President Donald Trump woke up early to gush about the “empty oil tankers” headed to the U.S. for our “sweetest oil (and gas!)” as the Strait of Hormuz remains a chokepoint for global oil supplies.

Just hours before the president’s deadline to destroy the “whole civilization” of Iran at 8PM on Tuesday, conflicting announcements of a two-week ceasefire emerged. While Trump and his allies declared the deal a victory, the Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed and details of the plan are hotly contested.

As the week drew to a close, Trump jetted off on Friday to a $1 million-per-person fundraiser at the Trump Winery in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The president returned to the White House late Friday night, and reposted a graphic showing the empty tankers just after midnight, exclaiming “Great!”

First thing in the morning, Trump dropped another post about the tankers, writing “Massive numbers of completely empty oil tankers, some of the largest anywhere in the World, are heading, right now, to the United States to load up with the best and “sweetest” oil (and gas!) anywhere in the World. We have more oil than the next two largest oil economies combined – and higher quality. We are waiting for you. Quick turnaround! President DJT”

Trump took questions before he boarded Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews on Friday, and was peppered with questions about the Iran War as he departed Washington, DC on his way to a fundraiser at his winery.

The president said the Strait would “open automatically” and that he did not “need” a backup plan:

Friday, April 10, 2026 6:05 PM
Travel Pool Report 2/Landed and transcript

Air Force One landed at Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport at 5:52. We will be loading into helicopters soon en route to Trump winery.

Here’s a rush transcript from JBA (with minor abbreviations):

Q: His message to VP Vance?

“Well, I wish him luck. He’s got a big thing. We’ll find out what’s going on.”

“They are militarily defeated and now we are going to open up the gulf with or without them. And that will be open.”

“I think it’s going to go pretty quickly and if it doesn’t we’ll be able to finish it off one way or the other. It’s going well.”

Q: Will you let Iran toll strait?

“No, we’re not going to let that. It’s international water. If they’re doing that. Nobody knows if they’re doing that. But if they’re doing it, we’re not going to let that happen.”

Q: What would a good deal look like?

“No nuclear weapons. I think it’s already been regime change. But we never had that as a criteria. No nuclear weapons, that’s 99% of it.”

Q: Strait of Hormuz too?

“Yeah, but that will open up automatically. The answer is yes, but the strait will open up if we just left, otherwise they wouldn’t make any money… what we have is no nuclear weapons, but we’ll open the strait anyways.”

“Don’t forget, we don’t use the strait. Other countries use the strait. So we do have other countries coming up and they will help out. But we don’t use it.”

“I would say this: we will have that open fairly soon.”

Q: Backup plan if no deal to open strait?

“You don’t need a backup plan. The military is defeated, their military is gone. We have degraded just about everything. They have very few missiles. They have very little manufacturing capability. We have hit them hard. Our military is amazing, the job they’ve done.”

Q: Will there be followup talks?

“I dont know, I can’t tell you. I’ll have to see what happens tomorrow. They’ve been talking for 47 years with other presidents and we’re not doing much talking.”

Watch above via White House Press Pool.

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