How global conflicts are shaping this year's midterms

**Kousha Navadar** (0:05)
This is Brian Lehrer's Daily Politics Podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Tuesday, July 28th.
I'm Kousha Navadar. I'm filling in for Brian today. There are two wars on the president's schedule today. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky are both at the White House this afternoon in separate meetings. For Netanyahu, it's his first sit down with President Trump since the two of them launched the war against Iran back in February. And both men are expected across town at the funeral of Senator Lindsey Graham. The war itself is in its fifth month. Gas is sitting at about $4 a gallon, and a new Reuters and Ipsos poll out yesterday finds just one in three Americans support the war. It's the lowest reading since the conflict's early days.
69% are saying the president has never clearly explained what we are fighting for. So we'll start there. Then we'll get into what this war is costing Republicans who are on the ballot in November and the president's effort to change how Americans vote, which his Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on yesterday. And with 98 days to go, we'll look at the Senate map. With me now is Jonathan Lemire, co-host of Morning Joe on MS Now, writer for MS Now and contributing writer to the Atlantic. Jonathan, good morning. Welcome back to WNYC.
Good morning. Always glad to be here. So you reported that late last week, the president was weighing a major escalation in Iran, and then he backed off. What happened?

**Jonathan Lemire** (1:46)
Well, there are a number of things at play. President Trump, four months now, has been trying to put this war behind him. It has not gone nearly as he thought. He was promised that it would last a few days, a handful of weeks at most. As you just say, we're now entering the fifth, it's now been five months.
After the memorandum of understanding was signed in Versailles, their agitatives and fragile ceasefire did take hold for a few weeks, but it was punctuated by sporadic violence on both sides. Then after Iran continued to exert control over the Strait of Hormuz, President Trump about two weeks ago, two and a half weeks ago at this point, authorized a series of strikes. For nearly two weeks, the US and Iran exchanged fire, the US bombing the Iranian homeland, while Iran struck at our neighbors in the region, including hitting a military base in Jordan that led to the death of three American service members. Trump was convened this meeting at the White House on Friday to see if he wanted to escalate further. That was the topic of debate. They want to return to an all-out war that we saw back in February and March. They even want to consider inserting ground troops in the conflict for the first time. Something Trump has been loathe to do. But after discussions of several hours, he opted against the fears raised about just dwindling munitions supplies, particularly those interceptor defense missiles that are needed to protect our friends and assets in the Middle East, as well as just the economic costs, obviously a very expensive war, and potentially the political costs. So for now, Trump opted against an escalation that even brought to an end these new series of strikes, trying to give diplomacy another chance.

**Kousha Navadar** (3:32)
So what I hear you saying there is after months of basically a quagmire that was expected to be just a couple of days, there were three things really that made Trump decide to back off. One, you said was dwindling supplies. The second was the economic cost. And the third was just the political capital, like the political costs that would take to continue this. Did I hear all that correctly?

**Jonathan Lemire** (3:49)
Yeah, that's correct. Now, the White House and the Pentagon pushed back against the thought of the munitions being dwindled. But there's been excellent reporting from, I mean, across the board, that they are running low on these missiles. And if the war were to escalate again, one assumes Iran would strike back and strike back forcefully. And there is real concern about the ability to protect the military bases in the region. And also just our neighbors, the Gulf Allies, whether it be Saudi Arabia or the UAE, the list goes on, who had borne the brunt of the Iran retaliation to this point. So that was number one. But yes, and then of course, there's the financial cost. This war has cost trillions upon trillions of dollars. The Pentagon's last public figures were 30 odd trillion and people believe it's way more than that. And then lastly, we should of course mention the Buckeye Cost. And you hinted at part of it already. The price of gas.