Trump says gas prices aren’t too high; Americans disagree

President Donald Trump on Thursday dismissed concerns about too-high gas prices because of the Iran war, even as a new poll showed a majority of American voters blame him for pump price increases.

“Well, they’re not very high,” Trump told a reporter at the White House when asked how long it would take for Americans to see higher gas prices.

Trump said prices are not as high as he expected they would be as a result of the war, which he said is intended to deprive Iran of the ability to produce nuclear weapons.

“Gas prices have gone very low in the last three or four days,” Trump said. Gas prices have risen 49% since the beginning of 2026, according to prices tracked by AAA. They fell an average of 7 cents a gallon after a two-week ceasefire was announced last week.

A Quinnipiac University National Survey The list of registered voters released Wednesday found that 65% of respondents blamed Trump either “a lot” or “some” for the recent rise in gas prices.

The same survey found that only 38% of respondents approved of how Trump is handling the economy, matching an all-time low for both his terms in the White House in March and October 2025.

The survey of 1,028 self-identified registered voters has a margin of error of 3.8 percentage points.

Gas prices have increased since the US and Israel launched war against Iran on February 28.

As of early 2026, the average price of regular gasoline was just above $2.75 per gallon. The average price on Thursday was $4.093 per gallon, according to aaa.

The average price of diesel fuel, which was just above $3.50 per gallon in January, is now about $5.65 per gallon.

“The truth is, if you look, the stock market is up, everything is going really well, and the big thing we had to do was make sure Iran did not have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said Thursday.

“Because if they do, you want to talk about problems, you’re going to have problems,” he said.