Trump Is Doubling Down on Iran. How Should Democrats Respond?

In the following excerpt, Derek and Ruben Gallego dive into the Trump administration’s messaging around the Iran war and what Democrats should focus on in response.

Derek Thompson: The war against Iran. I don’t know why we’re doing this. Sometimes the White House calls it a war. Sometimes they insist it’s not a war. Marco Rubio, I think, said we had to do this because Israel was going to attack anyway. And then he said we got to do this because Iran posed a direct threat to the United States. Sometimes I feel like Trump calls a reporter and says Iran’s about to get on the phone and beg for peace. And sometimes he says, Get prepared to fight for weeks or months. I’m confused. You’re a senator. Based on what you’ve been told, why are we doing this?

Ruben Gallego: That is a good question that they don’t have an answer to. And scarier for our troops. I unfortunately had to experience this déjà vu 21 years ago as a Marine in Al Anbar, where two years into the Iraq War, I was going town to town searching for insurgents, but there was no clear direction what victory looked like, what the end goal was, what was going to be the after-action report on Iraq. And right now, we don’t know what actually brought us into this war. There’s been a lot of testing of messages, which scares me—the fact they didn’t actually have a real reason except for the real situation is probably “because we could” and that they don’t know what victory looks like. They don’t know what happens after they destroy every launcher that Iranians have, what happens if we are able to destroy every boat possible, every vehicle that moves as owned by the Iranian military.

But yet what happens if the ayatollah’s successor is still in power? Is that a victory? I don’t know. It may not be a victory. What was the end goal besides trying to destroy their military capability? And then that only means that we’re just putting off, having to come back and do it. This is a very scary situation. I think that’s why the American public’s against it. None of this seems right. None of this seems good. And it’s also totally off focus of where the American public wants us to be, which is on domestic issues because people are really hurting right now.

Thompson: I want to get to where I think you were headed, which is making the war a domestic issue. But I want to be clear about what I think you’re telling me. You’re saying you haven’t seen evidence that an attack was imminent.

Gallego: Absolutely not.

Thompson: You haven’t heard a case for war, and you haven’t heard an end goal articulated. All three: no evidence, no accessibility, and no end goal.

Gallego: The only reason I heard, which is also not a rational reason and/or a reason to go around Congress, was that there was an imminent attack that was going to happen because Israel was going to attack Iran with or without us. And by that happening, that would mean that we were going to get attacked in retaliation. So therefore, we had to join in a pre-imminent attack on Israel, which is absolute BS. Why are we subordinating our war-making decisions to any country? Mind you, we are the superpower of the world. In what world would we allow the U.K. to decide to go to war with us or any NATO partner or anybody else? And so that first excuse or the first reasoning, which I actually think is probably pretty close to the truth, fell like a lead weight in MAGA world. And that’s why you’re seeing a big retreat, because MAGA world does not like the messaging of: “We went to war because Israel forced our hand.”

Thompson: One of the things I want to talk to you about is Democratic messaging. And I think a key part of that is focus. With Trump, there’s always an oversupply of things that Democrats can criticize, but I think good messaging isn’t about saying everything about everything. It’s about being deliberate about what you ignore and what you say.

Gallego: Exactly.

Thompson: So take the case of Iran. I feel like you could criticize this on several grounds. You could criticize this war on constitutional grounds. The president started a war.

Gallego: Process, yeah.

Thompson: Right, that’s Article 1. That’s the role of Congress. You can prosecute it on moral grounds: the Iranian children, the American lives lost. You can also focus on economic grounds. Look at oil prices. Look at the pain Americans are going through, and this isn’t responsive to their pain. What’s the message that you think Democrats should focus on?

Gallego: I think it’s very simple. This is a war of choice, and this is a distraction from focusing on what people need right now: lower prices, be able to buy a home, be able to buy a car. Keep it very simple, as simple as possible. And I don’t know if, Derek, you and I talked about this, but I’ve always been an advocate [of], yes, we don’t have to fight everywhere all the time. We have to be very selective of the battles we take this president on because he does try to overwhelm us, and we are in the minority. So we need to be very smart about when we attack and when we don’t attack, when we let some things just slide away because, you know what, it’s a distraction or it’ll take us away from the base of voters that we need to do. Sometimes we have to engage because there is an ethical reason to engage, and I think war is one of them.

But in this instance, this is the first time in quite a while that war of this nature is also extremely unpopular at first go. For those that are old enough, I’m not sure you are, but the Iraq and Afghanistan War were actually very popular among voters when they first kicked off. Afghanistan, understandably so, but Iraq was still popular when we first kicked off. There was a lot of belief in the American public or the American government’s assertion that Iraq was a danger to us. Right now, there is not even a real assertion by this administration that Iran is a direct threat to us. They don’t have the ICBM capabilities nearly enough to even hit our homeland, not for years to come, certainly don’t have the capability to load on a nuclear weapon. The nuclear weapon program was severely on the back foot, and with true, real diplomatic efforts, if we wanted to, I do feel that we could have had a solution that would’ve kept us out of this war. But I think this was set in motion years and years ago when the current president took us out of the Iran nuclear deal.

This excerpt has been edited and condensed.

Host: Derek Thompson
Guest: Ruben Gallego
Producer: Devon Baroldi