‘This Spells Real Trouble for Republicans’

The Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson joins E.J. Dionne Jr. and Robert Siegel to discuss Trump’s falling approval rating and what it portends for November.

By E.J. Dionne Jr.Robert Siegel and Kristen Soltis Anderson

Produced by Vishakha Darbha

Voters are not happy about President Trump’s war in Iran — and the polls are starting to show it. The Conversation convenes this week with the contributing writer and Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson, the contributing writer E.J. Dionne Jr. and the former “All Things Considered” host Robert Siegel to unpack the war and what it could mean for gas prices and the midterm elections.

The Political Cost of Trump’s War

Below is a transcript of an episode of “The Opinions.” We recommend listening to it in its original form for the full effect. You can do so using the player above or on the NYTimes app, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.

The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Robert Siegel: We begin, inevitably, with the war, which President Trump has made a peculiar practice of calling an “excursion.” We’re talking on Wednesday. It’s now been almost two weeks since the U.S. and Israel launched a series of strikes against Iranian nuclear and military targets.

A series of oil refineries have been hit. It was a tragic strike on an Iranian elementary school. And Iran has attacked more than 17 U.S. sites all across the Middle East. And we’ll get to what this means for American voters in a moment. But first, E.J., what do you make of what’s happening?

E.J. Dionne Jr.: Well, I think from the very beginning of this war, we got a sense that there wasn’t a great deal of serious thought put into it by the president of the United States about how it might end, what our objectives were, what needed to be done to protect Americans who are in the Middle East, what might happen to oil in the Strait of Hormuz. All you have to do is look at a little map and see how dangerous it is, that little space there, where all this oil has to get out of.

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