Zac, it's so good to have you back.

Zac Anderson:

Great to be here.

Dana Taylor:

Zac, you're right that Republicans increasingly see the Iran war as a political liability with the midterms less than three months away. How nervous is the party right now about what this conflict could cost them in November?

Zac Anderson:

Very nervous. I think there's a lot of concern that this has become one of the biggest liabilities for Republicans heading into the midterm election. The biggest issue, Trump's approval rating is down, and a big cause of that is this war. If you look at the polling, a majority of Americans do not support the war. You talk to Republican strategists, they're very concerned that this could be a drag on their candidates going forward. And so there's definitely a lot of anxiety within the party on this right now.

Read the full story: 'No upside.' GOP pressure builds on Trump to find path out of Iran war

Dana Taylor:

What's driving that anxiety most, the fact that it just keeps dragging on the economic fallout for consumers of the lack of a clear end goal for the US?

Zac Anderson:

I think all of those things, but the economic fallout is really the biggest concern if you're looking at gas prices above $4 a gallon. I talked to one GOP pollster who said, really, one of the biggest reasons that Trump won in 2024 is that he promised to bring down inflation. And now you're seeing the war really drive up gas prices, which has an overall effect on inflation. And that resonates with a lot of the voters, some of the voters who might not be as diehard Republicans, people who were willing to give Trump a chance because they weren't really happy with the economy. When you have prices, when you have cost of living concerns, there's a certain group of voters who the president is losing because of that.

And so I do think the economic aspect of this is the most worrisome thing for Republicans, but there are other aspects as well. Just getting into a long-term conflict overseas is something that many people are concerned about, the cost of the war as well. So there's multiple factors there.

Dana Taylor:

One Republican senator said Americans are "somewhat confused" about why the US went into Iran and where things stand now. Nearly six months into this war, what's the administration's explanation for what success actually looks like? And if it means the US will have to pay to access the Strait of Hormuz going forward, is there any way to convince them that we gained more than we lost?

Zac Anderson:

I think that's been a big challenge for the Trump administration. When this war started, the president was talking about regime change. He was talking about stopping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, also going in there and trying to prevent them from threatening the partners in the Middle East. A lot of the latest conversation has really revolved around the Strait of Hormuz and trying to get that open because that's where a lot of the oil flows through. And that has been a big challenge in terms of increasing oil prices. And so it's shifted in terms of some of the goals and it's not clear exactly what the president would accept in terms of a resolution with Iran is just getting the Strait of Hormuz open at this point. It seems like that's really what the administration is focused on. And so as the war has dragged on, the administration has struggled to say exactly what its goal is and what is a successful conclusion to this conflict.

Dana Taylor:

Zac, you've talked about how much of the political damage is tied directly to people's wallets. Gas is above $4 a gallon, inflation remains elevated. Are voters connecting those high costs to the war and the GOP support for it?

Zac Anderson:

Definitely. I think the costs are really the biggest driving issue here. When people are driving along the road and they see the price of gas? I talked to multiple GOP strategists who say that's one of the things that really a price that everybody knows because you're driving, you see the billboards at the gas station, you see what the price of gas is. That's one of those prices that just has a big impact on the consumer's psyche. And it can be a huge drag on people. The gas is up over $4 a gallon now. So when you're talking tens of extra dollars, maybe hundreds of extra dollars for people over the course of a month to fill up their tanks, that starts to really bite into their budget. So yeah, the economic aspects of this I do think are the biggest driver of discontent right now.

Dana Taylor:

I want to circle back to something you touched on earlier. There is a deeper contradiction here for Trump. He built part of his political identity around criticizing long-running US wars overseas. How has going to war with Iran strained his credibility with his own supporters and the GOP base in general?

Zac Anderson:

Yeah, this idea that he wouldn't get Americans into prolonged foreign conflicts, that was really central to all three of his presidential campaigns. He really ran as a really staunch critic of previous US wars in the Middle East, Iraq, Afghanistan. He just talked about how the Bush administration and what he saw as some of the folly of what they did in the Middle East. So I think that he's really reoriented foreign policy in the Republican Party and made it much more non-interventionist. And so for people who really bought into that, who really believe in that, which is a good number of his MAGA supporters, some of them have said they feel betrayed and that this is a major campaign promise that he is breaking. I talked to a former Trump administration official, counter-terrorism official who just said that that was central to the MAGA movement, and he resigned, Joe Kent, over his opposition to the war.

So I do think that you're seeing a lot of the MAGA opposition that we've seen has really focused on the idea that this war is not what they would term America first.

Dana Taylor:

Well, sticking with that, we've seen prominent MAGA voices, including Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, others publicly call for an end to the war. How significant is that fracture inside Trump's coalition?

Zac Anderson:

It's hard to say exactly how much the MAGA opposition to this has influenced the president. He's fired back at some of these figures, but there was a couple of waves of this. You saw early on after Trump started this war in February where you had some of his prominent supporters like Tucker Carlson, former Fox News host, Marjorie Taylor Greene, former Congresswoman, and one of Trump's most ardent supporters come out against the war. And Trump really lashed out at them and really targeted them and said that they're not MAGA and they've really broken with Trump. But then you saw Joe Kent, a Trump administration official, resign over his concerns. And you've seen others like Thomas Massie in Congress. They all got together and had a meeting where they were talking about strategy and floating the idea of how to approach a political movement of dissenters here.

But then you've also seen another wave of MAGA criticism where people who are supportive of the president, like former Representative Matt Gaetz. He's been skeptical of the war, but he's came out recently and said that the war should end. You have others like Benny Johnson, a conservative media personality, Laura Ingraham, a Fox News host. So you've seen another wave of MAGA discontent. It hasn't died down even though President Trump has really tried to squelch it and go after some of these people. And so I think as this war drags on, this continues to be a big issue for him.

Dana Taylor:

Still, Zac, this isn't a clean anti-war split inside the Republican Party. Some conservatives are warning Trump not to back down before Iran is defeated. What are those competing factions asking Trump to do?

Zac Anderson:

You see other elements of the Republican Party that are more hawkish, who have long called for a tough approach to Iran, tell Trump, "Don't cut and run. Don't leave before the job is finished." He seems to be caught between these two competing forces. He has vacillated between a peace deal and bombing Iran multiple times over the last few weeks. We've seen him start attacks and then stop them. He seems to go between thinking that he can get Iran to capitulate through military force and trying more diplomatic efforts here. So I think that the party is definitely split over this. A majority of Republicans still do support Trump's approach to Iran. So he does still have the majority of the party behind him. And there's a large contingent within the party that is still more of a aggressive interventionalist foreign policy approach, and they continue to push Trump to stay the course here.

Dana Taylor:

How is all of this affecting Republican candidates who now have to campaign with the war still in play? Are we actually starting to see some of them distance themselves from Trump on Iran? And if so, could that have political consequences for them?

Zac Anderson:

The criticism from actual elected officials has still been somewhat muted within the Republican Party. You've heard more and more of these officials cautiously talking about trying to end this or trying to find a way out of this and questioning how long this can go on. But most of them have continued to embrace the president. But you do see there's been some votes in Congress to check Trump's authority to continue waging the war in Iran, these war powers resolutions. And there's been a handful of Republicans who have supported those in Congress, and that has really started to put pressure on Trump over the war.

So you are seeing more of this. And as we get deeper into campaign season, one of my colleagues spoke to Senator Tillis and he said that he believes that Republicans may need to distance themselves from the White House on the war because it is so unpopular. We haven't seen that in mass right now, but as this war drags on and it gets deeper into the heart of the campaign season, that is a big question facing all of these candidates.

Dana Taylor:

Is that Democrats are already saying they want to make the midterms a referendum on this war. What opportunities does Iran give them politically that they may not have had otherwise?

Zac Anderson:

It allows them to say that Trump has broken his promises to the American people. It ties it in. The Democrats' main argument going into this election is really on affordability and cost of living. That's what they've really been focused on and arguing that Trump has failed to deliver on that. And the war really just feeds into that. They can point to the gas prices and talk about how Trump's policies are actually making things worse than better. So you're hearing Democrats really focus on the war quite a bit in some of their messaging.

Dana Taylor:

You end the story with one Republican senator suggesting that managing the conflict may be more realistic than ending it. If that's true, what does that mean for Trump and Republicans heading into November and potentially for the rest of Trump's presidency?

Zac Anderson:

Yeah, it's an interesting comment. I think it shows that there's concern about how to set the public expectations on this because they don't have a lot of great options here. One of them might just be to try and keep this conflict at a low simmer here instead of flaring it up into open hostilities. The Senator was talking about how the US has been in a proxy fight with Iran for decades now and the relationship has always been strained. So how you come to a conclusion here that everybody is happy with is maybe difficult for some of these lawmakers to see. I think they're trying to figure out how they can message this to the American people, but there's not a lot of good options here because the public support for this is very low. And so they're confronting a real challenge here and how to sell this and how to message it as they go into the elections.

Dana Taylor:

Zac Anderson is a White House correspondent for USA TODAY. Thank you so much for sharing your reporting here, Zac.

Zac Anderson:

Thanks for having me.

Dana Taylor:

That's today's The Excerpt. We'll be back tomorrow morning with what's next before your day gets going. I'm Dana Taylor. Thanks for listening.