U.S. President Donald Trump gestures during a press conference at a NATO summit in The Hague, Netherlands June 25, 2025.
The latest polls show that Americans are firmly against the war in Iran, with 61 percent of voters agreeing that military action was a mistake. According to CNN political reporter John King, that’s a “disaster for Trump and disaster for his party” as such numbers have historically signaled a public hunger for big change — and a willingness to bring it at the ballot box.
Per the new poll, not only do most Americans think the war was a mistake, but a whopping 71 percent of independents are against the conflict. These numbers are on par with public opposition to the wars in Iraq and Vietnam, and as King pointed out, in both those cases, the public decided to vote in new leadership.
“It was opposition to the Iraq war that allowed the United States to elect its first African-American president, Barack Obama,” explained King. “That opposition was so fierce, the American people said, ‘We want big change. We want dramatic change.’ That is what you feel when you travel the country.”
And as he noted, while in the cases of the Iraq and Vietnam wars it took years for the public to reach such levels of disapproval, President Donald Trump and his administration have brought it in less than two months.
“They’re still struggling to explain what they're doing to the American people,” said King before elaborating that Americans “don't understand why the administration is doing this war. They're just not making this case effectively to the voters. And we're seeing that in this polling. It's not just Democrats who are against the war, it's Independents. It's a good chunk of Republicans as well. And this is just going to continue to get worse if the president continues these actions in the Middle East.”
While the White House has attempted to portray the war as a decisive military success, not only has the conflict continued to drag on, but Americans have found themselves paying an economic cost they are not willing to bear.
“The president wants to sell no taxes on social security,” said King. “Republicans in the midterm elections are trying to say, ‘Remember, we cut your taxes on overtime and tips.’ They cannot break through because whatever little you got for that, you're paying at the pump. The president said this would be quick. It's past 60 days. The president said yes, gas prices would spike, but he would get out pretty soon and they would come down. They went up again overnight. So almost everything the president has said repeatedly — Iran has agreed to give up its nuclear materials; Iran has not agreed to give up its nuclear materials — has been proven…to simply not be true.”
“Politically,” King asserted, “this has become a disaster for him. It's a huge disaster for his party.”
King, who had just completed a trip through Ohio farming country, said that he’d seen firsthand how the situation is hurting some of Trump’s most important voters.
“Trump has had this firm grip on rural America for a decade,” he explained. “If you live in rural America, what do you have to do? You have to drive longer distances. Sometimes it's 25 minutes to the gas station. So you go pay $4.20 a gallon for gas you bought a week ago that was four bucks. Now you're driving to spend $4.20 on it. If you live in rural America, you might have a farm, or you might have equipment on your land that takes diesel fuel that's even more expensive than that. Fertilizer additives for the soil — that's even more than that.”
King went on to list several hotly contested elections in the states of Texas, North Carolina, Ohio, and Iowa, saying, “What do they have in common? They're largely rural. People are driving and spending more money, so even if they get the idea that Iran is a threat, they have not heard from their commander in chief a clear plan. And this is the mistake Trump makes all the time. He says it will be fast and it will be easy. Inflation coming down will be fast and easy. It was just Sleepy Joe. Iran — it's going to be a few days. We'll be fine. We’re 60 days and counting. So his own words get him in trouble.”
