Subject: Re: Trump confesses
*sigh* You tell me what could reap more money and praise, than making good on a billion dollar bribe, so he will receive more billion dollar bribes.

Sigh.

Two things. First, they didn't pay him a billion dollars. He said they should pay him a billion dollars because he was going to rewrite the environmental laws to help oil companies. The entirety of oil and gas contributions to all Republicans running for office in 2024 was about $250 million, and the amount that went to elect Trump was about $96 million.

Second, he already made good whatever campaign contributions and election assistance the oil companies gave him. Ten fold. He gutted virtually all of the environmental regulations that hindered their business. He repealed the endangerment finding that undergirded the entirety of our climate change regulation. He eliminated all of the federal subsidies for electric vehicles and tore out nearly all of the alternative energy/decarbonization funds appropriated during the Biden administration.

He never promised the oil majors he would shut down the Gulf or precipitate a global energy crisis. They never would expected him to. They neither had nor have any claim that they were owed that for him to have "made good" on their support. And no other person considering a bribe to Trump, a billion or otherwise, would ever look at all the stuff he did to benefit oil companies before the war and think that he hadn't "made good" on their support, either.

So, no. There's absolutely no possibility that Trump ever thought to himself that closing the strait was the least bit beneficial to him for that reason. Not in the least. It's completely implausible.

Anything else?