President Donald Trump on Wednesday morning attended his third dignified transfer since the war in Iran started, watching silently as four U.S. soldiers returned to American soil for the last time.
Hours later, he entered a high school stadium in Marietta, Georgia, to raucous applause as he touted GOP accomplishments on tax breaks, mass deportations and highs for 401(k)s and the stock market.
The sharp contrast – pivoting from the human cost of war to politicking – provided a vivid illustration of the balancing act Trump faces ahead of the midterms: On one side, a wartime president performing the gravest of duties, the result of an increasingly controversial war he started. On the other, a party boss trying to lead the GOP to a midterms victory despite sagging polls and concerns about the high cost of living.
“You have midterms crashing into reality. Right now, the president’s poll numbers are approaching freezing, meaning in the 30s. You have a war that the president started, is potentially unable to win and potentially unable to end. You have an economy that continues to be very frothy,” said Matthew Bartlett, GOP strategist and former Trump appointee to the State Department in the first administration. “So it is just a brutal atmosphere for Republicans.”
While Trump’s foray into Georgia may mark a fulsome return to the campaign trail to tout his administration’s policy accomplishments – something Republicans on the ballot this fall have been eager to see for months – the war in Iran, which Trump threatened to escalate Wednesday, and the deaths of American servicemembers cast a pall over the speech.
He said on his way to Dover Air Force Base that dignified transfers are “one of the hardest things to do as president.” Once in Georgia, Trump called the conflict a “skirmish” and said Iran is “getting hit so hard and they want to make a deal, but I say they’re not ready to make a deal because every time they make a deal, they want to change it.”
The ongoing questions Americans have over why Trump started the war – and casualties – has created a tricky balancing act for Trump, said Elliott Abrams, U.S. special representative for Iran in Trump’s first term.
“The president still has not explained the Iran war to the American people. He alternates between saying their nuclear program has been obliterated and saying we must keep on fighting so that they can’t have nuclear weapons,” Abrams said.
“I believe he is doing the right thing in attacking Iran and in attending the Dover AFB ceremony himself,” he added. “He isn't shirking responsibility. But he is simply not explaining things adequately to Americans.”
In Georgia, the president spoke at length about one fallen soldier’s family who was on hand – and hit the administration’s policy high points: popular tax cuts, lower drug prices and new investments in the American economy.
“Every day, we're fighting to put more money back in the pockets of the hardworking American families,” he said, rattling off that the stock market is up, the cost of rent in at the Atlanta-area is down and that Republicans passed the One Big Beautiful Bill to give voters no tax on tips, no tax on overtime and Trump Accounts.
He tossed red meat at his usual targets, garnering boos at mentions of communists, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) and the “fake news;” cheers when he said the U.S. “won Venezuela,” and laughter at the mention of “sleepy Joe.”
Republicans with growing anxiety about the midterms have been eager for Trump to energize and motivate voters and to talk more about the economy and affordability on the campaign trail. But doing so just hours after he greeted the military plane carrying four bodies back to the U.S. creates tough optics, argued Emily Horne, former National Security Council spokesperson to former President Joe Biden.
“The president’s role at a dignified transfer should be to honor the fallen by facing the costs of his orders. But instead, Trump is using a dignified transfer ceremony as a warm-up act for a MAGA campaign rally, where he'll surely continue to lie about the true costs of his Iran war,” Horne said ahead of the rally.
In some ways, Trump has helped create some of the very things he’s battling against – namely, his decision to go to war with Iran, which a majority of Americans dislike and that has sporadically sent gasoline prices spiking. After a brief lull, prices at the pump shot up again amid renewed bombing in recent days.
He’s also losing ground with his most ardent supporters. Anew POLITICO Poll showed a little more than a third of Trump’s MAGA base think the Iran war is worth its economic costs, dropping by 13 points in May. And, 37 percent of self-identified MAGA Trump voters say the U.S. should continue its involvement only if it doesn’t increase costs.
White House officials and allies defended Trump’s ability to focus on Iran and the campaign on the same day.
“I do not see a contradiction. President Trump is fulfilling his responsibility as commander in chief by going to Dover, while also making the case for his economic agenda in Georgia,” said Simone Ledeen, former deputy assistant secretary of Defense during Trump's first term. “Presidents do not have the luxury of addressing only one challenge at a time.”
White House spokesperson Kush Desai described the split screen of the president’s day as Trump demonstrating he “can walk and chew gum at the same time.”
“While the President ensures that Iran will never possess a nuclear weapon for our national security, the President has been equally focused on unleashing prosperity for working-class Americans, from creating Trump Accounts to slashing job-killing regulations,” Desai said. “For the Trump administration, economic prosperity is not possible without national security, and national security is not possible without economic prosperity.”
Trump and others in his administration have repeatedly said any costs to the American public will be brief, and in any case worth the price to deprive a dangerous regime of the ability to create nuclear weapons – even if it means the death of U.S. troops.
Trump echoed that sentiment Wednesday, saying that those killed said “very strongly, we can’t let Iran have a nuclear weapon.”
The White House did not immediately respond to questions about whether Trump had spoken with the troops’ families before Wednesday, though he did privately meet with them just prior to the dignified transfer. The soldiers were identified as 1st Lt. Tyler J. Feehan, Sgt. Michael E. Swinton, Sgt. Angel S. Rampersad and Pvt. Isabella Gonzales.
On Tuesday, Trump defended criticism about service members’ deaths, arguing in a social media post that they were fewer than in previous wars such as Afghanistan and Vietnam.
Bartlett described the post arguing fewer servicemembers have died in Iran compared to other wars as “rather crass.”
“It just really demonstrated how the White House is in a corner— is underwater even—and doesn't know which way is up,” he said.
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