that some commanders have framed this war in apocalyptic biblical terms. Apparently “normal constitutional republic” was too boring, so now we are doing End Times Call of Duty with the nuclear codes nearby.

While the administration keeps selling this as strength, the actual map looks more like a game bug that escaped quality control. The war is now hitting oil storage and refining facilities in Tehran, damaging desalination plants, rattling airports, and spreading across Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Iraq and the Gulf. Tehran residents were warned to stay indoors after strikes on fuel storage sites sent toxic smoke into the air, with fears of acid rain and broader environmental fallout. This is what “mission accomplished” apparently looks like in Trump’s universe: blackened skies, poisoned infrastructure and civilians being told to breathe shallowly while the White House congratulates itself for being very mucho macho manly on television.

The economic story, however, is not subtle. The war is not slowing recession fears; it is feeding them protein powder and handing them a flamethrower. The Financial Times reports that West Texas Intermediate has surged to about $90.90 a barrel and Brent to $92.69, with traders bracing for the possibility of $100 oil as production cuts, tanker disruption and attacks on energy infrastructure tighten the market. Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz remains sparse, and the bond market is already wobbling as investors realize this is not some tidy, temporary blip that can be solved with a Truth Social tantrum. When you light a match next to the global fuel system and then ask why groceries, freight and household budgets suddenly smell like smoke, you’re clearly not paying attention.

Max from UNFTR has been making this point clearly: the war is not interrupting a healthy economy, it is accelerating weakness that was already there. Before the bombs started falling, the economy was already softening. Now the Financial Times says the conflict is muddying expectations for Fed rate cuts because oil is rising at the same time the labor market is deteriorating. February’s jobs report showed the U.S. lost 92,000 jobs, which means the country is getting hit with the toxic combination of slower growth and resurgent energy inflation, exactly the kind of stagflationary nightmare central bankers hate. Trump has somehow fused an oil shock onto an already slowing economy, which is a bit like setting your house on fire because breakfast was taking too long.

Matt Randolph is also worth crediting here, because he has been cutting through one of the dumbest lies in circulation: that oil will just glide back to pre-war levels once the shooting stops. As Randolph explains, lower prices only existed because the market believed there was enough spare capacity and logistical breathing room to absorb shocks. That fantasy dies the minute storage depots are on fire, tanker traffic is jammed, output is cut, and infrastructure starts taking direct hits. You can end a war more quickly than you can rebuild a supply system, and Randolph’s point is that the market knows it.

Then there is the uranium problem, which should make everyone even less comfortable with the administration’s chest-thumping. Reporting indicates that even after earlier U.S. strikes, officials still fear Iran’s highly enriched uranium at Isfahan could remain accessible through limited access points, and Washington and Israel have reportedly discussed future options to secure it. Translation: bombing holes in a nuclear program is not the same thing as securing the material. So while Trump and Hegseth posture like they have already cleared the level, the most dangerous objective may still be sitting there unresolved, glowing ominously behind a locked door the player forgot to open.

The political and strategic costs are spreading just as fast as the economic ones. European countries are not being drawn in because they are dazzled by Trump’s genius. They are being dragged in because his war of choice is turning nearby bases, sea lanes and civilian infrastructure into targets. Cyprus is filling up with European military assets, including German, French, Greek, British, Italian and Spanish deployments, as governments try to contain the fallout and protect the eastern Mediterranean. Thanks to Trump, allies are grabbing mops and fire extinguishers while the guy who started the kitchen blaze keeps insisting he meant to flambé the curtains.

Trump, naturally, is handling this strain on allied relationships with his usual diplomatic finesse, which is to say by acting like a resentful nightclub owner. He publicly mocked Keir Starmer for not joining early enough, suggesting the U.K. wanted to show up after America had already “won,” even as the BBC and other reporting made clear the conflict was still widening and the region was becoming more unstable by the hour. This is the special relationship according to Trump: insult allies, rely on their geography, their ships, their bases and their cleanup crews anyway, then sneer at them online for failing to applaud loudly enough while you blow up the furniture.

Inside Iran, the stakes are somehow getting even more dangerous. Iranian clerics say the Assembly of Experts has reached a decision on a new supreme leader, though the identity has not yet been announced publicly. Israel has already warned it would target any successor and even those involved in the appointment process. Sit with that for a second. We are now watching a wartime succession under live assassination threat. And hardline clerics are signaling that the “best” successor may be someone most opposed by Washington, which is about as clear a sign as you can get that this war is not pushing the system toward moderation.

For a little schadenfreude palate cleanser amid the war horror, Corey Lewandowski is reportedly getting swept out of DHS right after Kristi Noem was fired. Just days ago, Noem was angrily calling questions about their relationship “tabloid garbage” and pretending Lewandowski was basically decorative. Now she’s out, he’s apparently out, and the whole thing looks less like a serious department of government than a Mar-a-Lago divorce court with security clearances.

What started as a sleaze story is shading into a contracts story. Noem’s $220 million self-promotional DHS ad campaign is already under fire for its no-bid structure and its connections to firms linked to people in her orbit. There is no public proof yet that Noem and Lewandowski personally profited, but there is more than enough here to say the whole thing smells like the kind of grift-adjacent patronage racket this administration keeps treating as normal governance.

So here we are: a weakening labor market, oil screaming toward triple digits, freight and inflation pressure building, allies scrambling to protect themselves from the spillover, toxic smoke over Tehran, and a defense secretary talking like he got his ethics from a monster truck rally sermon. Hegseth is projecting the moral and intellectual depth of a man who thinks war is just another place to audition toughness for the manosphere. Trump is mashing buttons, calling it strategy, and hoping the cut scene ends before the player notices the entire map is on fire.

This administration keeps telling us not to worry, that everything is under control, that victory is close, that oil will settle down, that markets will calm down, that allies will fall in line, that the civilians gasping under smoke clouds are regrettable background graphics in a glorious campaign. The truth is uglier and much simpler: this war is making the economy weaker, the region more unstable, the nuclear question murkier, and America’s alliances more strained. “Death and destruction from the sky all day long” is not an economic plan, a diplomatic doctrine or a moral vision. It is just the slogan of a collapsing empire trying to convince itself the lag is someone else’s fault.