U.S. President Donald Trump holds a meeting in the Situation Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S. June 21, 2025. The White House/Handout via REUTERS
Former Army major Harrison Mann says President Donald Trump tosses off lies and untruths, but his latest this week isn’t doing anything to help the party catching splash damage from his Iran conflagration.
Trump claimed this week that his self-declared war on Iran is officially over, but Iran gets its own say and is maintaining its block on global oil tankers filing through the narrow Strait of Hormuz. This is walloping U.S. and global oil and fertilizer prices and delivering considerable damage to Trump and his party.
“Frustrated Republicans like Senators Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) have seized on the (1973 War Powers Resolution) 60-day deadline in the hope of prodding the administration to wrap up a war that Trump increasingly appears emotionally and intellectually incapable of ending,” said Mann, who resigned in protest of his office’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza under the Biden administration. “Other Republicans have also pointed to a provision of the WPR that allows the president to extend a war for 30 days, to claim that Trump still has a month of slack, while Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth suggested on Thursday that the current ceasefire means a pause in the 60-day countdown.”
But then Collins, whose seat is in jeopardy in a tough year, “fired a warning shot on Thursday” when she joined Democrats in a vote attempting to end the war, the first Republican to do so other than Senator Rand Paul.
“Congressional Republicans and the White House know the war is unpopular and that they’re going to take the blame for cost-of-living-exploding Iranflation if they don’t end the war ASAP – though it’s possible ASAP may not be fast enough to repair the US economy by the time of the midterms,” said Mann.
