Trump shares video that includes racist depiction of the Obamas, sparking backlash

(WASHINGTON) — Ten days into the U.S. war with Iran, Americans are starting to feel the economic fallout as oil and gas prices soar.

Gas prices skyrocketed to a national average of $3.47 on Monday, up nearly 50 cents from last week, according to data from AAA. Plus, oil prices on Monday surpassed $100 a barrel for the first time since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 before falling lower later in the day.

President Donald Trump has dismissed the higher cost, telling ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce it’s “a little glitch.”

“I think it’s fine. It’s a little glitch. We had to take this detour,” Trump told ABC’s Bruce in an interview on Sunday before going on to tout the U.S. military campaign against Tehran.

In a social media post on Sunday night, Trump argued: “Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace.”

Yet the cost of living remains one of the biggest issues heading into the 2026 midterms, where Trump and Republicans are seeking to maintain narrow majorities in Congress.

A poll released by NBC News on Sunday found Trump received his lowest ratings in the poll on his handling of inflation and the cost of living as 36% of registered voters approve and 62% disapprove.

On Iran, the NBC poll found a majority of registered voters (54%) disapproved of Trump’s handling of the matter.

Trump, on the 2024 campaign trail, vowed to bring gas down below $2 a gallon. During the first year of his second term, Trump routinely pointed to the drop in prices at the pump, including in his State of the Union address last month.

“Gasoline, which reached a peak of over $6 a gallon in some states under my predecessor and was, quite honestly, a disaster, is now below $2.30 a gallon in most states, and in some places $1.99 a gallon,” Trump said in his speech on Feb. 24.

Now, gas prices are closing in on $3.50 a gallon and are expected to continue to keep rising the longer the Middle East conflict lasts.

Patrick De Haan, a petroleum analyst at GasBuddy, told ABC News Live that Americans are currently experiencing “sticker shock.”

“Gas stations are seeing their costs go up in real time again today, as oil markets are jumping, and that’s going to be in another round of price increases over the course of this week, prices could jump another 15 to 35 cents a gallon for gasoline over the next three days, as long as nothing changes,” De Haan said. “And it’s going to be worse for the price of diesel, which could jump 35 to 50 cents a gallon, that would put it close to nearly a $5 a gallon national average.”

Some Democrats are seizing on the price jump to criticize Trump and the administration for the handling of the war.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, has called for President Trump to tap into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) to alleviate the financial burden for Americans.

“American families are suffering from higher prices as the effects of Trump’s reckless war become pain at the gas pump and beyond as high gas prices trickle down making everything more expensive,” Schumer said in a statement on Sunday. “They cannot afford to simply wait and hope prices come down. The President has a solution right here at home, and he should use it.”

“Trump promised a Golden Age in America. Meanwhile. Republicans are crashing the economy, gas prices are out of control and the extremists are spending billions dropping bombs in the Middle East. You deserve better,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, also a New York Democrat, wrote on X on Monday.

Trump was asked over the weekend if he would use the SPR to bring some relief, but declined to say, instead criticizing former President Joe Biden’s use of the reserve. Biden released oil from the SPR several times over the course of 2022 as prices increased due to Russia’s war on Ukraine.

“I filled it up and he brought it down to the lowest level it’s ever been. We will start at the appropriate time, which is basically a gut instinct, we will start filling up,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Saturday.

“Biden used them so that he could get some extra votes in the election,” Trump added.

Analysts previously told ABC News that the SPR is a “valuable resource” for the administration to bring some relief to Americans and assuage market fears, but likely wouldn’t be enough oil in the long term to make up for the 20 million barrels of oil currently being prevented from passing through the Strait of Hormuz every day.

Trump told Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade in an interview on Sunday night that ships holding at the Strait of Hormuz need to “show some guts” and push through the channel.

Several war-risk insurers have canceled their coverage for vessels amid the widening conflict. Trump said the U.S. government was going to provide some risk insurance and guarantees, and if necessary the U.S. Navy would escort tankers through the strait. 

Like Trump, several Republicans are contending that higher gas prices will be temporary.

“The prices will come back down as soon as we get out of Iran, as soon as we finish turning them into fish food, which will be pretty soon,” Republican Sen. John Kennedy said on Fox News on Sunday.

How long the Iran war will last remains an open question. President Trump initially estimated four to five weeks for the U.S., though he later said the timeline would be whatever it takes.

On Sunday, Trump told ABC’s Bruce: “I don’t know. I never predict. All I can say is we are ahead of schedule both in terms of lethality and in terms of time.”

GasBuddy’s De Haan told ABC News Live that the longer the conflict lasts, the more time it will take to see oil and gas prices to get back to their previous levels

“Every day the situation continues, it could add another several weeks to the recovery time,” De Haan said.

ABC News’ Isabella Murray, Nicholas Kerr, Soo Youn and Max Zahn contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — An 11th hour plea from the prime minister of Pakistan appears to have swayed both President Donald Trump and the Iranian regime to agree to a two-week ceasefire deal in exchange for temporarily opening the Strait of Hormuz, at least temporarily staving off Trump’s promise to bomb Iran back to the “stone ages.”

With just hours to go until Trump’s 8 p.m. ET Tuesday deadline, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif — one of the key mediators attempting to the end the conflict — issued a public call to Trump, urging him to allow more time for negotiations.

“Diplomatic efforts for peaceful settlement of the ongoing war in the Middle East are progressing steadily, strongly and powerfully with the potential to lead to substantive results in near future,” Sharif said. “To allow diplomacy to run its course, I earnestly request President Trump to extend the deadline for two weeks.”

Sharif also implored Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz as a “goodwill gesture.”

Just after 6:30 p.m. ET, Trump posted on his social media platform that he would suspend military attacks.

“Based on conversations with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir, of Pakistan, and wherein they requested that I hold off the destructive force being sent tonight to Iran, and subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz, I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two week,” he wrote.

“We received a 10 point proposal from Iran, and believe it is a workable basis on which to negotiate,” Trump continued, referring to an Iranian counterproposal transmitted to negotiators after rejecting plans for a longer ceasefire on Monday. “Almost all of the various points of past contention have been agreed to between the United States and Iran, but a two-week period will allow the Agreement to be finalized and consummated.”

Within the hour, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council claimed that the U.S. agreed to its plan which includes numerous concessions.

In a lengthy statement on Iranian state media, the council said the U.S. “committed in principle to non-aggression, continued Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz, acceptance of enrichment, lifting of all primary and secondary sanctions.”

Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi, meanwhile, said Iran would agree to a ceasefire if attacks against it are halted. He also said passage through the Strait of Hormuz would be allowed during the two-week period if coordinated with Iran’s armed forces.

The White House did not respond to specific questions Tuesday evening on whether the U.S. agreed to Iran’s 10-point plan — which includes lifting all primary and secondary sanctions and withdrawing combat troops from the region — or what it made of Iran saying the Strait of Hormuz would open with coordination from Iran’s military.

In response, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement:

“President Trump’s words speak for themselves: this is a workable basis to negotiate, and those negotiations will continue. The truth is that President Trump and our powerful military got Iran to agree to reopening the Strait of Hormuz, and negotiations will continue.”

Despite Trump calling Iran’s counterproposal a “workable basis” for negotiations, it contains many terms the U.S. and the president himself have long rejected and was previously described by administration officials as “maximalist.”

After the two-week ceasefire was announced, mediators began making arrangements to hold the first round of talks following the implementation of the ceasefire on Friday in Islamabad, but the White House said late Tuesday that it had not yet committed to any plans.

Before Sharif’s proposal was made public, two U.S. officials cautioned that although talks showed signs of progress, the Trump administration and Iranian regime still appeared to be far apart on core issues, expressing doubt that a broad deal could be reached on such a tight timeline.

One U.S. official also said the dynamic proposed by Sharif mirrored confidence-building measures under discussion behind closed doors, but up until the president and Iranian authorities accepted the terms, it was unclear whether both sides could be brought on board.

Fully reopening the Strait of Hormuz is a top priority for U.S. officials, who indicated that any agreement with Iran would have to lead to near-immediate progress on that front.

Asked about the state of negotiations with Iran on Tuesday morning, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he hoped “to have more news” later in the day and called Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz “a big problem for the world.”

“The whole world’s been impacted unfortunately because Iran is violating every law known by striking commercial vessels in the Straits of Hormuz,” he said. “I mean this is a regime that doesn’t believe in laws, rules or anything like that — it’s a State Sponsor of Terrorism, so it’s not surprising that they’re now conducting terrorist activity against commercial vessels.”

Iran sees the strait as equally important and has signaled publicly and in private negotiations that it is highly reluctant to agree to any terms that would see it losing leverage over the waterway.

Iran’s counterproposal issued Monday stipulated that the country would fully open the Strait of Hormuz but set the rules for passage through the waterway and extract a toll of $2 million per vessel, a situation the Trump administration has repeatedly said would be untenable.

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