“The Mad King” Trump, “The Crazy War,” and “The Manic Market”
TechFlow Selected TechFlow Selected
“The Mad King” Trump, “The Crazy War,” and “The Manic Market”
The latest disclosed insider information allows us to truly understand where this “frenzy and loss of control” originates—and where it may lead the situation.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsBy Long Yue
Source: WallStreetCN
April 23 marks the eighth week of the U.S.-Iran war.
Just days earlier, the situation appeared to take a positive turn: a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon was implemented; Iran announced the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz; and negotiations in Islamabad seemed imminent. Yet shortly afterward, Trump declared that the U.S. naval blockade would remain in place and ordered inspections of vessels bound for Iran—prompting Iran to announce the strait’s immediate closure and firmly reject a second round of talks.
Such unpredictability is not new.
From the outbreak of hostilities to today, this conflict can be summed up in one word: madness. A “mad king” president—literally locked out of the Situation Room by his own aides—has waged an hour-by-hour whiplash war, generating a market so chaotic even mainstream media struggle to make sense of it.
Newly disclosed insider accounts now reveal precisely where this “madness and chaos” originates—and where it may lead.
“The Mad King” Trump: The President Locked Outside the Door
On April 22, newly leaked reports from U.S. domestic media revealed a telling incident that occurred over Easter weekend—offering deep insight into how this war is being managed.
At the time, a U.S. Air Force F-15 was shot down inside Iranian airspace; two pilots were missing. When news reached the White House, Trump reportedly shouted at his aides for hours.
“The Europeans offered no help,” he repeated. By then, the national average gasoline price had already surged to $4.09 per gallon—and images of the 1979 Iran hostage crisis lingered persistently in his mind.
“Look at Carter [the 39th U.S. president]… helicopters, hostages—that cost him the election,” Trump complained. “What a mess.”
He demanded the military launch an immediate rescue operation. But his aides judged his impatience unhelpful under the circumstances—and barred him from the decision-making room, briefing him only at critical junctures.
Vice President Vance joined via video from Camp David; White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles dialed in from her home in Florida. The team tracked the rescue minute-by-minute—aircraft stuck in sand, feints against Iranian forces—while the president waited outside for updates.
One pilot was located quickly; the second wasn’t rescued until late Saturday night. Trump didn’t go to bed until after 2 a.m.
Six hours later, on Easter morning, he posted a world-shocking social media message: “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards—or you’ll live in hell.” He appended an Islamic prayer at the end.
This post was not part of any formal national security plan. According to senior White House officials, it was entirely improvised. Trump said he wanted to appear “as unstable and as insulting as possible”—because he believed that was the only language Iran understood.
After posting, he asked his aides: “How’s the reaction?”
In just 12 hours, he transformed from a fear-stricken, collapsing figure into a calculated strategist playing madness. The question remains: Which version is real—or are both?
International relations scholar John Mearsheimer, in a recent interview, used a single term to describe him: “mad king.”
“A Mad War”: The Collapse of Foundational U.S.-Iran Trust
Under such extreme emotional dominance, U.S. diplomatic actions have regressed in ways that defy conventional logic—directly causing today’s breakdown in negotiations.
Iran has repeatedly stressed that repeated U.S. threats and erratic behavior led them to reject a second round of talks.
Mearsheimer, reviewing last week’s events, cut straight to the point: On Friday, a rare and precious ceasefire window actually opened—when Iran, as a goodwill gesture, began preliminarily reopening the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. should have seized the moment to advance negotiations in Islamabad.
Instead, the Trump administration deliberately shattered the tacit understanding: It not only publicly refused to lift its naval blockade on Iran but also ordered U.S. forces to intercept, open fire upon, and board Iranian vessels.
“The result? Iran executed a complete 180-degree reversal and re-closed the Strait.”
This tactical flip-flopping—devoid of strategic consistency and occurring precisely at decisive moments—has completely exhausted Washington’s strategic credibility. To Iran’s hardliners, the U.S. has become an utterly unreliable “madman”; negotiations have thus lost all meaning.
With trust fully shattered, diplomacy has been pushed to the brink of death.
“A Mad Strategy”: How Israel “Sold” War to—and “Controlled”—Trump
The root cause of this chaos lies in Washington’s highly unusual outsourcing of great-power strategy to external lobbying forces.
International relations scholar John Mearsheimer stated that—with the exception of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and a few others—most senior U.S. military and intelligence officials hold strong skepticism or outright opposition toward this war. They clearly anticipated high risks—including Iran’s retaliatory closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Yet Trump wholly ignored warnings from his own experts. Mearsheimer bluntly asserted: “It was the Israelis who sold him a bill of goods.”
Inside the White House Situation Room, Mossad Director David Barnea and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu painted Trump a fantasy:
U.S. military might would deliver a swift, decisive victory—no need to worry about Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz. Enthralled by Venezuela’s “bloodless regime change in hours,” Trump bought in without hesitation.
After the war began, Trump received daily morning briefings featuring footage of explosions across Iran and edited “victory videos.” Aides described him as “awestruck” by the scale of U.S. military power—and repeatedly praised the armed forces’ performance.
But battlefield “impressiveness” did not translate into political success. As the war entered deeper waters, strategic disarray became unmistakable.
On one hand, confronted with a strait blockade threatening 20% of global oil supply, Trump rejected the military’s recommendation to deploy ground troops to seize Kharg Island—the hub of 90% of Iran’s oil exports—due to his intense fear of unacceptable U.S. casualties.
On the other, Israel even bypassed the U.S. to directly strike Iran’s largest South Pars gas field—forcing Trump to urgently distance himself from the action on social media. This state—strategically beholden to another power while tactically paralyzed—ensured total loss of control over the war’s trajectory.
“Mad Hormuz”: A Problem With No Plan—by Anyone
When top decision-makers are both unpredictable and externally influenced, operational execution inevitably descends into chaos. The Strait of Hormuz is the clearest example.
Before the war erupted, Trump told his team that Iran would likely yield on the strait issue—or, if it didn’t, the U.S. military could handle it. Yet when tanker traffic rapidly stalled following the onset of bombing, some White House advisors were caught completely off guard.
Trump later expressed belated surprise: “A guy with a drone can shut it down.”
This is the most ironic image in the entire story: The man who launched the war never considered what would happen afterward.
Faced with this upper-level failure to prepare for such a critical chokepoint, Jim Bianco, founder of market research firm Bianco Research, spoke plainly at the Hedgeye Investment Summit on April 23:
“My frustration is that they have no plan for the Strait of Hormuz—or, if they do, it’s utterly ineffective. What markets truly care about right now is oil flow. They can wait patiently on nuclear issues—but not on oil flow.”
Amid this political back-and-forth, Brent crude has surged past $102—fully reversing last week’s decline—and continues climbing.
“Manic Markets”: “The Oil Pricing Mechanism Has Collapsed”
When political decision-making loses its anchor, financial markets lose theirs too.
The first to collapse was the underlying commodity pricing mechanism. Jim Bianco revealed an extremely dangerous signal: the global oil market’s pricing function has become dysfunctional.
In normal years, the price spreads among benchmarks—including Canadian Western Select, Brent, WTI, and spot Oman crude—typically stay within an extremely narrow band of $1–$2, signaling a healthy global energy supply chain. Today, however, amid bidirectional blockades and an “open-ended” protracted war, these spot crude spreads have exploded to a shocking $60!
“If you’re extremely bearish, you can find quotes at $70; if you’re extremely bullish, there are actual physical deals at $130.”
Bianco warned that such extreme dispersion proves the physical oil network has been severed by geopolitics. Brent crude breaking $102 is merely the surface symptom—the real crisis is that the foundational pricing anchor has vanished entirely.
In other words: Nobody knows what oil is truly worth. This isn’t market volatility—it’s market failure.
Yet, while the real economy plunges into crisis, U.S. financial markets exhibit a kind of “apocalyptic carnival” mania.
U.S. equities continue hitting record highs. Capital flows like a “meme stock” frenzy—trading at ultra-high frequency based solely on Trump’s emotionally charged tweets. At the slightest positive signal from the White House, markets buy indiscriminately.
Meanwhile, even as the war drags on, Trump spends significant time boasting to donors about deserving the “Medal of Honor” and reviewing blueprints for renovating the White House ballroom.
But illusory K-lines cannot conceal underlying bleeding. The University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index delivered the harshest verdict—the authoritative 74-year-old metric plunged to 47 in March, an unprecedented low.
American public despair over the current economy has now far exceeded levels seen during the 2008 subprime crisis, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the Great Inflation of the 1970s.
This is a profoundly fractured, fully失控 K-shaped macro picture: Equity bulls toast to White House-manipulated news feeds, while $4.09-per-gallon gasoline prices have already breached ordinary citizens’ survival thresholds.
Is Trump “Trading” the Market?
This is the most sensitive—and least openly discussed—question among market participants.
Keith McCullough bluntly voiced what many think at the summit: “Trump seems increasingly comfortable manipulating market direction—whenever and however he wants—because people remain overly focused on a single factor.”
He further noted that correlations among the dollar, oil, gold, and Bitcoin have now approached 95%. “It’s not complicated,” he said. “If you know where oil and the dollar are headed, you know where nearly every asset is going.”
More striking is a detail he highlighted: Iran has begun releasing Lego-themed memes mocking Trump—joking that each time he announces the Strait is “about to reopen,” someone is shorting oil.
“It’s an open secret,” McCullough said, “and apparently nobody cares—because everyone wants the same thing: markets up, Trump pulling the strings, fine, let’s keep going.”
The Real Risk of This Game
Mearsheimer said one sentence in his interview that bears repeating:
“The Trump administration should want to reach an agreement. There are two reasons: First, they cannot win by escalating further; second, they risk pushing the global economy off a cliff. So they should want a deal.”
“But sometimes Trump acts like he wants a deal—and sometimes like he doesn’t.”
This is precisely what makes the current situation most dangerous—not deliberate destruction by either side, but systemic, decision-driven chaos.
Trump dares not truly deploy ground troops to seize Kharg Island, yet constantly issues maximum threats on social media—even sending contradictory signals when aides attempt to manage the situation.
In this “game of chicken,” both sides wait for the other to blink first. The problem? When one side’s decision-maker is inherently unpredictable, no one can reliably calculate the Nash equilibrium of this game.
Once the gears of “loss of control” begin turning, stopping them in the short term becomes exceedingly difficult.
Join TechFlow official community to stay tuned
Telegram:https://t.me/TechFlowDaily
X (Twitter):https://x.com/TechFlowPost
X (Twitter) EN:https://x.com/BlockFlow_News
