Welcome to meet the press now.

I'm Kelly O'Donnell in Washington, where President Trump is making a direct appeal to the international community to help the U.S. secure the Strait of Hormuz to avoid

a global oil supply crisis, even as he claims the U.S. could secure the strait by itself and says

that we don't need the oil. It comes as the White House continues to try to reassure consumers

that the spike in energy prices due to the conflict will be temporary.

Yesterday, President Trump said he was demanding countries that rely on oil from the Middle East

join the U.S. in forming a coalition to secure the strait, which supplies roughly 20% of the global oil market.

Today, the president doubling down on his calls for a global coalition.

I strongly encourage the other nations to get involved with us and get involved quickly

and with great enthusiasm. I have that from a number of them, and I'd like to say their names, but frankly,

I don't know if they would want me to or not because maybe they don't want to be targeted.

But I say, it wouldn't matter if you're targeted or not, because this is a paper tiger that

we're dealing with now. It wasn't a paper tiger two weeks ago.

It's a paper tiger now.

That assessment comes, as the president is also claiming,

that Iran has been, quote, literally obliterated in the war

and that its leadership has effectively been dismantled,

prompting this question from reporters.

Now that you've announced that the U.S. has destroyed all of Iran's mind-laying ships,

why can't the U.S. just immediately reopen the Strait of Hormuz?

Well, we could, but it takes two to tango. We have to get people to take their billion dollar ship

and, you know, drive it up. You know, these ships are very expensive. They can cost up to

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