White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt shared a glowing report Monday about President Donald Trump’s decision to enact a U.S. Navy blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which called the decision “brilliant” – and immediately drew widespread ridicule from critics.
“President Trump brilliantly calls Iran’s bluff – with his own Strait of Hormuz blockade,” Leavitt wrote in a social media post on X, sharing the headline from a New York Post report.
The Strait of Hormuz, a critical shipping channel through which 20% of the world’s oil trade flows, has remained closed to U.S.-aligned vessels since late February, when the United States launched a large-scale attack on Iran. Trump has grown frustrated with Iran’s refusal to reopen the strait to U.S.-aligned vessels, demanding Tehran “open the f—– strait” last week.
After peace talks between Washington and Tehran failed to produce results on Saturday, Trump announced that the United States would be enacting its own blockade of the strait, a decision that was described as “brilliant” by Leavitt and the Post, but perplexed onlookers.
“Your definition of ‘brilliant’ certainly isn’t brilliant,” wrote liberal influencer Brian Krassenstein in a social media post on X to nearly 1 million followers.
“Open the strait or I will block the strait isn’t a genius move,” wrote X user “Lucifer,” a frequent political commentator and Trump critic who’s amassed nearly 73,000 followers.
Trump’s decision to respond to a partial blockade of the Strait of Hormuz with his own blockade has baffled experts as well, including Karen Young, a senior scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, who told CNN on Sunday that Trump’s blockade would only exacerbate the increasing scarcity of oil.
“If we have a blockade, we still have the problem of a shortage in the market of about 7 million barrels of crude, 4 million barrels of product not getting out,” Young told CNN. “And we just added to that by making the Iranian barrels off the market.”
Your Definition of ‘Brilliant’ certainly isn’t brilliant. — Brian Krassenstein (@krassenstein) April 13, 2026
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