Longtime Fox News contributor Marc Thiessen spent the spring predicting the war with Iran would deliver political gains for President Donald Trump and the Republican Party. On Sunday, the president said the opposite, acknowledging that the conflict and the gasoline prices that followed it helped cost his party control of Congress. The admission has brought a wave of criticism from across the conservative movement, including Donald Trump Jr., Mollie Hemingway, Sean Davis, and Steve Cortes.
The president’s comments came in an interview that aired Sunday on CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” days after Democrats captured the House and Senate in Tuesday’s elections. Trump said voters penalized his party over the conflict and rising gasoline prices. “They didn’t like the war. They didn’t like the fact that gasoline went up… And there’s a great dislike, incredibly, for Israel,” he said. He defended the strikes, saying preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon justified the operation and that he would make the same decision again.
The assessment mirrored the one Vice President JD Vance offered after the votes were counted, when he blamed the conflict for the losses. Vance argued that Americans had grown frustrated with military operations overseas and the financial pressure that followed them home. Republican voters, he said, wanted the fighting ended, relief from rising living costs, and a renewed emphasis on America First priorities. Conservative commentators spent the days after the broadcast debating whether the interview amounted to a rebuke of Vance.
As Trending Politics reported, the pushback came quickly. Donald Trump Jr. rejected that framing Monday morning and called for the president’s full remarks to be played. “Play the full quote please,” he wrote. Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway criticized misleading edits of the interview, saying Trump was not among those unhappy with Vance’s comments and agreed with his assessment of the war’s political damage.
Thiessen had made his own position clear days earlier. Appearing on “Special Report” after the ballots were counted, he said he was “shocked” by Vance’s statement blaming the war for the losses. “It was, quite frankly, disloyal to the president of the United States,” he said. The clip, which Fox News posted on November 5th, has drawn more than 100,000 views.
Federalist co-founder Sean Davis criticized the commentators who had claimed the war would strengthen Trump’s political position. Tagging Thiessen and conservative radio host Mark Levin, Davis wrote: “Really looking forward to the Thiessen/Levin rant about how Trump is disloyal to Trump for saying obvious things about the election that everyone with a brain knew were true five seconds after vote counts started coming in.” Former Trump campaign adviser Steve Cortes then resurfaced footage of Thiessen discussing the war during a May 2026 appearance on Fox Business.
Watch Thiessen’s “shocked” reaction to Vance’s midterm statement here:
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In the footage, Thiessen urged Trump to make the conflict a central midterm campaign issue and predicted Republicans would benefit politically. “I think Donald Trump outta… campaign on it in the midterms. Point out the Democrats opposed it. By the time this is done, this is going to be a winner for Donald Trump in the midterm elections!” he said. Cortes’ decision to resurface the tape highlighted the divide between conservatives who viewed military action against Iran as politically advantageous and those who warned a prolonged conflict would erode Republican support.
The criticism now extends beyond Thiessen to conservative media figures who championed the military campaign and dismissed warnings about its political cost. Trump’s remarks drew a distinction between defending the decision to confront Iran and acknowledging what the war cost Republican candidates. For Thiessen and the war’s other prominent supporters, the criticism centers on whether they underestimated voters’ concerns about gasoline prices, foreign military commitments, and the direction of American foreign policy.
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video.