Donald Trump’s war on Iran could deliver the lethal blow that sinks Republicans in the midterms, one political strategist warned.
Steve Schmidt, co-founder of The Lincoln Project and the Save America Movement, cautioned that a “tidal wave” of epic proportions is coming for the president’s party on The Daily Beast Podcast.
“We’re not winning this war,” Schmidt told host Joanna Coles. “And that is unpardonable in the United States.”
Top intelligence officials have reportedly repeatedly told the president, 79, that the Iranian regime shows no signs of backing down following Trump’s surprise attacks on the country in coordination with Israel on Feb. 28.
Despite that, the president has publicly declared victory in the war he started while also flip-flopping on its length and outcome. As of publication, at least 13 American servicemembers have been killed and 140 others injured.
Schmidt, a former adviser to George W. Bush, said Trump’s indecisiveness portrays a weakness that could be the final blow to Republicans in November.
“Before the war started, the midterms were already a political disaster of immense dimensions, immense dimensions for MAGA, for Trump,” Schmidt said. “They’re going to lose the House majority. They’re likely to lose the Senate majority. They’re going to lose governors’ races. They’re going to lose up and down the ballot all over the country.”
Since Trump regained power, Democrats have flipped 28 traditionally safe Republican state legislative seats across the country since November 2024, according to the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. Republicans have flipped none.
“There are a lot of [Democratic] candidates and a lot of places who are going to win, and that’s before the war,” Schmidt said.
“You can tell through the collapse of his polling numbers and their further deterioration and the split within the MAGA party on this issue that this is terrible for Trump.”
Polls have shown widespread rejection of Trump’s war in Iran among the American public. Notably, even members of Trump’s own party don’t seem wholly behind him. CNN polls found that nearly a fifth (19 percent) of Republican respondents said the conflict would make the U.S. less safe.
Right-wing leaders and influencers, including Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, and Joe Rogan, have also condemned the conflict and questioned its motives.
“It just seems so insane based on what he ran on,” Joe Rogan said during his latest podcast, which averages a reported 11 million views per episode. “He ran on no more wars, and these stupid, senseless wars, and then we have one that we can’t even really clearly define why we did it,” the podcaster said.
Schmidt also pointed to the mounting failures in the war over a few weeks’ span. Military analysts have reportedly found that the U.S. is behind a strike on a primary school in Iran that officials said killed 168 people, including 110 children—amounting to the most catastrophic military error in decades.
“This war is a disaster,” Schmidt said. “We talked about some of the moral dimensions of it….some of the mistakes, if you want to call them that, that have been made, the obliteration of a school of young girls in it.”
Schmidt added: “He doesn’t look strong here. He looks incompetent. He looks weak and he’s gonna look weaker as this all unfurls out.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
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