President Donald Trump on Sunday said he does not disagree with Vice President JD Vance’s assessment that the Republicans’ sweeping midterm losses were caused by the Iran war, rising costs and U.S. relations with Israel.
“I don’t disagree with it,” Trump said during a CBS 60 Minutes interview.
Asked whether he knew Vance was planning to share his take in a post on X, Trump said the vice president was fully transparent with him beforehand.
“He asked me what do I think,” Trump said.
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“I said, ‘You write what you want. By the way, what are you going to write?’”
Trump added that the one thing he wished Vance would have done differently was share whether the vice president would have made the decision to strike Iran again, given his role in the administration’s decision-making process.
“The only thing I wish he would’ve said there, if he felt it,” Trump said.
“My answer is an emphatic yes, because you can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said.
He said the administration’s decision to engage in war with Iran was far more important than the political consequences of losing the midterm elections, arguing that while the decision may be unpopular, the alternative would have been allowing Tehran to obtain a nuclear weapon.
“I think, historically, this will be a very good decision. Is it a good decision for today and tomorrow? Maybe not,” he said.
“I have to go with what’s right for our country. If they had a nuclear weapon during my term, I would be excoriated far worse than what’s happened.”
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On Wednesday, Vance delivered a blunt assessment of Republicans’ midterm losses, which allowed Democrats to regain control of both chambers of Congress in a major blow to the Trump administration. Democrats flipped at least seven Senate seats and more than two dozen House districts.
“The real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone,” Vance wrote on X. “The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night.”
Like Trump, Vance argued that the political consequences of the war were a “worthwhile cost to pay.”
“If you’d like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so,” Vance said. “Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that’s at least honest. But everyone knows why we lost.”