Lawler rejects Trump's 'small potatoes' Iran war take — SkimNews
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- Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) broke with President Trump on CNN's 'State of the Union,' saying the Iran war is 'certainly not small potatoes. It is serious. I think we all recognize that'
- Trump said in the Oval Office on Friday the Iran conflict is 'a military conflict because it's small potatoes for us' and 'It's not a big thing'
- Lawler outlined specific stakes: preventing an Iranian nuclear weapon, halting financing of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, and stopping mass production of ballistic missiles and drones that Russia uses against Ukraine
- The Iran war has passed the six-month mark, straining U.S. relationships with historic allies, driving up oil and gas prices, and proving unpopular with the American public in recent polling
- Gas prices are above $4 per gallon on average, per the source, and Energy Secretary Chris Wright said on Sunday he did not 'want to have an opinion' on where prices are heading
Why it matters: A sitting Republican congressman publicly contradicting a sitting Republican president's framing of an ongoing war reveals visible daylight inside the GOP on the conflict's gravity. With gas above $4 a gallon and the war polling poorly, a Trump-aligned New York Republican is insisting on the record that the fight is serious, not minor, six months in.
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