Congratulations, You Just Bought an Ocean

Nobody told Oman

Congratulations, You Just Bought an Ocean

Nobody told Oman

The Jack Hopkins Now Newsletter #999: Saturday, August 15th, 2026

Great news.

You…are a landowner. Yep.

Well…to be fair…a waterowner.

Look, the paperwork’s still being drawn up…but on Friday afternoon…at a police academy in Garden City, Long Island….the President of the United States…informed a room full of law enforcement officers…that he’ll shortly be declaring the Strait of Hormuz a territory of the United States.

His words: after we finish defeating Iran, which is being very badly defeated, pretty soon I’ll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States.

Yes, he’s a stupid son of a bitch. We know that. But…let’s look closer.

He chuckled when he said it. Thunderous applause.

So…congratulations. You now own twenty-one miles of salt water eight thousand miles from Long Island…and…you didn’t even have to close on it. Are you smiling?

Let me be the first to say what a bargain that is.

Now, A Small Housekeeping Matter

There’s another country on the far side of that strait.

It’s called Oman.

Lovely place. Sultanate. Been there a while. Owns roughly half of the waterway in question…since the narrowest point of the strait runs between Iranian territory and Omani territory…which is how straits generally work…they have two sides…like an oversized university hallway.

I have searched high…and…yes…low…for any indication that anyone has mentioned this development to the Sultan.

Nothing so far.

I’m sure he’ll be delighted. I mean, who wouldn’t want to wake up on a Saturday…and discover the shipping lane outside the window…is now a U.S. territory? It’s like finding out your driveway…got annexed by the guy three streets over…because he owns a very large truck.

And Then There’s March

Now here’s my favorite part, and I want you to sit down for it.

Five months ago…in March…this same president was on Air Force One telling reporters that he’d demanded about seven countries send warships to help keep the Strait of Hormuz open.

His argument at the time?

That it’s their territory.

Have I said he’s a stupid son of a bitch? Just checking.

He said it plainly. He was demanding these countries come in and protect their own territory…because it is their own territory. He noted that the United States barely uses the strait. China takes about 90% of its oil through there. We’ve got our own energy. Not our problem, he said. Somebody else’s territory.

That was March.

This is August.

Same waterway. Same president. Same twenty-one miles of ocean.

In March…it was so thoroughly not ours that other nations were being scolded for failing to guard it.

By August…yeah…it’s American soil. Ooops. Sorry…American water.

I want to tell you: that is the greatest repositioning of an offer I have ever witnessed. Coca-Cola couldn’t do that. You’d need a whole new agency.

Let’s Talk About “Territory”

I’m no constitutional scholar. Neither…I suspect…is anyone who cheered on Friday. But… I did look up how territories work…and I damn sure have some administrative questions.

Territories have residents. This one has fish.

Territories get delegates in Congress. Who represents the Strait of Hormuz? Does the flounder caucus get a vote?

Territories require…at minimum…some manner of LEGAL acquisition. Purchase. Treaty. Conquest. The Louisiana Purchase involved Napoleon…and roughly fifteen million dollars. Alaska cost us $7.2 million…and everybody laughed at Seward for a decade.

Friday’s method appears to be: say it out loud at a police academy in Nassau County and see if anybody objects.

Iran objected…incidentally. Their deputy foreign minister…posted within hours…that the strait opens and closes on Iran’s authority alone…and that Tehran won’t be intimidated by a show of force.

So that’s one no vote. Oman abstaining…pending finding out.

The Part That Isn’t Funny

Here’s where I have to stop clowning (and, I’ll admit…when writing about Trump, that’s not easy) because there’s a real thing underneath the joke…and you deserve the straight version.

The blockade is not a punchline. It’s real, it was reinstated in July when a negotiated pause collapsed…and…it sits on top of a waterway that normally carries about a fifth of the world’s traded oil.

Trump described it Friday…as a wall of steel. No ships get through unless we want them to.

Have I mentioned he’s a stupid son of a bitch?

That wall of steel is made of sailors. Some of them are on the Abraham Lincoln…which has been out there past 260 days…with no end date…announced and families going to reporters because they can’t get answers any other way.

I spent 180 days at sea…in the same hot ass gulf. I never went more than a month without a port call. And…I knew the end date. It. Still. Sucked. I have some idea of what morale is like on the Lincoln.

Gas prices are up. The Vice President has acknowledged the political heat. The administration’s position…is that the cost is worth keeping a nuclear weapon out of Iranian hands…which is an actual argument…and reasonable people can debate it.

What is NOT an argument…is announcing the annexation of an international waterway…as a laugh line between remarks on local crime.

Because…here’s the thing about jokes from a podium with a blockade behind them:

Tehran doesn’t get to hear the chuckle. They get the transcript. And…a transcript that says a foreign power intends to claim your coastline reads…exactly the same whether the man saying it…was kidding…or not.

So Where Does That Leave Us

Owning an ocean, apparently.

Not paying for it. Not administering it. Not explaining it to the Omanis…the Iranians… or the several thousand Americans currently floating on it in hundred-and-forty-degree heat.

Just owning it. Out loud. On a Friday. To applause.

#HoldFast

-Jack

Jack Hopkins

P.S. Three days before this…at a summit in Miami…he floated renaming it the Strait of Trump.

I shit you not.

So we’ve gone from rename it…to annex it in seventy-two hours.

At this rate…I’d like to formally request that nobody mention the moon to him…at least until at least Thursday. please.

Sources

• Trump: I Plan to Declare the Strait of Hormuz a ‘Territory’ of the U.S. — NOTUS, Aug. 14, 2026

• Iran live updates — ABC News (the blockade remarks and the July collapse)

• Trump says he’ll soon declare Strait of Hormuz to be US territory — South China Morning Post (Iran’s response)

• Trump says he’s demanded countries help ‘protect their own territory,’ police Iran’s Strait of Hormuz — AP via PBS NewsHour, March 16, 2026 (the “their own territory” remarks)

• State of Hormuz? Trump jokes about annexing Middle East waterway — The Washington Times