GOP candidates in tight races push Trump to pause diesel exports
GOP candidates press Trump on diesel, Iran exit as energy costs climb
President Trump used his address to the United Nations on Tuesday to cast his second-term foreign policy as his post-White House legacy, telling world leaders that the November midterm elections would not affect his approach to the war in Iran. “It doesn’t even enter my mind,” Trump said of the midterms. In a roughly 35-minute speech, the president doubled down on his muscular foreign policy agenda, positioning his interventions on multiple continents as the centerpiece of his second term.
For weeks, Trump has repeated the same message in a bid to drive his supporters to the polls in November: “Pretend I’m on the ballot.” At the United Nations on Tuesday, the president offered a different assessment.
“The Republican Party is running—and I’ll be helping them. But I am not running,” Trump told the assembly. Some Republicans wish the midterm elections would affect his approach to the war.
Less than six weeks before the election, the war has become one of the GOP’s biggest vulnerabilities. The open-ended conflict has sparked an energy shock that has led to sharp increases in the price of gasoline and sent diesel prices to record highs. Voters have signaled their frustration with the president and members of his party who are running for office.
At the U.N. on Tuesday, Trump argued that his most important mission is preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. The political fallout, he suggested, is a small price to pay.
He also raised the prospect of escalating the war, a move that could trigger more global instability and higher prices, threatening to “annihilate” Iran and asking whether it was better to make a deal with Iran or “drive them into hell with no chance of survival.” He didn’t offer an answer, leaving the question to hang over the final weeks of the campaign season as GOP candidates face sharp questions from voters about the war and its fallout.
Several Republican candidates facing tight races have raised concerns about the war’s effect on energy prices. Rep. Ashley Hinson (R., Iowa), who is running for the open Senate seat in her state, called on the Trump administration to pause diesel exports, arguing Iowans “shouldn’t have to foot the bill at the pump or the checkout line for the war in Iran.” Hinson skipped a campaign stop by Vance last week in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
Former Rep. Mike Rogers, who is running for Senate in Michigan, also called for a pause in diesel exports. “The war in Iran needs to end to bring costs down,” he said. On Tuesday, Trump told reporters he is considering such a pause.
Rep. Tom Tiffany, the Republican candidate for governor in Wisconsin, said Tuesday, “I just believe we should be exiting Iran, that it’s time to move on.”
Asked about reports of waning Republican enthusiasm in the wake of the Iran war, Vice President JD Vance told reporters at the White House that he hadn’t “seen what you’re talking about.” Instead, Vance said that he had encountered voters during his travels who are “very excited about what we’ve done and frankly who don’t want to give control of Washington, D.C., over to the far-left Democrats.”
White House spokesman Davis Ingle defended Trump’s approach. “President Trump is the unequivocal leader, best messenger, and unmatched motivator for the Republican Party, and he is committed to maintaining Republican majorities in Congress,” Ingle said, describing Trump’s comments on Cuba and Iran as a reflection of the president’s commitment “to addressing national security threats.” “The choice has never been more clear: doubling down on President Trump’s winning, commonsense agenda or the Democrats’ extreme liberal policies and obstruction,” Ingle added.
The president, who returned to the White House in part on his promise not to start any new wars, appeared to lay the groundwork for another conflict during his speech to the U.N. Trump predicted that the communist government in Cuba will fall, adding that his administration is “seeking a fundamental change in the situation in Cuba.”
Tuesday’s speech capped a tumultuous few days for the president, who is increasingly lashing out at the press for coverage he doesn’t like. Trump restricted CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, prompting a lawsuit and leading television networks to suspend some coverage of him. The president has taken policy positions on issues such as artificial intelligence and immigration that some Republicans in tight races have had to distance themselves from in recent days.
Trump has held fast to his support for rapidly developing artificial intelligence, rejecting calls for global regulation of the emerging technology and telling world leaders at the U.N. on Tuesday, “I’m not going to stifle growth of something that will be bigger than the industrial revolution.” He declared that he would rebrand AI as “super intelligence.” “The use of the word artificial makes intelligence…sound fake and it is not fake. It’s actually amazing,” he said. In polls, many voters have signaled concerns with AI, even if they see promise in the technology, and most Americans are opposed to data centers that power AI being built in their communities. Trump has derided opponents of data centers.
Senior advisers have spent months urging Trump to shift his attention from legacy initiatives, such as his construction projects around the capital, to issues of primary concern to voters, such as the economy. While the president has become a more frequent presence on the campaign trail, construction remains on his mind. Trump has expressed deep frustration to aides that he isn’t receiving more praise for his second-term actions on both the foreign policy and domestic front, according to a senior administration official. Trump recently complained that high-profile figures in Washington hadn’t publicly thanked him for trying to overhaul the Kennedy Center, one of a series of projects in the nation’s capital that have drawn his focus.
During a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the sidelines of the U.N. summit on Tuesday, Trump bemoaned that his most prized White House reconstruction project wouldn’t be complete by the time of the leader’s next visit. With the wartime leader at his side, Trump said, “I wish we had the ballroom.”