The worst and most stupid bit is this:
Speaking to crowds on Wednesday, vice president JD Vance said US allies are “suffering from this, frankly, more than we are.”
He claimed this was because they had “focused on a lot of green energy scams and they’re hurting a lot more than we are.”
Vance continued:"As much as we’ve got to focus on getting these gas prices down, the reality is overseas they’re feeling it far worse than we did because we’ve taken the steps to protect our energy economy.
They think they can bully all the other governments into submitting to their wishes, because they assume that’s how the USA has always been able to dominate the post-ww2 world.
They’re wrong. They do not understand soft power. They do not understand that US economic power is a mutual decision, and that we foreigners decided to allow the US its leadership because we benefited too.
They do not understand that military power has limits. They are unable to comprehend that they have severely weakened the USA as a world power, and given China victory after victory, and - maybe permanently - lost the trust of Europe, Japan, Canada, Australia, and South Korea.
Yes, the ultra-conservative forces behind people in the administration like Stephen Miller and Russ Vought - ie the Heritage Society and associated organisations - have won a historic series of ideological victories over their hated progressive enemies. The cost, though, is that they have badly damaged the USA’s power to direct the course of international events.
For evidence of that, see Trump’s pathetic whimpering that none of the former friends of the US have turned up to help re-open the Strait of Hormuz.
He cannot see that the way we were keeping it open was by not attacking Iran. That was the reality. There would be no point in sending ships. You could only stop Iran by killing millions of Iranians, and losing millions of your own troops, in a ground invasion, and the example of Hezbollah and Gaza shows even that might not work.
It’s insane that he might do it anyway.