‘We’re Losing Every Day’: David Brooks Argues Trump Needs to Accept Iran War Is Going Terribly

The Atlantic staff writer David Brooks argued the war against Iran is going terribly for the United States — but President Donald Trump is too much of a “huckster” to admit it to the American public.

Brooks shared his thoughts on the war during an interview on PBS NewsHour on Friday.

“The costs are just exorbitant now, not to mention the human suffering. And so, if Trump doesn’t see that we’re losing every day he continues this thing, he’s going to just face more and more political problems, military problems, and all sorts of problems,” Brooks said. “And so he just needs to admit that [is] what’s going on, and I doubt he has the mental ability to do that.”

That came after he said he had been “somewhat moderately hoping there’d be some positive outcome” from the war and that he believed there had some benefits. But he said those benefits are now being outweighed by the costs of Operation Epic Fury, both at home and abroad.

“We’ve had to go to the Middle East for almost every decade for the last 50 years because of radical Islam, which the Iranian regime typifies. But this is clearly the week where the costs of the war are so exponentially larger than the benefits of what we’re getting in these marginal weeks,” he said.

Brooks continued, “Russia is getting all this revenue, Iran is getting all this revenue, the European and world economies are in crisis, NATO is in shreds.” He also said Trump failed to warn Americans that Iran is a “serious country” and can make life tough for other nations; he pointed to traffic through the Strait of Hormuz slowing down during the war — leading to higher oil prices.

His answer came after two American fighter pilots were shot down over Iran on Friday; one pilot has been found and the other is still be searched for.

It also came a few days after Trump told the American public the war was going great and would be wrapping up in a few weeks during a televised address on Wednesday night.

Trump’s speech came a little more than a month after Operation Epic Fury started on Feb. 28, when joint U.S. and Israeli strikes killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Dozens of other leaders from Iran’s theocratic regime have been killed since then. There have been 13 American service members who have died since the war started, compared to about 3,500 Iranians. There is currently a search and rescue operation underway for a pilot from a fighter jet shot down over Iran. The first pilot was reportedly successfully rescued.

MS NOW anchor Jonathan Capehart, who was the other guest alongside Brooks on Friday night, said it seemed to him like there was “more of a plan” to save the abandoned pilots in the movie Top Gun: Maverick than there is right now.

Watch above via PBS.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!