Trump claims he tanked economy on purpose: 'I love the inflation'

President Donald Trump insisted he loves inflation caused by his war in Iran and claimed he tanked the stock market on purpose.

The 79-year-old president spoke to reporters Wednesday in the Oval Office, where he was asked about year-over-year inflation hitting a three-year high of 4.2 percent last month as his war pushed energy prices higher, and he claimed that was part of his broader strategy for launching the attack in the first place.

"No, I love it – the numbers were great," Trump said. "You know what I really love? I love the inflation. You know why? Because as soon as this war is over, you know, I can say it now, something you didn't know. You know, we've been taking out millions of barrels of oil, nobody knows it. You know who doesn't know about it? Iran, until right now we took out the other night 22 ships late at night with no lights because they don't have any radar because we blasted the crap out of it. We took out, that's why oil is $85 a barrel."

Trump said he met with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Attorney General Todd Blanche and other administration officials to discuss the risks of the Feb. 28 attack that launched the war, and he claimed they all agreed the cost was worth it.

"I mean, you take a look – remember when I did this?" Trump said. "I said, look, the one bad thing will be we hit the best economy we've ever hit, and I said to my people, I had Scott, I had Howard, I had Pete, I had all, I had Todd in the room. I said, the one thing we have to do now, we had just hit the highest stock market in history, highest 401ks in history. Everything was going well, and I said, I hate to do this to you guys, but Iran's going to have a nuclear weapon very soon. We have to go and attack."

"So we hit him with the B-2 bombers, which took a lot of courage," he added. "It was totally successful. We buried it, very hard to get, but now we had to make the second move, and I said, you know, the bad part is the stock market will go down by little bit – a lot, based on predictions of experts, like 25 percent, and it was worth it to me. It was worth it not to have a nuclear weapon."

- YouTube youtu.be