Trump’s Midterm Nightmare Deepens With Scathing New Poll

Donald Trump’s war in Iran is the most unpopular it has ever been, according to a scathing new poll.

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The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, conducted between July 24-26 among 1,246 U.S. adults, shows that just 33 percent of Americans approve of the war, while 62 percent disapprove.

So far, the Iran war, which Trump launched without congressional approval, has been far less popular than other American conflicts in their early days.

About 70 percent of Americans backed the Iraq War in its early months, while support for the war in Afghanistan reached roughly 90 percent.

But support for the Iran war has remained below 40 percent since it began.

The poll suggests that is partly because, five months into the conflict, Americans are still confused as to why Trump started the war in the first place.

“It’s not clear why we started a war with them. I have no idea,” Republican voter Alex Womack, a retired turbine repair specialist from Stockbridge, Georgia, told Reuters.

Trump has repeatedly shifted his public justification for the war, variously saying it is intended to help Iranians overthrow their government, destroy Iran’s ballistic missile program, and stop Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon.

As a result, nearly seven in 10 Americans—including four in 10 Republicans—say Trump has failed to clearly explain the goals of U.S. military involvement in Iran.

The Reuters poll is just one of many surveys that have shown humiliating results for the Trump administration.

The latest CBS poll showed that Americans are becoming increasingly frustrated by the conflict, and fear it could go on for months, or even years, to come, despite Trump’s repeated assurances that the war is won or almost won.

Meanwhile, nearly two-thirds (63 percent) said the conflict is going badly for the United States.

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It comes after four U.S. service members were killed at bases in Jordan and Iraq last weekend, bringing the American death toll to 18 since the U.S.-Israeli campaign began on Feb. 28.

Trump responded by vowing on Truth Social that Iran would pay “many times over” for every American killed.

But if fighting continues, there could be more misery ahead for Americans in a war that has already led to a spike in energy prices.

The conflict has driven up fuel costs. The national average price of gasoline has climbed to just over $4 a gallon, up from around $3 before the war began.

The White House has insisted that the price rises are temporary, but Republican strategists have warned for months that price rises will seriously hurt Trump and his party in November’s midterms.

“This puts pressure on the party in a myriad of ways, all of them bad,” Alex Conant, a Republican political strategist, told Reuters. “The White House officials have been saying since January that they need to win economic arguments. It’s hard to win the economic arguments when you’re clearly focused on foreign policy.”

Meanwhile, the Reuters poll shows that Trump’s party is losing crucial support ahead of the midterms, with independent registered voters, 67 percent of whom disapprove of the war in Iran, breaking toward Democrats.

Independents said they favor a Democratic congressional candidate by 36 percent to 20 percent. Independent voters also said they trusted Democrats more than Republicans to handle the economy.

“The toughest thing, too, is that we made gas prices the Achilles’ heel for (former President Joe) Biden and now it’s our own,” an unnamed adviser told Reuters in May.

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