Vance says Republicans lost control of Congress because of Iran war
In a rebuke of his administration’s top foreign policy focus over the past year, Vice President JD Vance conceded Wednesday that Republicans lost control of Congress because of the war with Iran. In a lengthy post on X, Vance said that people who voted Republican in the 2024 election showed up this year, but they voted for Democrats because of fallout from the war. “The reason we lost is the war,” Vance wrote. “The president himself said so last night.”
Vance, a Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq, said in 2023 that he supported then-candidate Donald Trump because he would not “recklessly send Americans to fight wars overseas.” That anti-interventionist stance put him in an awkward position when the president launched a pre-emptive war on Iran earlier this year. Even as he privately voiced opposition to the conflict from the start, according to multiple current and former U.S. officials who spoke with MS NOW earlier this year, Vance became the face of peace talks between Iran and the United States.
Left out here: Drops what it reported before
The article says only that "the president launched" the war. It never says that the US and Israel launched it together on 28 February, though MSNBC reported days earlier that it was a war "Washington launched with Israel". Without this, a reader takes the war as a US-only action and cannot see why voters named US relations with Israel among their reasons in S8.
How we know
- MSNBC wrote earlier“the war Washington launched with Israel”Trump plans to resume strikes on Iran day after midterm elections (opens in a new tab)
- Times of Israel reported“before the US and Israel launched it on February 28”Vance says GOP lost midterms due to Iran war, and that voters want ... (opens in a new tab)
In his Wednesday morning post, the vice president said he had spoken to a pollster who told him the top four reasons voters who previously voted Republican showed up for Democrats were the war, cost of living and inflation, Republicans not putting America first and U.S. relations with Israel. “Our voters showed up,” Vance said in reference to Trump 2024 voters. “And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats.” As Republicans pick up the pieces and try to move forward Vance got an immediate backing from the president's son, Donald Trump Jr. in a post on X: “Every word of this is 💯💯💯.”
After the scale of the GOP’s losses became clear on Tuesday night, the president told FOX News that he believed Americans supported the war saying, “I think part of it was Iran, but at the same time, people understood the importance of what I've done with Iran.” But he admitted that its impact on driving up gas prices was consequential. “People agree with what I’m doing on Iran, but they really probably weren’t willing to do the short-term consequence of playing- paying more for gasoline, and that you know, I understand.
That’s it’s like I don’t agree with it,” Trump said. Asked Wednesday about Vance blaming the Iran war for Republican losses the president said he thought it was “largely true,” because it drove up gas prices “a little bit, short term.” But he added, “if I had to do it again, I'd have to do it again because long term, it's the only answer. You can't let Iran have a nuclear weapon.” According to the MS NOW Voter poll, which surveyed approximately 100,000 voters across 50 states in the 2026 midterm elections, more than 6 in 10 said military action against Iran was wrong.
As attention shifts to 2028, Vance — a possible successor to Trump — now must grapple with keeping the Republican coalition together as the Trump administration seeks an end to the war. In his post, Vance said if supporters of the war would like to argue it was worth it to lose the Senate for the next six years, then they could do so. “But everyone knows why we lost,” Vance said. “And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.”
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