Trump hasn’t forgotten the average American. And now he’s coming to our defense.
Because Donald Trump put Big Oil on notice with one huge announcement.
President Donald Trump tapped back into his populist roots Monday, calling out Chevron and Exxon Mobil after the oil giants posted eye-popping profits while American drivers absorb the pain of wartime gas prices.
It’s not every day a president who calls himself the biggest champion of free enterprise starts publicly scolding two of the country’s largest energy companies. But that’s exactly what happened Monday, when President Trump turned his fire on Chevron and Exxon Mobil over profits he says have gotten out of hand.
The War’s Silver Lining — For Big Oil, at Least
The numbers explain why Trump is annoyed. Since the Strait of Hormuz fell under Iranian control, commercial shipping has faced repeated disruptions and energy infrastructure across the Gulf States has taken damage, sending oil prices climbing well above where they stood at the end of 2025. For ordinary drivers, that’s meant real pain at the pump. For the oil majors, it’s meant a windfall: Chevron just posted its best quarterly profits in six years, and Exxon Mobil’s second-quarter net income hit $14.5 billion — its highest mark in four years.
Trump didn’t hold back when reporters asked him about it Monday. “Based on a shortage, they’re making too much money,” he said. “I don’t like it, and I should be the last one to say because I’m a big free enterprise guy — nobody bigger.”
He named names, too, saying Chevron and Exxon Mobil had made “too much, too much money,” and told the companies bluntly, “They ought to give some of that back to the public, and they better cut the retail price, the consumer price.”
One CEO in Particular Draws the President’s Ire
Chevron chief executive Mike Wirth became a specific target after appearing on Fox Business Monday morning. Trump took to Truth Social afterward, accusing Wirth of leaving out an inconvenient truth.
“The only thing he conveniently forgot to mention is that, without the genius, foresight, strength, and stability, of the TRUMP Administration, the Oil Industry, and our Country itself, would be DEAD!” Trump wrote, demanding that oil companies “get your consumer (retail!) Oil Prices DOWN, NOW!”
Nationally, gas prices have climbed nearly a dollar above last year’s average since the war began — the kind of pocketbook pain that tends to grab a president’s attention regardless of party.
An Odd Echo of the Last Guy’s Playbook
There’s a bit of déjà vu here. Back in 2022, it was Joe Biden hammering the very same companies — Chevron and Exxon Mobil — for what he called “war profiteering” after oil prices spiked following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Just a week before that year’s midterms, Biden threatened the industry with tax hikes if it didn’t ramp up production to bring costs down. “It’s time for these companies to stop war profiteering, meet their responsibilities to this country, give the American people a break and still do very well,” Biden said then. “Give me a break, enough is enough.”
Whether Trump’s version of that pressure campaign actually moves prices at the pump is an open question. But by picking a public fight with an industry he’s otherwise defended at every turn, Trump is signaling that keeping costs down for everyday Americans still matters to him politically, even mid-war and even at the expense of some uncomfortable overlap with his predecessor’s talking points.
