Trump says gas prices ‘not very high’ as most U.S. voters blame him for price spike

WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 16: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on April 16, 2026 in Washington, DC. President Donald Trump is traveling to Las Vegas, Nevada to promote the tax cuts he signed into law in the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” ahead of the midterm election. Tomorrow he will deliver remarks at a Turning Point USA event in Phoenix, Arizona. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

President Donald Trump speaks to the media before boarding Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on April 16, 2026.
Anna Moneymaker | Getty Images

President Donald Trump on Thursday brushed aside concerns about much higher gas prices because of the Iran war, even as a new poll showed that most U.S. voters blame him for the pump price spike.

“Well, they are not very high,” Trump told a reporter at the White House after she asked how much longer Americans would continue to see high gas prices.

Trump said those prices are not as high as what was expected they would be as a result of the war, which he said was aimed at denying Iran the ability to produce a nuclear weapon.

“Gas prices have come down very much 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 dropped by an average of 7 cents a gallon after a two-week ceasefire was announced last week.

A Quinnipiac University national poll of registered voters released Wednesday found that 65% of respondents blame Trump either “a lot” or “some” for the recent rise in gas prices.

The same poll found that just 38% of respondents approve of how Trump is handling the economy, which matches the all-time low for both of his terms in the White House reached in March and in October 2025.

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

The price of gas has soared since the U.S. and Israel launched the war against Iran on Feb. 28.

At the beginning of 2026, the average price of regular gasoline was just above $2.75 per gallon. On Thursday, the average price was $4.093 per gallon, according to AAA.

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

Trump on Thursday said, “The fact is, if you look at, the stock market’s up, everything’s doing really well, and the big thing we had to do is make sure that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon.”

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