‘You’d Make a Fortune’: Trump Tells Fox News He’s Always Wanted to Invade Kharg Island

President Donald Trump called into Fox News’s Fox & Friends on Thursday morning and told the hosts that he has always wanted to invade Iran’s Kharg Island, one of the country’s key energy infrastructure sites.

Trump ranted at the media coverage of the war in Iran and fumed, “The Wall Street Journal, they did an editorial today about we’re not hitting them hard enough.”

“I mean, it is just, ‘not hitting them hard enough.’ We dropped $250 million worth of bombs on them last night. The whole thing is crazy. And they’re really in submission. They just don’t know it yet, okay, to be honest with you. They just don’t know it yet,” Trump continued, adding:

We are talking to him and all, but you know, when — look, my preference has always been to take Kharg Island, and that’s been — Brian knows that, I spoke to him a long time ago, Lawrence knows it, I spoke to him a long time — we go way back. My preference would be that — I don’t know that America has a stomach for it, to be honest with you, to make a fortune, but I don’t know that America has the stomach.

I think you’d like to see us come home. But we did it with Venezuela. Venezuela’s worked out great for everybody. We’ve taken millions and millions of barrels of oil out of Venezuela. We brought them to Houston and various other places. Louisiana, we’re — you know, refineries that we have that are incredible.

They’re going 24 hours a day, making a fortune. You know, I like that in this case too, but I’m not sure that America has — a long time. You know, it’s a little longer process, something that’s a guarantee if I want to do it. But I’m not sure the country has the appetite for it. Does that make sense to you?

“I understand where you’re going–” co-host Brian Kilmeade tried to interject.

“As good as it is. By the way, as good as it is, that’s always been my number one thing, but as good as it is, I’m not sure the country has the appetite for it, and that’s okay, I understand that,” Trump continued.

In late March, speculation ramped up that the Pentagon was preparing to take Kharg Island as Trump ordered 3,000 additional U.S. ground troops to the region and Republicans close to Trump publicly called to invade the heavily fortified island. “So here’s what I tell President Trump: keep it up for a few more weeks, take Kharg Island where all of the resources they have to produce oil, control that island, let this regime die on a vine,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said at the time.

Kilmeade continued by offering praise of Trump, “I mean, what you do is — you came to power because you said America wants to win, and you won — even in 2020, more votes than anyone in the history of the Republican Party. So when you look at this, this seems to be like an anaconda, you say, in the way you lay the groundwork and suddenly just squeeze them more and more so they have no options.”

“One of the hits yesterday, as our audience probably knows, is on a water facility — they were already running out of water. So if you can continue to blockade, and now you’re taking down their eyes and ears, you’re letting them know you’re not playing games. And the rhetoric that’s been coming out of them for the last eight weeks really looks hollow today,” Kilmeade concluded.

“Well, Brian, if you can hear me — I think you can. I will say that, first of all, you mentioned 2020. You’re right, in 2020 I got more votes than anybody in the history of the Republican Party. And we got more votes, but the election was rigged. But in 2024, I really got more,” Trump replied, before pivoting to pushing his baseless claims of election rigging in California:

We made it too big to rig. But we did great in 2020 — it was a rigged election. And you saw it in California. Very interesting, if I could just divert. So the kid got, you know, the shaft — and he did — Spencer Pratt, he did really pretty damn well. And they threw him out, and it was happening to Steve Hilton, and I went on a tear. And they said it was going to be two weeks, and they’ll know about Hilton and whether or not he’s going to make it.

I went on such a tear that they approved it immediately, they approved Steve. It’s such a rigged deal, it’s so crazy. They approved him so fast because everybody was watching. And he was leading by a lot, and you saw his lead was dissipating rapidly. They were taking it away from him just like they took it away from the kid.

Watch the clip above via Fox News.

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