Kathrine Frich
Trump admitted he was unsure whether Vance would make the same call again.
When a close team suffers a painful public loss, everyone wants to explain what went wrong.
Friends who usually stand side by side can suddenly find themselves offering very different takes on the same setback.
Now, a blunt post-mortem has sparked a rare public correction from the boss.
One missing question
According to the Irish Star, US President Donald Trump says Vice President JD Vance left out a key point when blaming the war in Iran for the Republican Party’s crushing midterm losses.
Speaking with reporters on Sunday before boarding Air Force One after a weekend at his Florida home, the 80-year-old leader noted that “people didn’t like” his second-in-command’s blunt remarks.
“Have JD Vance’s comments about Iran, questioning some of those decisions, impacted your relationship at all?” a reporter asked, as quoted by the Irish Star. Trump brushed off any personal rift: “No, not at all. But a lot of people didn’t like his comments, but not me.”
Even though the president agreed the Middle East conflict hurt Republican candidates, he argued that Vance missed “one thing” in his statement.
“He was right other than one thing; he should have made one other statement, one statement that I think is very important. If you had to do it again would you do it again? The answer is yes,” Trump said, according to the Irish Star.
He then doubled down on the strike decision. “I can tell you, if I had to do it again, this historically for history will go down as one of the best things we ever did because if they ever had a nuclear weapon they would blow up the world. You know why? Because they’re crazy,” the president added.
Blaming the war
During a 60 Minutes interview that aired Sunday night, Trump admitted he was unsure whether Vance would make the same call again, the Irish Star reported.
For himself, however, the answer was “an emphatic yes, because you can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon.”
The back-and-forth started last week when Vance, who reports had described as a “skeptical” voice inside the White House before the conflict began, posted a long message on X about the midterm wipeout.
“The real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone,” the vice president wrote, according to the Irish Star.
“The reason we lost is the war,” Vance stated. “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. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that’s at least honest,” he wrote, before concluding:
“But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.”
