When you fill up your tank with regular, unleaded gas pushing $5 bucks a gallon or pump diesel into your truck closing in on $6 per gallon, think ballrooms.

It’s all the president thinks about even as the war he started (for no good reason) takes a sharp bite out of your wallet every time you refuel.

Two months ago, the erratic felon in the Oval Office dragged the U.S. into a quagmire in the Middle East with no clearly defined objective or exit strategy.

Trump just bombed Iran, a nation that posed no imminent threat to America — if we take him at his word. Last summer, Trump repeatedly said Iran was decimated following U.S./Israeli airstrikes that “obliterated” the country’s nuclear facilities. 

But he launched an epic attack on Iran anyway, amassing over 50,000 troops and multiple carrier strike groups in the region, rapidly depleting key munition stockpiles and running up a tab of at least $25 billion-and-counting.

Iran retaliated (predictably) by closing the Strait of Hormuz, a critical global energy chokepoint.

Which gets us back to soaring gas prices and ballrooms.

Closure of that vital waterway in the Persian Gulf is directly related to what you’re paying for a full tank of gas today over what it cost in late February. 

Why? Gasoline prices are primarily determined by supply and demand in a global market, not a domestic one.

When supply of crude oil, used to make gasoline, is disrupted — courtesy of Trump’s Iran war — and demand for gas stays the same, (because you still need to get to work) prices rise. Worldwide. Plus, higher transportation costs mean you also pay more for other products from groceries to clothes.

But as gas prices surge to record highs in Ohio, compounding cost-of-living spikes everywhere else, and the global economy is knocked sideways by Trump’s reckless “excursion” into Tehran, the president is laser focused — not on an urgent way out of the mess he created — but on a gold-plated legacy to dwarf the White House.

“We need a ballroom,” Trump said ludicrously as warning signs of recession flashed around the world. A petulant plutocrat obsessed with opulence not governing.

The serial liar, who promised no taxpayer money would be spent on his ballroom, sent a bill to Congress for $400 million to build it.

A Trumpian Palace of Versailles done on the public dime — while you can’t afford gas for your car.

But the Marie Antoinette “let them eat cake” mentality King Donald and his billionaire cronies assume in their gilded bubble, isn’t constrained to only the Trump circle.

Last week, Ohio’s power brokers in state government gloried in the groundbreaking of the palatial pet project of a multi-billionaire NFL owner.

Jimmy Haslam had called in his GOP chits to get hundreds of millions in public funding for his private sports facility investment.

Jimmy and Dee Haslam, owners of the Cleveland Browns (who should henceforth be called Brook Park Browns) padded the campaign coffers of leading Ohio Republicans and dropped $100,000 on their efforts to defeat an anti-gerrymandering ballot issue two years ago to grease the skids for lavish government subsidies for a new domed stadium/entertainment complex in Brook Park.

Call it another billionaire bailout on the backs of Ohioans struggling to stay afloat with climbing electric bills, rent hikes, rising out-of-pocket medical costs, worsening food price inflation, and gas prices that recently spiked nearly 40 cents in a single day.

But Ohio “needed this” gushed Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine as he rubbed elbows with the Big Money gathered to break ground on the Haslam’s $2.6 billion suburban boondoggle.

He was there to chat about what the state’s role might be in lessening the financial burdens of a football team owner whose personal net worth is $10.3 billion and whose family’s overall worth is $14.4 billion.

The state has already agreed to kick in a whopping $600 million via unclaimed funds, (currently tied up in court) and Brook Park expects to throw in another $245 million, to be generated via tax revenues.

The Ohio Department of Transportation approved $35 million in state funding to help upgrade infrastructure near the new stadium site.

The Haslams are angling for a bump in the Cuyahoga County sin tax, maybe doubling or tripling the rate, to pull in more public money for maintenance.

DeWine lauded the largesse of the state plan to subsidize a privately owned, for-profit business owned by an enormously rich sports industry titan and suggested, with a straight face, that the massive handout in public funds to the Haslams “did not interfere with the money we need for education and all the other things we want.”

Yet before Republican lawmakers gifted their generous GOP donor with a generous state grant (to leave Cleveland in the dust) Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman — who pocketed $60,999 from Jimmy and Dee between Jan 1, 2024, and March 24, 2025 — maintained the state couldn’t afford to fully fund public education and passed a budget (the governor signed) that cut the Fair School Funding Plan by two-thirds.

That budget also slashed state aid to libraries and cut millions from Ohio food bank funding, childcare, clean water programs, etc.

If only the state had $600 million to spare for desperately needed quality of life initiatives.

If only the plutocrats drawn to domed playgrounds and gaudy ballrooms pumped their own gas. 

This story is republished from the Ohio Capital Journal under a Creative Commons license. View the original article.