Fox Host Panics as Trump Election Disaster Looms

Fox News host Laura Ingraham is urging President Donald Trump to find a way out of his war on Iran before the midterms, warning her own network’s audience that the conflict is becoming a political liability for Republicans.

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The U.S. bombed Iran for a tenth consecutive night this week, after Iranian strikes on Jordan killed two active-duty U.S. Army soldiers over the weekend. A third U.S. servicemember was killed in Iraq while disposing of an Iranian drone. At least 17 U.S. troops have died since the war began.

Trump has since vowed retaliation over the American deaths, with a U.S. official telling CNN the president “will make Iran pay for the recent deaths of U.S. soldiers” and that strikes “will continue until the President deems otherwise.” Gas prices, meanwhile, have climbed back to an average of $4 a gallon nationwide as the fighting intensifies, according to AP.

On her show, Ingraham didn’t mince words about what the bloodshed and rising costs mean for her own party. “With the midterm elections a little more than 100 days away, the clock is ticking for President Trump to get out of this war before voters head to the polls,” she said.

“It’s making a lot of Republicans nervous. It’s already, as we know, unpopular. According to the new Washington Post/Ipsos poll, 69 percent of Americans disapprove of the handling of this conflict. Republicans cannot let this become an endless distraction, especially if they want to win in November.”

She wasn’t the only Fox News host sounding the alarm. Hours earlier, Brit Hume said on Special Report that the war had put Trump, and Republicans by extension, in a “tough spot.”

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“And he promised to keep us out of endless wars or unsatisfactory wars, and now he’s in one, and it’s not at all clear how it’s gonna end,” Hume said. “So, he’s vulnerable on this point, and in political terms, he does need to get this over with. But what he may need his time, and he doesn’t have a lot of time.”

The unease at the network came hours after Trump himself appeared to stumble when confronted with a question about the war’s timeline. Disembarking Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews after attending the World Cup final in New Jersey on Sunday, Trump was asked by a reporter in the press gaggle, “On Iran, Mr. President, you said at the start of the war it would be four or five weeks. Now it’s nearly five months?”

Trump shot back that the reporter had undersold the scale of the operation. “This is a far bigger job that we’re doing,” he said. “We were doing a little job, stopping them from having a certain capability. Now, we’re just ending it.” He added, “It’s really not the same thing,” clarifying that “what we’re doing now is we’re ending any chance where they could have a nuclear missile.”

He then attempted to walk through a revised timeline, saying “if you look at it, after a week-and-a-half… not four weeks, a week-and-a-half, two weeks,” before trailing off mid-sentence: “we stopped them from probably, but I don’t want to have the word ‘probably’…”