Trump’s Iran war messaging is not winning over Americans – or their representatives

Donald Trump has two things to say about his war with Iran. The first is that it’s already over. And second, a symbolic congressional vote to end it – carried by four members of his own party – is a stab in the back that could derail the peace talks he’s conducting for the war that’s already over.

By a 215-208 margin on Wednesday, the US House of Representatives voted to direct the president to withdraw US forces from hostilities with Iran, the first time either chamber has passed such a measure in the little over three months since Operation Epic Fury began on 28 February. By Thursday morning, Trump was on Truth Social calling the vote “unpatriotic” and blaming it on “Trump Derangement Syndrome”.

The four Republicans who crossed the aisle, each with different ideologies, don’t exactly fit the bill for such a diagnosis.

Thomas Massie of Kentucky is a libertarian-leaning constitutionalist who has opposed the war from day one, lost his primary to a Trump-backed challenger, and has, in Trump’s estimation, nothing left to lose. Warren Davidson of Ohio is a West Point graduate, former army ranger, and ex-Freedom Caucus member who voted against the war with Massie in March, but flipped back until recently.

Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, a former FBI agent representing Philadelphia’s suburbs, is well known as a moderate who framed his vote in the plainest possible terms “You either follow the law, or you change the law,” he said. “You can’t violate the law. That’s not an option.”

Tom Barrett of Michigan voted in March against a war powers resolution, saying Trump had “earned the opportunity to resolve this conflict quickly”. By May, however, he had changed his mind, citing the economic pain hitting his constituents. All four lawmakers coalesced for last night’s vote.

But none of this has stopped the administration from declaring, with some confidence, that the war is already over. Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, told Congress this week that Operation Epic Fury had “concluded”. The Trump administration insists the US is now only conducting “completely defensive” strikes.

And yet gas prices are averaging close to $4.24 per gallon nationwide, per AAA, and nearly $6 in California. The strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20% of the world’s oil normally flows, remains effectively closed, three months after the first strikes on Iran.