Trump to address nation on Iran as gas prices rise, poll numbers drop -- and midterms loom

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump will address the nation Wednesday night as soaring gas prices, an unpopular war in Iran and his slumping approval number have become a collective political thorn for Republicans heading into November’s midterm elections.

Trump will use the prime-time address to repeat his Tuesday declaration that the U.S. bombardment of Iran should end in two or three weeks, according to a White House official. The official, granted anonymity to be candid, described the speech as an “operational update on the progress of Operation Epic Fury, which is meeting or exceeding all of its benchmarks.”

Trump is expected to tell the nation that the U.S. military has mostly succeeded in “achieving all of its stated goals prior to the operation,” the official said in an email. Those objectives include an ongoing effort to “destroy Iran’s deadly ballistic missiles and production facilities” and “annihilate” its navy, according to the official. What’s more, Trump is expected to describe how Iran’s “terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the region” thanks to the U.S.-led actions and to “guarantee” that Tehran can “never” field a nuclear weapon.

To that end, the president told Reuters on Wednesday that U.S. officials could carry out “spot strikes” in the future, should Iran make inroads toward a nuclear weapon.

Pain at the pump

As gas prices continue to tick up, Trump has appeared dismissive of voters’ pain at the pump despite the strong political headwinds his turbulent second term has created for Republican candidates,

Iran has struck oil tankers attempting to traverse the Strait of Hormuz, leading to a dramatic reduction in the typical daily traffic at the vital waterway, which provides fuel products to India and Asian economic powers. But Trump ignored rising global energy prices on Tuesday afternoon in the Oval Office as he signaled he would cast aside the United States’ decades-old role in ensuring the strait was open for business.

“What happens in the strait, we’ll have nothing to do with,” he told reporters, again stating that countries who depend more heavily on the passageway should take charge of securing it.

The average price of unleaded gasoline in the United States rose again Wednesday, to an average of $4.064 a gallon, according to the American Automobile Association. That was up from an average of $4.018 a gallon on Tuesday and $2.984 a gallon a month ago. (The war started on Feb. 28.) Average diesel prices, which help drive consumer prices as companies pass along increased transportation costs to buyers, were at $5.490 a gallon on Wednesday, up from $5.454 per gallon a day earlier and $3.761 per gallon one month ago, according to AAA.

The pump pain has some Republican politicos worried, with the midterms just over seven months away.

“You need to get gas prices below pre-war levels by Memorial Day,” GOP strategist Ford O’Connell said of the May 25 holiday. “That affects all other prices.

“We’re four weeks into this war, and Democrats are trying to do everything possible to make the war and the president look bad,” O’Connell said in a telephone interview. “The perception of what people think is happening is something the president and the Republicans have to be very mindful of.”

Multiple polls show that most Americans think gas is too expensive and oppose the joint U.S.-Israeli war in Iran.

According to a March 27-30 Economist/YouGov poll, Trump’s net job approval rating was at 35%, a record low for either of his terms, with 58% of Americans disapproving. The same survey found 61% saying gas prices had gone up “a lot” where they live, while 24% said prices at the pump were going up “a little.”

A CNN/SSRS survey released Wednesday found that 64% of U.S. adults disapproved of Trump’s handling of his job as president, with 35% approving. The same survey found 76% disapproving of Trump’s handling of gas prices, compared with 24% who approved.

In his latest dismissive remark about how he planned to get gas prices down, Trump on Tuesday shrugged as he told reporters, “All I have to do is leave Iran” for oil prices to “come tumbling down.”

It typically takes some time for gasoline and diesel prices to fall after a major shock, then consumer prices to follow suit. Complicating Trump’s Tuesday declaration is the matter of how Iran might respond to the U.S. ending its bombing campaign — especially if Israel continues to pound targets inside Iran, where the hard-line government remains intact and firing missiles and drones at targets across the region.

‘Two weeks’

Talking to reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump said the U.S. role in the Iran conflict could be over in “two weeks, maybe three.”

The proclaimed “two-week” time frame for a major action or announcement has been a fixture so far in Trump’s second term, though things have not always gone to schedule.

It is against that challenging backdrop that Americans will be tuning in to his prime-time address, searching for some hope that gas and diesel prices soon could fall — especially ahead of the summer travel season.

Senate Minority Whip Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., wrote on X that gas in the U.S. had hit “the highest price in nearly four years.”

“President Trump’s war with Iran is costing Americans at home, and endangering our service members abroad,” Durbin wrote Tuesday. “Yet Congressional Republicans want to give this Administration a blank check for a war that seems to have no end strategy.”

Trump was asked by a reporter during a March 26 Cabinet meeting about gas prices but began his answer lauding stock market performance during his second term.

“Now, before this started, the Dow hit 50,000. The S&P hit 7,000,” he said. “We hit it in our first year. And I said, well, now we have to take an excursion to Iran. … Frankly, I thought the oil prices would go up more, and I thought the stock market would go down more. Hasn’t been nearly as severe as I thought.”

“I think they have confidence in, maybe, the American president and maybe the people sitting around this table,” Trump said of himself and his Cabinet members.

Still, the price of a barrel of oil at midday Wednesday stood at just over $100, which O’Connell described as a problem for the president and his party.

“If you have $90 a barrel for a much longer period of time, people are really going to feel that $4-a-gallon gas over the summer,” the GOP strategist said. “So the White House knows they either need to get gas prices down, or he has to explain to the American people a big deliverable from Iran that clearly shows America is safer and the world is now a better place.”