The following is a lightly edited transcript of the June 5 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.After the House voted this week to end Donald Trump’s war in Iran, Trump exploded in fury at the four Republicans who sided with Democrats against him. He called them grandstanders while simultaneously mocking the vote as meaningless. It’s not meaningless, of course. It shows that Republicans are now taking new steps to break with Trump. And importantly, it comes as the leaks are getting worse for him. We’re learning more about his blundering incompetence from insiders, which is itself another sign of his ongoing weakening.So is there a path to forcing Trump to end this conflict and what’s likely to happen now in the war itself? We’re talking about it all with Emily Horne, a former veteran of the State Department and National Security Council. Emily, good to have you back on.Emily Horne: Thanks, Greg, for having me.Sargent: So the House passed a bill Wednesday directing Trump to end the conflict, with four Republicans breaking ranks. The Senate could pass this, and because it’s a certain type of resolution, it’s not subject to a veto, but Trump can probably not follow it. Still, this is significant, isn’t it, Emily? Can you tell us why?Horne: The fact that you have Republicans that are willing to cross the aisle at this particular moment is really telling politically. This war has been wildly unpopular from day one, and the longer that it drags on—we’re entering month three when we were promised this would be a quick overnight operation—as costs to voters begin to mount, as energy prices continue to rise with no end in sight, as airline prices continue to soar, no pun intended, as we approach the summer travel season. And unfortunately, terribly, tragically, as more American service members continue to die or be injured in conflict in the Middle East, the more this war expands regionally and the more innocent civilian lives are lost, the harder that it becomes for Republicans to defend this war when in fact many of them were running on the principle that Trump would not get Americans into open-ended foreign conflicts. That’s a lot harder to defend when we are at month three of an open-ended conflict.Sargent: Trump exploded on Truth Social Thursday over this vote, raging that it’s meaningless. He said it was passed by “four bad Republicans and all of the Dumocrats.” Trump also raged that this is happening, “right in the middle of my final negotiations to end the war with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Who would do such an unpatriotic thing?” And he even raged that Republicans are “grandstanders who should be ashamed of themselves.” Emily, what’s your reaction to that?Horne: This vote is not happening as a coincidence. This vote is happening now because the 90-day deadline for a War Powers resolution has come and gone, and we are still in this war. And so this has not exactly been a Congress that has taken its oath of office to both the letter and the spirit of the law, but it’s nice to finally see some backbone and some acknowledgment that they do have a constitutional duty to do things like allow the president to declare war or not, that that is a pretty important part of their oath, in fact. So while procedurally this may not change anything, politically, again, I think this is a really important moment.Sargent: I think it’s the worst of all worlds for Trump and Republicans in this way as well. Of the four Republicans who crossed over, only two of them are vulnerable this fall, which means all the other House Republicans who are top targets in the election were too frightened to distance themselves from Trump. And now they’re on the hook for voting to continue the war, which means holding the House is going to be harder for Republicans because the war is just absolutely killing them. Republicans have done this to themselves even as Trump has also been delivered a rebuke. It’s just an all-around failure in every way for them, no?Horne: Well, OK, we’re five months out from the election. I’m certainly not making any predictions about what is going to happen in the midterms, but there’s no question that this war is wildly unpopular across the political spectrum. And again, as costs continue to rise, as diplomacy continues to falter, and as the chaos continues to reign across the Middle East—not just in the Strait of Hormuz—with no end in sight, this is a war that is entirely of Trump’s making. And going back even years and years ago to the first Trump administration, we had a diplomatic deal. He blew it up in 2018. He started us down this path a long time ago. And even then, he still had many chances to not wind up in this current situation. He still had multiple off-ramps where diplomacy was still a realistic option.
