Trump Called Two American Cities a “Small Price.” Hurricane Isaias Would Like a F@#king Word.

Twenty-six days before the midterms, the Gulf is about to send Republicans an invoice. Some might call it karma, but lives are at stake.

PASCAGOULA, Miss., (The Daily Whatever Press)—On Monday night in Grand Island, Nebraska, the president of the United States stood before a cheering crowd and offered up two American cities, like he was trading trinkets, or perhaps offering them up to Baal. Iran, if you’re listening… He was defending what his war with Iran has done to gas prices, by hypothetically trading away millions of American lives. “It’s a small price to pay for keeping the world safe, keeping our country safe,” Donald Trump said. “They can take out a city. Let them take out Los Angeles. Let them take out San Diego.”

The crowd cheered, because in this fucked-up timeline, of course Americans cheered for the sacrifice of other Americans, nevermind how many registered Republicans there are in Southern California.

Four days later, the first hurricane of the 2026 Atlantic season is crossing a bathtub-warm “Gulf of America” toward the oil coast, and that small price is about to get a whole lot fucking bigger.

Oooops! He did it again.

The cleanup crew arrived on cue on Tuesday. The White House rapid-response account posted, “No, he didn’t, you buffoons,” and explained that the president meant America is fighting to stop Iran from nuking California. One small problem: Trump never mentioned nuclear weapons in those remarks. He mentioned gas prices, a small price, and two cities he could apparently live without.

One of those cities is home to more than 115,000 active-duty service members and the largest Navy base on the West Coast. San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria answered for them: “San Diego is not collateral damage. We are not expendable.” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass reminded the president that his job is “to protect the country, not to actively threaten it.” Even Jim Desmond, a Republican running for Congress in a competitive district near San Diego, said he “vehemently” disagreed, which is what a someone says when they can hear their own polling numbers crash through the floor, never to be seen again.

None of this deterred Donald “Bomb, bomb Iran” Trump.

At another rally on once-safe Republican ground on Wednesday, he doubled down by saying, “You want to see trauma? You want to see problems?”

“And I said it the other day, let them hit a missile into San Diego or Los Angeles on the way. Let them hit... you want to see a horror show? You want to see problems? Let them hit San Diego. Let them hit Los Angeles, and you want to see some bad things happen, you want to see a country that would be in freefall.”

I’m old enough to remember August 1984, when Ronald Reagan joked into a hot mic that “we begin bombing in five minutes.” It was an international incident for weeks. And Reagan, whatever else you want to say about him, was at least joking about bombing somebody else’s cities.

California Governor Gavin Newsom did not mince words:

Enter Isaias, stage left

Isaias became a hurricane late Wednesday. The National Hurricane Center expects it to strengthen fast and come ashore late Friday or early Saturday somewhere between the Mississippi coast and the Florida Panhandle. Parts of Florida are under mandatory evacuation. A hurricane warning runs from Ocean Springs, Mississippi, to the Florida Panhandle.

Before anybody gets cute: the people boarding up in Gulfport, Mobile, and Pensacola did not cheer in Grand Island, and they are nobody’s punchline. Whatever this storm does to them is a tragedy, full stop.

What it does to the oil market is a different matter. Offshore producers have already cut output, and those cuts, says Jim Burkhard of S&P Global Energy, are steep enough to move markets. Chevron’s Pascagoula refinery, the biggest in Mississippi at roughly 350,000 barrels a day, sits just east of Ocean Springs, inside the warning zone. In fairness to the storm, the track has drifted east, and the giant refinery rows of Louisiana and Texas sit west of the cone. Burkhard calls the oil-market risk “moderate, but rising.”

But hurricanes are notoriously fickle things, and a turn westward in the track would put even more people and oil platforms and refineries at risk. Forgive me if I say that “moderate” would be comforting in a normal year. 2026, so far, is not a normal year.

The math does not care about your rally

Gas averaged under three dollars a gallon when Trump’s war started in February. By late September, AAA had it at nearly $4.50, with diesel past $6.50. He delivered his “small price” line in Nebraska, in October, at harvest. Harvest runs on diesel. So does everything you buy.

Gas prices normally drift down in the fall; GasBuddy’s Patrick De Haan calls it a seasonal tailwind. This year’s tailwind has a name and an eyewall. After Hurricane Ida in 2021, GasBuddy figured the damage added five to ten cents a gallon. That sounds survivable until you meet Stanford’s Jon Krosnick, whose research found that every ten-cent increase shaves about six-tenths of a point off a president’s approval. Now that he’s polling at sub-30%, Trump does not have six-tenths of a point lying around.

Neither does his party. A Fox News poll in September found 61 percent of voters calling gas prices a major problem, and voters preferred Democrats on prices, 55 to 40. Fox. News. Of the thirteen most competitive House districts where gas has risen faster than the national average, nine are held by Republicans, per Politico. Election Day is November 3, twenty-six days from now. A refinery knocked offline can take weeks to restart, and there are not many weeks left.

Ask the Democrats how this movie ends. In 2022, gas hit five dollars in June, and by November they had lost the House. “Democrats were hurt with high prices in 2022,” and paid the price at the polls, losing the House to the GOP.

And wouldn’t you know it, the president has already scheduled the relief. “Right after the election, oil prices are going to be tumbling downward,” he promised. Right after. He isn’t offering you cheaper gas. He’s offering you cheaper gas the minute you can no longer do anything about it—almost like he’s holding us hostage, wouldn’t you say?

It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature

Those of us raised on seventies television remember the Chiffon margarine lady, crowned in daisies, summoning thunder because somebody tried to fool Mother Nature. I’d love to tell you Isaias is her handiwork, karma with a barometric pressure reading. It’s warm water and physics, and if she were taking revenge, she’d have better aim than Gulf Shores.

The irony needs no help from the supernatural. A man stood in farm country and called gas prices, Los Angeles, and San Diego a small price to pay. Then the weather showed up to raise the price, right on schedule, twenty-six days before the people paying it get a say.

He’s told us what he thinks we’re worth. On November 3, we get to quote him a price of our own.

Thanks for stopping by!

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