"Mad King" Trump, "crazy war," and "insane market"

April 23rd, the U.S.-Iran war entered its eighth week. Just days ago, there was a turning point: a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon took effect, Iran announced the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, and negotiations in Islamabad seemed imminent. However, Trump then announced that the U.S. maritime blockade would not be lifted, and ordered inspections of ships heading to Iran—so Iran immediately closed the strait again, firmly rejecting a second round of talks. Such sudden reversals are nothing new. From the start of the conflict until now, one word has continuously described it: **madness**. **A “mad king” president pushed out of the situation room by his advisers, fighting an unwinnable war that changes by the hour, causing a market so out of control that even mainstream media can’t understand it.** And the latest revelations have let us truly see where this “madness and chaos” came from, and where it might lead. ## **“Mad King” Trump:** The President locked out of the room April 22nd, newly leaked reports from U.S. media revealed an incident during this year’s Easter weekend that deeply illustrates the way this war is managed. At the time, a U.S. F-15 was shot down in Iranian airspace, with two pilots missing. When news reached the White House, **Trump screamed at his advisers for hours.** “Europeans aren’t giving us any help,” he repeated. By then, the U.S. average gasoline price had reached $4.09 per gallon, and images from the 1979 Iran hostage crisis kept playing in his mind. “Look at Carter (the 39th president)… helicopters, hostages, that cost him the election,” Trump complained then. “What a mess.” **He demanded the military rescue the men immediately. But advisers judged that his impatience was no help at that moment. So, they kept the President outside the decision room, only reporting to him at critical points.** Vice President Vance video-called in from Camp David, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles dialed in from her Florida home. The team tracked the rescue almost minute by minute—planes stuck in desert sand, diversionary actions against Iranian troops—**while the President waited outside for phone calls.** One pilot was soon found; the second wasn’t rescued until late Saturday night. **Only after 2 a.m. did Trump go to sleep.**  Six hours later, he sent out a social media post that shocked the world on Easter morning: “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll live in hell.” At the end, he even added an Islamic prayer. **This post did not come from any national security plan. Senior White House officials confirmed it was an improvisation.** He said he wanted to appear “as unstable and insulting as possible,” since he believed this was “the language Iranians understand.” After posting, he asked advisers, “How’s the reaction?” From collapse in panic to playing the mad strategist—Trump switched roles in under 12 hours. The question is: which is the real him? Or are both true? International relations scholar John Mearsheimer used the term **“mad king”** in his latest interview. ## **“Mad War”: The Collapse of U.S.-Iran Trust** Under such extreme emotion, American diplomacy has fallen into a severe anti-logical regression, directly leading to today’s breakdown in talks. **Iran repeatedly emphasized that it was America’s repeated threats and unpredictability that led them to refuse a second round of negotiations.** Mearsheimer pointed out incisively that last Friday, there was an extremely rare ceasefire window: when Iran showed goodwill by reopening the strait, the U.S. should have leveraged this to push Islamabad talks forward. **But the Trump administration tore up the tacit understanding at that critical moment**: not only did he publicly refuse to lift the maritime blockade, but also ordered U.S. forces to intercept, fire on and board Iranian ships. “The result: the Iranians made a 180-degree turn and closed the strait again.” This lack of strategic resolve and “flip-flop” tactics at crucial moments exhausted Washington’s strategic credibility. In Iran's hardliners’ eyes, **the U.S. has become a contract-breaking ‘madman’, making negotiations meaningless.** The total collapse of trust directly pushed peace talks to their death.  ## “Mad Strategy”: How Israel “Sold” War and “Controls” Trump The root cause of the chaos is that Washington has extremely rarely “outsourced” its great power strategy to lobbying by external forces. John Mearsheimer said that except for a few like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, most U.S. military and intelligence leaders harbored strong doubts or opposition about this war. They accurately foresaw enormous risks, including Iran’s countermeasure of closing the strait. But Trump completely ignored his own experts’ warnings. Mearsheimer bluntly stated: **“The Israelis sold him a bill of goods.”** In the White House situation room, Mossad chief David Barnea and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu painted Trump a picture: **U.S. military might would deliver swift, decisive victory with no need to worry about Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz. Trump, enamored with the “no blood” regime change in Venezuela, bought it without hesitation.** After war began, **Trump watched footage of explosions in Iran and “victory videos” every morning.** Advisers said he was “shocked” at the scope of military power, continually praising U.S. forces.  But battlefield “impressiveness” didn’t translate into political win. When the war entered deep waters, strategic chaos emerged. On one hand, facing the strait blockade (cutting off 20% of global oil supply), Trump refused to send ground troops to take Khark Island (responsible for 90% of Iran's oil exports), fearing unacceptable U.S. casualties; On the other hand, Israel even bypassed the U.S., directly attacking Iran’s largest South Pars gas field, forcing Trump to urgently deny involvement on social media. Such strategic constraint and tactical timidity doomed the war’s utter chaos. ## “Mad Hormuz”: A Problem With No Plan When top-level decision-makers are unpredictable and pulled by external influences, execution below inevitably falls into disorder. The Strait of Hormuz is the prime example. Before the war broke out, Trump told his team Iran would likely yield on the strait issue, and even if not, the U.S. could handle it. But when tanker traffic ground to a halt after the bombing started, some White House advisers were caught off guard. Trump later expressed belated surprise: “A guy with a drone could shut it down.” **This is the most ironic scene in the whole story: the one who started the war never thought about what would happen afterward.** Facing these top-level planners’ lack of contingency for the oil chokepoint, market research CEO Jim Bianco said it bluntly at the April 23rd Hedgeye Investment Summit: **“My frustration is, they never had a plan for the Strait of Hormuz, or if they did, it’s useless. The market only cares about oil flow. Nuclear issues, markets can wait; but for oil, there’s zero patience.”** In this seesawing political game, Brent crude has already cracked $102, fully reversing last week’s slide, and keeps rising.  ## **“Insane Markets”: “Oil Pricing Mechanism Is Paralyzed”** When political decisions lose their anchor, financial markets lose theirs too. The first thing to break is commodities pricing. Jim Bianco pointed out a truly dangerous sign: **the global oil market’s pricing functionality is now dysfunctional.** In normal years, whether Canadian Western Select, Brent, WTI or spot Oman crude, their price gaps stay in a narrow $1-$2 range, showing global energy supply health. But today, amid double-sided blockade and “no timeline” long war, these spot price spreads have exploded to an astonishing $60! “If you’re bearish, you’ll find $70 offers; if you’re bullish, there are also $130 real goods offers in the market.” Bianco warns that this extreme dispersion shows the oil market’s physical network has been cut off by geopolitics. Brent over $102 is only surface; fatally, the anchor for baseline pricing is gone. **In other words: nobody knows what oil is really worth. This isn’t market volatility—it’s market dysfunction.** Yet, facing the abyss of the real economy, America’s financial markets show an apocalyptic “party frenzy”. U.S. stocks keep setting new highs. Funds chase “meme stocks”, trading on Trump’s mood swings posted online. Any hint of positivity from the White House triggers mindless buying. Trump himself, even as the war drags on, spends huge amounts of time bragging to donors about deserving the “Medal of Honor” and studying ballroom renovation blueprints for the White House. **But the fanciful K-line can’t hide the bloodshed below.** The University of Michigan Consumer Confidence Index delivered the harshest verdict—a 74-year-old indicator plummeted to 47 points this March, an all-time low. **Americans’ despair about their economy far exceeds 2008’s subprime crisis, 9/11, and the ‘70s inflation era.** This is an extremely torn, utterly uncontrollable K-shaped macro picture: stock market bulls raise glasses to White House-manipulated news flows, while $4.09 gas prices have broken ordinary people’s survival threshold.  ## **Is Trump “Manipulating” the Market?** This is the most sensitive—and hardest to discuss—question for market participants. Keith McCullough said at the summit what many think: “Trump seems increasingly used to moving the market in the direction he wants, whenever he wants, because people focus too much on single factors.” He further noted, correlation coefficients among the dollar, oil, gold, and Bitcoin are now near 95%. “It’s not complicated,” he said, “If you know oil and dollar direction in advance, you know the direction for almost all assets.” More striking, he cited a detail: **Iranian sources are now publishing Lego memes mocking Trump, every time he announces the strait is ‘opening soon’ someone shorts oil.**  “It’s an open secret now,” McCullough said, **“and nobody seems to care, since everyone wants the same thing—the market to rise, Trump’s pulling it, fine, keep going.”** ## **The Real Risk in This Game** Mearsheimer said something in the interview worth pondering: **“The Trump administration should want a deal. Two reasons: First, they have no way to win if the war escalates; Second, they risk pushing the global economy off a cliff. So they should want a deal.”** “But sometimes Trump acts like he wants a deal, sometimes like he doesn’t.” This is what makes the situation so dangerous—not intentional destruction by either side, but system-level chaos driven by tangled decision-making. Trump won’t send ground troops to take Khark Island, yet keeps sending out the toughest threats on social media. Even as aides try to control the situation, he's sending contradictory signals. **In this “game of chicken,” both sides wait for the other to blink. The issue is: when one side’s leader is himself unpredictable, no one can really calculate where the Nash equilibrium of this game lies.** And once the gears of “chaos” start turning, they are hard to stop in the short term. Risk Warning and Disclaimer The market carries risks and investment requires caution. This article does not constitute personal investment advice and has not considered the unique investment goals, financial circumstances, or needs of individual users. Users should assess whether any opinions, views, or conclusions in this article fit their own situation. Investment is at your own risk.