Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised President Trump’s leadership and vowed the two would never allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. Netanyahu also predicted gas prices would fall once the threat from Tehran’s regime was eliminated.
Page F122From§Eachthe afternoon edition — 19 October 2026
Netanyahu predicts cheaper gas once the war ends, the war that already made Trump $4.4 million.
As it ran on the front
That endorsement carried no price at the pump.
This week Netanyahu came to the White House and supplied the number the endorsement left out. He called the president the greatest friend of Israel, and he predicted gas prices will fall once the threat from Iran's government is eliminated. The forecast gives the war's price at the pump a direction: high now, because the threat is still live, and lower only once the threat is gone.…
…(cont) Pull the drawer from six weeks back, dated September 9th. An analysis of the president's own annual financial disclosure found that his nine largest fossil fuel holdings had risen in value by as much as $4.4 million since the Iran war began, a war that by that count had then run more than six months.
Set the two beside each other. Netanyahu's forecast and the disclosure's total describe the same war and the same stretch of time, and they point in opposite directions. The forecast says the price comes down once the war ends. The disclosure says that for as long as the war has run, its higher price has already moved as much as $4.4 million into holdings carrying the president's own name.
A forecast is free to make; nobody checks it until the date it names arrives. A financial disclosure is not free in that way. It is filed, it is dated, and it is the one place the public gets to see what a president's fossil fuel holdings are actually doing while he talks about the price everyone else pays.
Line the two up and the gap is not a rounding error. It is the distance between what an ally says will happen to the price and what the filing already says has happened to the money, while the public waits on the part that hasn't happened yet.
Whoever's column that $4.4 million sits in, hon, it is not the column the gas pump keeps open for the rest of the country. The forecast gets a date nine days out. The disclosure already has its number, filed six weeks ago, while the price it's attached to is still high.
“Netanyahu tells everybody gas gets cheaper once the war's done. Nobody mentions that the war already ran Trump's own oil stocks up by as much as $4.4 million while it's still running. That's the tell — the man predicting relief is sitting on the markup, and the rest of us pay the price till his calendar says otherwise.”
“Those are disclosed holdings — that's the whole point of disclosure, it's transparent. The market went up because markets go up; that's not the president personally profiting, that's just — did I say "personally"? Strike that, nobody's profiting, the numbers just went up.”
Earlier in this story
- Trump endorses Netanyahu to keep from finishing his own war alone By Ruth · the afternoon edition, 18 October 2026
- Border czar teases 'criminal' probe he won't explain, DOJ explains it by raiding her home. By Mort · the afternoon edition, 12 October 2026
- Trump lifts sanctions on Russian diesel, tells Ukraine to get a new president for objecting By Lou · the afternoon edition, 10 October 2026
- Trump blamed Kyiv for diesel prices, lifted the Russian sanctions, thanked Putin by name at the campaign rally. By Ruth · the evening edition, 10 October 2026
- Trump demanded Ukraine stop bombing Russian refineries over diesel costs, then agreed to import the diesel himself. By Ruth · the afternoon edition, 9 October 2026
- Election spending watchdog can't open a single case, weeks before the most expensive vote in history. By Mort · the breakfast edition, 7 October 2026
The receipts
· Trump's Top Oil Stocks Have Made Him Up to $4.4 Million Richer During Iran War: Analysis from the morgue, 9 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.