# Post ts_114298249002673077

- Post ID: `ts_114298249002673077`
- Platform: Truth Social
- Posted: 2025-04-07T19:07:51.867Z (UTC)
- Deleted: no
- Repost: no
- Canonical URL: https://trump.fm/post/ts_114298249002673077
- Analysis page: https://trump.fm/post/ts_114298249002673077/analysis
- Audio narration: https://static.trump.fm/audio/ts_114298249002673077.mp3 (a synthesized voice reading the post text, not a recording)

## Post text

> “What we're not talking about is, oil was $76, now it's $65. Gasoline prices are going to plummet…”

## What the media says

**Video transcript** (0:27), transcribed automatically, so names and numbers may be wrong. Speakers aren't identified, so a voice in it may not be his:

> What we're not talking about is oil was $76, now $65. Gasoline prices are going to plummet. Any other time, that would be the number one story. In fact, if you go to the polls, what will get you elected as president? Much cheaper gasoline or Wall Street crying. I'm just being honest about it, right? So yeah, people have these stocks in their 401(k)s, and guess what? We've been through it. There's a correction on average every year. There's a bear market every couple years. I think most people are accustomed to that,

## Media

- video: https://static-assets-1.truthsocial.com/tmtg:prime-ts-assets/media_attachments/files/114/298/247/691/316/126/original/431a98e7d697ddcb.mp4

## Engagement

- Likes: 8,691
- Reposts: 2,243
- Replies: 592
- Views: unknown
- Metrics collected: 2026-02-01T01:19:51.313Z (UTC)

# Analysis

_Machine-generated by trump.fm on 2026-03-22T00:37:01.872Z (UTC): a model's reading of this post, not his words. Its psychological terms describe the language, not a clinical assessment of him._

## Analytical Commentary

### Post Overview

This post is a short embedded video clip (MP4) with a quoted third-party statement praising the decline in oil prices as a positive consequence of Trump's tariff/energy policy environment:

> "What we're not talking about is, oil was $76, now it's $65. Gasoline prices are going to plummet…"

The post contains no original Trump language. It is purely a curated quote-and-clip amplification. Analysis must therefore pivot away from direct linguistic/cognitive assessment of Trump and focus on: (1) curation intent, (2) strategic context, and (3) the psychological function this form of posting serves.

---

### Authorship Attribution

**Timestamp:** 2025-04-07T19:07:51.867Z = **3:07 PM EDT** (Washington D.C., where Netanyahu meeting occurred that day).

**Verdict: Aide-written/curated (high confidence).** This is squarely within business hours, uses no Trump-characteristic language (no ALL CAPS, no typos, no stream-of-consciousness), and follows the classic Scavino curation template: find a friendly voice, clip it, post with minimal framing. The entire April 7 posting sequence shows the same pattern — a rapid-fire series of third-party validators, almost certainly queued and staged rather than impulsively authored. Trump himself is not textually present in this post.

---

### Strategic Context: Information Counter-Operation During Market Crash

This post must be read in the context of what was happening on April 7, 2025. The "Liberation Day" tariff announcement had triggered a historic global market crash. Hong Kong's Hang Seng had just recorded its worst single day since 1997; global equity markets were in freefall; automakers had halted U.S. shipments. The stock market was broadcasting a vivid, unambiguous signal of economic distress.

The response — on display across five consecutive posts that day — is a systematic counter-narrative operation: amplify third-party voices praising the economic benefits of tariffs, suppress engagement with negative indicators. This post specifically selects **one positive economic data point** (oil price decline from ~$76 to ~$65) as synecdoche for overall economic health, while the broader market context is catastrophic.

This is not cognitive confusion. It is deliberate **selective reality framing**, a well-documented rhetorical technique.

---

### Psychological Function: Defensive Supply-Seeking via Third-Party Proxies

The cluster of posts on this date reveals a recognizable narcissistic defensive configuration: when primary supply (stock market gains, approval indicators) is threatened, the subject mobilizes **proxy validators** — external voices who affirm the grandiose self-narrative. By quoting others rather than asserting directly, the post achieves several functions simultaneously:
1. **Plausible deniability**: "I didn't say gas prices are fine — they did."
2. **Amplification without authorship risk**: Claims travel through sympathetic proxies.
3. **Flooding the zone** (RAND Firehose model): The volume of validating posts crowds out negative framing.

The narcissistic state here is **defensive-grandiose**: maintaining the self-as-successful-economic-steward narrative under acute threat. The trigger is clear — the tariff retaliation and market crash constitute a large-scale narcissistic injury (policy linked to personal identity is visibly failing by conventional economic measures).

---

### Defense Mechanisms

- **Denial (Level 1)**: The broader market catastrophe is simply not acknowledged.
- **Rationalization (Level 3)**: Oil price decline is presented as if it represents the intentional, predicted benefit of the policy — ignoring that oil fell primarily because recession fears reduced demand expectations.
- **Splitting**: Posts present an entirely good/beneficial tariff policy versus an entirely bad/unfair trading-partner behavior, with no complexity admitted.

---

### Rhetorical Analysis

- **Cherry-picking / selective evidence**: Oil at $65 is real but presented as representative while markets crash.
- **Third-party credibility transfer**: The unnamed speaker provides a "regular person" or "expert" framing to the claim.
- **RAND Firehose technique**: This is one of ~5 posts in rapid succession using the same format, collectively creating an impression of broad consensus support.
- **Implied causality**: Oil's decline is framed as attributable to Trump's policies (deregulation, energy production messaging), though the actual driver is recession fear from the same tariff policy.
- **Anticipatory framing**: "Gasoline prices are going to plummet" is a forward-looking prediction designed to shift temporal focus away from present chaos toward a promised future benefit.

No violent imagery, dehumanizing language, or stochastic terrorism indicators are present. Danger level: none.

---

### Fact Verification

| Claim | Verdict | Evidence |
|-------|---------|----------|
| "Oil was $76, now it's $65" | **Mostly True** | WTI crude was trading in the $70-76 range in early 2025 and fell to approximately $61-65 in early April 2025 during the tariff-induced market selloff. The numerical claim is broadly accurate. However, the implied cause — that this reflects a policy benefit — is misleading: the price decline was driven by recession-fear demand destruction from the same tariff policy, not energy deregulation. |
| "Gasoline prices are going to plummet" | **Unverifiable** | Forward-looking prediction at time of posting. While lower crude prices do correlate with lower retail gasoline prices with a lag, the magnitude and durability of any decline depends on refinery margins, demand, and policy developments beyond the post's timeframe. |

Overall Veracity: 65%

## Authorship Analysis

**Aide-Written** (score: 8%)

### Indicators

- 3:07 PM EDT — business hours, not late night/early morning
- No original Trump language present — pure quotation relay
- No typos, ALL CAPS, or stream-of-consciousness markers
- Part of a staged rapid-fire series of curated third-party validators
- Classic Scavino template: clip + quote + no framing text

## Psychological Profile

### State

**Grandiose State**

**Trigger:** Narcissistic Injury — Criticism (Global market crash and international retaliation attributable to Liberation Day tariff policy)

Sentiment: +0.55

### Clinical

**Malignant Narcissism:**
- Narcissistic: 50%
- Antisocial: 20%
- Paranoid: 10%
- Sadism: 0%

**Defense Mechanisms:**
- denial (pathological)
- rationalization (neurotic)
- splitting (immature)

**Cognitive Complexity:**
- Complexity: 20%

**Parasocial Techniques:**
- Zone flooding via rapid-fire third-party validator posts
- Proxy credibility transfer — anonymous speaker implies broad consensus
- Anticipatory promise ('gasoline prices going to plummet') shifts focus to hypothetical future benefit

## Danger Assessment

**NONE**

### Gaslighting

- Selective reality framing: presents one positive economic indicator (oil price) while historic global market crash occurs simultaneously
- Implied causality reversal: oil price decline caused by recession fears from tariff policy is re-attributed to policy success
- Part of broader zone-flooding operation on April 7 that collectively suppresses acknowledgment of market catastrophe

## Fact Checks (2)

_The model's verdicts from 2026-03-22._

> Oil was $76, now it's $65

**MOSTLY TRUE**

WTI crude was trading in the $70-76 range in early 2025 and fell to approximately $61-65 in early April 2025 during the tariff-induced market selloff. The numerical claim is broadly accurate. However, the implied cause — that this reflects a policy benefit — is misleading: the price decline was driven by recession-fear demand destruction from the same tariff policy, not energy deregulation.

Sources: General knowledge of April 2025 commodity markets during Liberation Day tariff crisis

> Gasoline prices are going to plummet

**UNVERIFIABLE**

Forward-looking prediction at time of posting. While lower crude prices do correlate with lower retail gasoline prices with a lag, the magnitude and durability of any decline depends on refinery margins, demand, and policy developments beyond the post's timeframe.

Overall Veracity: 65%

## Tags

- aide-authored (92%)
- counter-narrative-operation (85%)
- tariff-crisis-response (90%)
- selective-reality-framing (75%)
- proxy-validation (80%)
- firehose-technique (70%)
- oil-prices (90%)
- liberation-day-tariffs (85%)

## That day

_From trump.fm's machine-generated digest of the day, not his words._

**Markets Burn, Trump Builds an Alternate Reality: A Day of Zone-Flooding and Narcissistic Rage Against China**

Trump spent most of the day aggressively defending his tariff policy while global markets crashed around him. The morning opened with defiant claims that inflation was nonexistent and trade wars were being won, escalating to a direct threat of 50% additional tariffs on China after Beijing refused to back down. His team flooded social media with a rapid-fire barrage of supportive video clips and cherry-picked economic stats, effectively constructing a parallel reality where everything was going according to plan. By evening, the tone shifted entirely — cheerful endorsements of a Senate budget bill, a casual note about an upcoming physical, and celebration of a Supreme Court ruling — as if the trade crisis had never happened.

Full digest for 2025-04-07: https://trump.fm/date/2025-04-07/analysis

## Citation

- APA: Trump, D. J. (2025, April 7). “What we're not talking about is, oil was $76,... [Social media post]. Truth Social. trump.fm. https://trump.fm/post/ts_114298249002673077
- MLA: Trump, Donald J. "“What we're not talking about is, oil was $76, now it's..." Truth Social, 7 Apr. 2025. trump.fm, https://trump.fm/post/ts_114298249002673077. Accessed 9 Oct. 2026.
- Chicago: Donald J. Trump, "“What we're not talking about is, oil was $76, now it's...," Truth Social, April 7, 2025, archived at trump.fm, https://trump.fm/post/ts_114298249002673077.

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