This is an adapted excerpt from the July 22 episode of “The Briefing with Jen Psaki.”
Have you ever been in one of those situations where a friend starts to embarrass themselves — maybe they had a little too much to drink, maybe they said something they shouldn’t have, or maybe they just seem to be having a hard time keeping it together — and you have to gently cajole them into taking a break?
We’ve all been there at some point. And right now, that is exactly what it must feel like for MAGA Republicans trying to deal with President Donald Trump and the war with Iran he started.
A new Politico poll out Wednesday found that the number of self-identified MAGA supporters who think the president’s war is worth the economic costs has dropped 13% in just the last two months.
Just consider the advice longtime Trump supporter and MAGA darling Bill O’Reilly shared on his podcast this week. O’Reilly told the president to “take the next month off.”
“Get into an environment where you, like, golf and relax a little bit,” he said. “You got to deal with Iran — I understand that, everybody understands it — but you can do that on the phone, and you can do that with your people coming. But you need a breather.”
Now, was O’Reilly making that suggestion because he is genuinely concerned that Trump is not OK? Maybe. Or was he making it because he thinks this disastrous war will be easier to bring to an end if Trump isn’t sitting in the Oval Office every day? It’s possible. Or it could be a combination of the two; it’s hard to know.
Regardless of the reason, there is no question it’s a bad sign for Trump that one of his biggest supporters is telling him to just “take the next month off” from his duties as president of the United States. But that is where we are now amid the growing backlash to Trump’s war with Iran.
And the thing is, O’Reilly may have actually been speaking for a much larger swath of Trump supporters. A new Politico poll out Wednesday found that the number of self-identified MAGA supporters who think the president’s war is worth the economic costs has dropped 13% in just the last two months. And a majority, 57%, blame Trump’s war for the high cost of gas.
We’re seeing that same sentiment on the ground in key battleground states. MS NOW’s Alex Tabet recently spoke with several three-time Trump voters at a gas station in North Carolina about Trump’s war in Iran. One told Tabet the war has been “taxing on everyone.” Another said the president “shouldn’t have gotten us into this war.” And one Trump supporter said it’s made her “angry” and “disillusioned.”
It’s clear Trump is losing support for this war even among his core base. But if you ask the president, he says everybody loves the war. On Wednesday, he told reporters that “Americans aren’t against the war,” which he said “just came out loud and clear in a poll.”
But in addition to that Politico poll, the latest Washington Post-Ipsos survey on support for Trump’s war found more than two-thirds of the country, 68%, do not think this conflict is worth fighting. Only 28% of Americans think this war is worth it.
Trump is obviously in a bind. He started a war without a clear objective and with no clear plans for ending it. And so here we are, almost 150 days into that war, and the president is once again going back to his same bag of tricks of making big, sweeping threats.
On Wednesday morning, he issued a new threat to Iran on social media, writing, “From this point forward, any time the Islamic Republic of Iran shoots at a ship in the Strait of Hormuz, whether it be by Missile, Rocket, Drone, or any other device or weapon, the United States will bomb and destroy ONE BRIDGE OR POWER PLANT, including those located next to, or in, the Capital City of Tehran.”
To be clear, that’s the president threatening to commit potential war crimes by targeting civilian infrastructure, which would be big news if it was the first time we have heard Trump make such threats, but it’s not.
There are other signs Trump may be feeling cornered and desperate. His administration just announced an agreement to provide the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with its own civilian nuclear program. We know that Saudi Arabia was a key partner at the start of the president’s war, and we also know that its support for the war has waned in recent months, leading to clashes between Trump and the Saudi crown prince.
Trump knows this war is a liability for him. But he doesn’t know how to get out of it. He also doesn’t know how to maintain support for it.
All of a sudden he’s offering the Saudis the possibility of a major gift, and you have to wonder if that is Trump’s way of trying to salvage his fracturing coalition in this increasingly unpopular war, all while increasing the potential for nuclear volatility in the Middle East. Because if Saudi Arabia has a civilian nuclear program, other countries in the region are going to want one too.
Is that the kind of step that is going to de-escalate the war that is already underway with Iran? The answer to that is no.
Trump knows this war is a liability, but he doesn’t know how to get out of it. He also doesn’t know how to maintain support for it.
He’s doing nothing to help himself on that front. On Tuesday, he posted a chart to his social media account comparing the American death toll from his war to other major conflicts, seemingly in an effort to minimize the loss of those fallen service members. He did that knowing full well that he was going the next morning to attend the dignified transfer for four more service members who lost their lives because of this war.
Later that day, in front of his most enthusiastic supporters, in the critical swing state of Georgia, he was in delusional spin mode, insisting the war was a “skirmish” and telling the crowd that America doesn’t “need the Hormuz Strait, but we do it because we have to do it.”
He says we don’t need the Strait of Hormuz, even as gas prices continue to rise. He says Iran wants to make a deal, even though he said the exact opposite just two weeks ago when he walked away from the negotiating table.
Trump was on the stump in Georgia, a state Republicans desperately need to win this November, and all he can muster are the same tired lines that didn’t convince anyone before and aren’t going to convince anyone now.
Maybe he should listen to his own crumbling echo chamber and just take a breather.
Allison Detzel contributed.
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