Trump Says the Iran War Is Bad for Him. It Is Worse for Everyone Else

Photo: U.S. Navy photo by Seaman Apprentice Emilio Martinez / Public domain

Donald Trump has finally said out loud what the rest of the country has been living with for months. The war in Iran is hurting him politically. He admitted it after the midterm results, telling Fox News that voters were unhappy about the spike in gas prices and that the war likely cost Republicans at the ballot box. He is right about the politics. What he still will not say is that the politics are the smallest part of this story.

The war is worse for everyone else. According to Pentagon figures released in late October, the fighting has already cost the United States $47.1 billion. Eighteen American service members are dead. More than 860 have been wounded. Those are families who got the knock on the door, and service members who came home changed, or did not come home at all. A president worried about his standing can recover in a news cycle. The people who paid that price cannot.

This was supposed to be quick. When the war began, the projections were four or five weeks. It has now lasted more than eight months, with no clear end in sight. The price at the pump told the story before the results did. Gas climbed past $4 a gallon, and voters made the connection themselves. They filled their tanks, watched the total climb, and knew exactly which war was pushing it up.

That is why the midterm results landed the way they did. Voters did not just reject a party. They rejected a war that had taken their money, their loved ones and their patience, and a president who kept insisting the costs were worth it while the costs kept growing. Trump himself has now conceded the point, saying the war likely contributed to the defeat. They agree on what happened. They just disagree on what it means.

For Trump, it means a political problem to manage. For the families of the dead, it means an empty chair at the table. For the wounded, it means months of treatment and recovery. For working people, it means a gas bill that eats into the grocery budget while the government found $47.1 billion for a war. That gap is the whole story of this presidency, and it is why the war became a voting issue.

So what happens now? Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has been pressing the case that the war should end immediately, pointing to the same numbers Trump is now quietly admitting. Democrats are also pushing Congress to use its power of the purse, the power to cut off the money that keeps a war going. A war does not end because a president finds it inconvenient. It ends when the money, the votes and the public pressure line up against it.

Trump wants it both ways. He wants the war to go away as a political problem without admitting it was a mistake, and without changing the decisions that made it drag on. That is not how this works. You cannot spend $47.1 billion, lose eighteen service members, and then ask the country to pretend the bill was never due.

The voters have already said what they think. Congress needs to finish the job, and end a war that has cost everyone else far more than it has cost the man who started it.

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