Donald Trump may have started his war with Iran with the aim of regime change. But it has quickly became a battle over control of the global oil futures market. Iran may have few, if any, conventional weapons it can use to block, retaliate against or bloody the United States. But it has the ability to menace, if not close, the Strait of Hormuz. And that means the ability to trigger a global energy and economic crisis that may force the United States or at least its president — synonymous for the moment — to relent. What’s both fascinated and confused me is the response of global oil markets to the crisis, which seems based on at least a short-term willingness to credit Trump’s public comments as having some strong relationship to reality, which of course is absurd.

Let me give you at least a few examples of this.

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Kate and Josh talk the Iran war and Kristi Noem’s ouster.