President Donald Trump is once again stuck in a quagmire that is driving away voters in droves, prompting one Fox News host to plead with him to reverse course before he definitively tanks the midterms.
Despite hyping up the memorandum of understanding as a major step towards peace, Trump’s war with Iran now appears to be back in full swing, with reports emerging about new U.S. casualties and gas prices beginning to climb once more due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict, with its nebulous goals and disastrous impacts on the global economy, has always been unpopular with voters, and it continues to subsume Trump’s presidency ahead of the all-important November midterms.
As highlighted in a Tuesday report from The Daily Beast, Fox News host Laura Ingraham is now “warning her own network’s audience that the conflict is becoming a political liability for Republicans,” and pleading with Trump to find a way out of the war before the general elections. In a broadcast from this week, she “didn’t mince words” about what the fallout of the Iran war would be for the GOP.
“With the midterm elections a little more than 100 days away, the clock is ticking for President Trump to get out of this war before voters head to the polls,” Ingraham said. “It’s making a lot of Republicans nervous. It’s already, as we know, unpopular. According to the new Washington Post/Ipsos poll, 69 percent of Americans disapprove of the handling of this conflict. Republicans cannot let this become an endless distraction, especially if they want to win in November.”
The Daily Beast further noted that Ingraham is far from alone amongst her conservative Fox colleagues when it comes to Iran, with network veteran Brit Hume repeatedly stressing how much of a “tough spot” the conflict has put Trump in.
“And he promised to keep us out of endless wars or unsatisfactory wars, and now he’s in one, and it’s not at all clear how it’s gonna end,” Hume said, only hours before Ingraham’s segment. “So, he’s vulnerable on this point, and in political terms, he does need to get this over with. But what he may need his time, and he doesn’t have a lot of time.”
Late last month, Hume also said during an appearance that Trump appeared to be getting strung along by Iranian leaders, whom he said were “absolutely notorious for going back on deals, violating ceasefires, violating memoranda of understanding”
“And of course, there’s the question of whether they have any control over the Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is independent to a great extent of the broader government,” Hume said. “It’s hard to resist the conclusion that the President of the United States is being jerked around by an Iranian regime in much the same way that previous administrations have been jerked around.”