Trump calls a Wall Street Journal question on Iran ‘so stupid’, then cites the Journal

Trump has two opinions of the Wall Street Journal, and on Saturday he got through both in under a minute.

At the gaggle after he voted early in Palm Beach, a Journal reporter asked how far along he was on a possible attack on Iran. “Would you really think I’d tell you that?” he said, then: “can anybody from the Wall Street Journal ask a question so stupid?” Then he answered it anyway: “well, we’re thinking about doing it and maybe tomorrow.” Whether that was a joke, a threat or a scheduling update, he didn’t say. He added that there’s also “a possibility” of “a nice big beautiful agreement.” Earlier in the same gaggle he’d told the paper it “has lost its way.”

About 40 seconds after “so stupid”, by our math, the Journal was his source: “your paper wrote yesterday, two days ago, that we’re getting more oil out of the Hormuz Strait” than before the war.

Close. The Journal reported this week, citing the ship tracker Kpler, that total Middle East oil flows had passed prewar levels, partly because pipelines now carry far more crude around the strait. Through Hormuz itself, flows were about 82% of prewar. So the paper that asks stupid questions is good enough to quote, as long as nobody reads past the headline.