The Political Cost of Trump’s War

0:00Robert Siegel:Hey, it's Lauren Dragon from Wirecutter, the product recommendation service from The New York Times, and I test headphones. We basically make our own fake sweat and spray it over and over on these headphones to see what happens to them over time. We're going to put on some noise-canceling headphones and see how well they actually block out the sound. I have 3 ,136 entries in my database.

0:19Kristen Soltis Anderson:Kids, workout, what version of Bluetooth?

0:21Robert Siegel:At Wirecutter, we do the work so you don't have to. For independent product reviews and recommendations for the real world, come visit us at nytimes.com slash Wirecutter. This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it.

0:49Robert Siegel:Hi, I'm Robert Siegel, once again in conversation about politics with two people who know much more about the subject than I ever will. E.J. Dionne, who has covered and written news stories, columns, books about politics for decades. Welcome. Joy to be with you. And joining us for the first time, Kristen Soltis Anderson. She's a Republican pollster and writer. She wrote the book The Selfie Vote about millennials. She has contributed stories to The Times about some very interesting focus groups that she's conducted. Kristen, welcome. It's great to have you.

1:20E.J. Dionne Jr.:Thank you for having me. I want to say it's a joy to be with Kristen, whom I've known for a long time and learned from for a long time.

1:25Kristen Soltis Anderson:Yes, what a privilege this is to get to be here with EJ and to be with you.

1:32Robert Siegel:We begin inevitably with the war, the war which the president has made a peculiar practice of calling an excursion. We're talking on Wednesday. It's now been almost two weeks since the U.S. and Israel launched a series of strikes against Iranian nuclear and military targets. A series of oil refineries have been hit. It was a tragic strike on an Iranian elementary school. And Iran has attacked more than 17 U.S. sites all across the Middle East. We'll get to what this means for American voters in a moment. But first, E.J., what do you make of what's happening?

2:05E.J. Dionne Jr.:Well, I think from the very beginning of this war, we got a sense that there wasn't a great deal of serious thought put into it by the president of the United States about how it might end, what our objectives were, what needed to be done to protect Americans who are in the Middle East, of what might happen to oil in the Straits of Hormuz. All you have to do is look at a little map and see how dangerous it is, that little space there where all the oil from the world has to get out of. He sent this message by announcing the war, not in a speech to the American people from the White House, but in a video released in the early hours of the morning wearing a baseball hat.

2:45E.J. Dionne Jr.:And maybe I'm all-fashioned, but that did not look terribly presidential to me. It looked like he was rooting for a side in a video game. And I think what we've seen since is a problem in explaining why we were at war. And so I think that even among the minority of Americans who supported this war going in, and you're noticing some of this in the commentary, there are grave doubts about what is the president doing here. And no matter how many times Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth repeats the word lethality, that is just not a strategy for ending the war in a way that would be in the American interest.

3:23Robert Siegel:Yeah, this war was not really a surprise. The U.S. made no bones about moving two carrier groups to the region to be within range of Iranian targets. But apart from signaling a willingness to attack, as you've said, there never was that speech explaining why this was necessary or important to do. Kristen, given that lack of that particular kind of effort, how are Americans reacting to Trump's war?

3:50Kristen Soltis Anderson:Well, in the absence of a clear case for why we have entered into this conflict, people's attitudes about it really are just reflective of do you generally trust Donald Trump or not? Do you like Donald Trump or not? And so things like approval of the war tend to track pretty closely with things like Donald Trump's overall job approval figures. You know, this week we had Quinnipiac came out with some of their numbers showing that the president's job approval is both not great but also not significantly lower than it was, say, a month ago. And I think that's where the White House has sort of run into a challenge of its own making on this in that there are some justifications for military engagement in Iran that do get better numbers than just how do you feel about Donald Trump today.

4:38Kristen Soltis Anderson:The American public is very eager that Iran not be able to have nuclear capabilities and so on and so forth. But in the absence of evidence or a compelling case being made that this is the reason why we've done this, people have sort of defaulted to do I trust Donald Trump or not? And problematically for the White House right now, that means that you are starting with approval for this war that is lower than approval for almost any conflict that the United States has entered into in recent decades.

5:06E.J. Dionne Jr.:No, I think that's right. And I think it's very important that Trump went into this war unpopular so that the baseline for support of the war at best is low and that some of the cases that they might have made like this will get rid of their nuclear threat. It's almost certain that they can't completely get rid of the nuclear threat with war. And so many of the other rationales just don't wash with people. So the result is, looking at a group of numbers, you know, there's less support for this than even the intervention in Libya, which was never particularly popular, well below Afghanistan, below Iraq, below almost any other intervention that we have made.

5:48E.J. Dionne Jr.:And it's because the American people just have not heard a great case for why we should go to war and why we should be spending a billion dollars a day. I think that number has really caught on with people and people are asking themselves, well, what else could we do with a billion dollars a day, say, for health care or housing or the things that people were worried about the day before this war started?

6:11Robert Siegel:But I'm curious, Kristen, I understand that people who consider themselves supporters of President Trump will answer in the affirmative. But what about people who were, you know, in independence but voted for Donald Trump, not MAGA members but voted Republican? Do they feel the same way about it?

6:29Kristen Soltis Anderson:Well, independent voters, I often find in my data, are among the most isolationist group of voters that you have. On the one hand, Democrats nowadays a little bit more open to the idea of American projection of power around the world, at least when it is somebody that they trust at the helm, I should add. You saw Democrats consistently ahead of Republicans in terms of providing support to Ukraine in its fight back against Vladimir Putin. And then for Republicans, there's a lot of really old, old baked in DNA there from the Cold War of America is good. America is strong. American power around the world is a positive thing.

7:06Kristen Soltis Anderson:You saw a lot of this in very bold form during the George W. Bush administration and the global war on terror of the world is better off when America is projecting power. And even though you've had this isolationist strain really sort of take root and grow within the Republican Party in recent years, it is still like the majority view that I find in my data of Republicans feeling like, yes, let's use American power around the world. But there is a bit of a generational divide. And some of these younger independents that Donald Trump brought to vote for him, if not brought to the Republican Party itself, are among those voters who I think are looking the most skeptically at this and wondering to what extent this is something that is in their interest.

7:50Kristen Soltis Anderson:They did not grow up in a world where they've seen American projection of power around the world turning into something that they feel benefited them directly or greatly. And that's one, I think, one of the political risks of this.

8:02Robert Siegel:I mean, their world, it's been Afghanistan and Iraq is what it's been. I would just add that there doesn't appear to be much discussion of an invasion of Iran or the large use of ground troops, maybe special operations forces to locate enriched uranium and seize it from the Iranians. But Trump's insistence that he should be involved in picking the person who leads Iran suggests imperial designs without imperial conquest. Can you run Iran from offshore?

8:34E.J. Dionne Jr.:Well, he did it in Venezuela, he thinks. And so the Venezuelan model has left in his head the idea that he, you know, presto, he can sort of, in this case, just kidnap a leader or grab a leader, put him on trial here and get a person in power who will do business with him. And so I think just to build on one point that Kristen made, it really shows how unpopular this war is because it's hard to think of a regime that is less popular in the United States than the Iranian regime. For older people, they remember the hostage crisis under Jimmy Carter. For everybody, they remember the brutality of this regime in putting down a democratic opposition and protest.

9:16E.J. Dionne Jr.:So there's no sympathy for the Iranian leadership here. And yet Americans in exceptionally large numbers are still asking, why are we carrying out this war? And I sometimes think about the president as believing that he can make almost any case he wants and kind of change day by day until he's it's like he's running a focus group. And, well, that didn't work yesterday. So let's try this. You know, selling a war is not like selling Trump University or Trump stakes. Selling war is a very serious business, and he just has not gone about it in a very serious way.

9:54Robert Siegel:Well, one thing that has resulted from the war is an increase in oil prices. And even before the war began, the cost of energy was emerging as a very important cost of living issue. This from a president who ran virtually with the price of gasoline at the pump as the measure of his effectiveness as president. And Kristen, what do we know about how voters see the two parties when it comes to dealing with the cost of energy? And how might the war affect that further?

10:24Kristen Soltis Anderson:Well, when you ask voters which party they trust more on the overall question of cost of living, much to Republicans' chagrin, it's become a more even fight than it was certainly than a year or definitely than two years ago. But when you break it out by different categories, which party do you trust more on an issue like health care? Democrats tend to be much more trusted to bring down the cost of health care. When you ask, who do you trust more to bring down the cost of education? Democrats are much more trusted. But on energy and gas prices, that is one area where voters have tended to trust Republicans more.

10:56Kristen Soltis Anderson:They look at Republican policies to expand domestic production of energy. And they say, look, I think that if somebody's going to make my price at the pump cheaper, it's going to be Republicans. I think if somebody's going to make my power bill cheaper, it's going to be Republicans. And so for Republicans to preside over a moment where suddenly that's no longer the case, that really complicates what was one of their sort of best issues within this broader bucket of cost of living. And there's a real short-term versus long-term challenge that I think the Trump administration is going to face in trying to sell the benefits of why we've done what we've done.

11:29Kristen Soltis Anderson:They may say that over the long term, our world is safer if we no longer have this regime in Iran. Look, all of our friends and allies in the Gulf have come to our side, come to join us in pushing back against what Iran is doing. The world will be safer. World energy markets will be more stable if we can achieve what we want to achieve. But in the short term, you're going to have attacks on American military assets in the Middle East. You could have attacks here within the United States if sleeper cells get activated. And then on the energy issue, you are likely to see effects at the pump. And so the short-term pain for a promise of some vague long-term gain is never a political dynamic that works out well for anybody.

12:08E.J. Dionne Jr.:E.J.? It is remarkable, the president's capacity to throw away the potential he had going in. He had a real possibility of building a new coalition when you saw the shifts. It didn't happen in 24. That was a close election. But there were these gains among younger people, particularly not young women, but young men. There were gains among Latinos, and it was all—a lot of it was overprices the economy and who'll stand up for my economic benefit. Whether you agreed with that or not, you could understand. It's easy to forget that right before the pandemic in January—I looked this up recently—in January of 2020, Trump had a 49 percent approval rating overall.

12:51E.J. Dionne Jr.:all, but he had a 63 percent approval rating on the economy so that many, many Americans had good memories of Trump. They said the pandemic was caused by a virus, not Trump. And boy, that was pretty good. Low unemployment, low prices, low interest rates, rising wages. All of that has been thrown away. Our colleague Jamel Bowie, I thought, had a great column about the alternative presidency of Donald Trump, where essentially he is Trump one, not Trump two, and doesn't do quite so many wild things. And I think he was elected to be Trump one. And all the people who voted for Trump one are unhappy about prices, unhappy about the effects of the war on prices, and just sort of take a look at the news and say, you know, why is he acting this way when he used to act that way.

13:42Kristen Soltis Anderson:I'm not sure that I let me push back a little bit on the idea that Americans voted for Donald Trump because they wanted Trump won. I do think that his message in running for reelection in 2024 did suggest a bolder, let's, you know, throw off the restraints kind of approach. I don't think that that he sort of hid the ball on that at all. And I do think that there was an extent to which voters said, you know, it feels like the control room has been empty for the last four years. I might like Donald Trump back in there. And frankly, Donald Trump unplugged might be exactly what America needs. But very quickly, we're sort of disabused of that notion when you had tariffs go into place that were immediately pretty unpopular, a lot of market turmoil around that.

14:25Kristen Soltis Anderson:And just a variety of issues like that where people went, oh, I wanted the border more secure. But gosh, you're deporting people from the parking lot of my local Home Depot. That's not what I wanted. I wanted fair trade deals. But gosh, it seems like the market's gotten a little bit chaotic. I'm a little worried about what this means. And that's where I think things ran into trouble. And energy is one of those issues where Donald Trump has consistently said, I want to be bold. I want to be aggressive. Drill, baby, drill. We're going to have energy independence. But when a war in the Middle East is dramatically affecting your price at the pump, one, it sort of betrays just how independent are we truly?

15:01Kristen Soltis Anderson:It may feed into a narrative of we need greater American energy independence, but at least in the short run, people's wallets have a big influence over how they think and how they vote.

15:10E.J. Dionne Jr.:Just a couple of things in response. First, this war shows why the idea of having more alternative energy is a good idea, because if you get rid of wind, which the president seems to want to do, he seems to hate wind for some reason, if you get rid of solar, we are more, not less dependent on oil. So that's, I think, a policy problem that I think you're going to hear a lot about from people saying, why did we walk away from alternative energy? But I do think Trump hid the ball a lot for a lot of voters. Yes, to his base, he said some things, you know, he's going to fight 2020 election forever.

15:44E.J. Dionne Jr.:But when he was asked about Project 2025 and all the ideas in Project 2025, he said, who me? What is Project 2025? I know nothing about that. And then lo and behold, he gets elected and Russell Vaught is one of his top people in the White House over at OMB. And Project 2025 is the model. Again, some of us did expect what you said, which is why we were worried about this man being elected again. But I think an awful lot of voters, that was to reassure them that it won't be so bad, I won't be so radical. And they voted for him and they got the radical.

16:20Robert Siegel:But when you include in that description of Trump, too, the candidate, when you say he disputed the 2020 election, it was pretty clear what he thought about the presidency.

16:32E.J. Dionne Jr.:Well, I think there are two questions here. Question one, do I think it was very high risk to elect Trump? Yes. Do I wish myself that people had looked back and said, wait a minute, look what he did at that moment? Yeah, of course I do. And that's what I think. I think that when the election came around, there was sufficient frustration in the country that sort of began, you know, Joe Biden, whose presidency I still think deserves more credit than it, I think it'll get more credit over time. But after the Afghanistan withdrawal, his numbers never recovered. After, as soon as he might have recovered that, the inflation went up by June, I guess, of the next year to about 9%.

17:16E.J. Dionne Jr.:And his numbers were flat all the way to the end of the administration. He had to withdraw. Kamala Harris had to jump in at the last minute. So a lot of Americans said, we just want to go back to this other thing because it kind of sort of worked better. And a lot of voters vote on that basis. And that's OK with me. I think that voters have a right to compare what they got, what they thought they had and make their choice. In the end, I think this is not what they voted for.

17:45Robert Siegel:There was a special election this week in the very conservative Georgia House district that was represented by Marjorie Taylor Greene. was retired. And the Democrat running in, that's a jungle primaries, both Democrats and Republicans and Libertarians all ran. And the one who came in first, didn't quite make 50 percent, was the Democrat in the race, still had a couple more points this time than the last time he challenged Marjorie Taylor Greene in the same district. So Democrats still have reason to feel some enthusiasm for them out there, even in very conservative places. So what do you say, to Democrats who sense something, they sense enthusiasm, excitement, a bunch of young new candidates and think, I think we can take Texas.

18:36Kristen Soltis Anderson:I've heard that before, but there's always a first time. I guess it's not a first time. There was a point in time, even in my lifetime, where Texas was occasionally voting for Democrats statewide. So I joke a bit. But look, this is going to be a good year for Democrats. I think it remains an open question how good. So let's take something like the Texas race where you had Senator Cornyn. Right. Senator Cornyn is the incumbent. We had the primary somewhat recently on the Democratic side. You have James Tallarico emerging as the Democratic candidate. It is still an open question who the Republican candidate will be and whether President Trump will endorse in this race.

19:16Kristen Soltis Anderson:But I think back to 2018, that was the last time that there was a real strong, I think, contention for who would be the senator from Texas where it got close. And in that race, you had Beto O 'Rourke coming within about three points, I believe, of Senator Ted Cruz at the time. But recall that 2018 was a blue wave year. It was a very good environment for Democrats. It was where you had the initial backlash to Trump, the hashtag resistance movement. You had a lot of Democratic voters very fired up to push back against what they saw was an administration in Washington that needed standing up to. And in that race, so I would then ask if you're looking at something like Texas, I believe you would need three things to fall into place for it to be that extreme, that Democrats could win Texas.

20:03Kristen Soltis Anderson:One, is the environment better than 2018? I'm not yet convinced that it is.

20:08Robert Siegel:The political environment.