The US president has dismissed Democrats’ criticisms, arguing that far more American soldiers lost their lives in Vietnam and Afghanistan
US President Donald Trump has brushed aside Democratic lawmakers’ calls to end the war with Iran after four US service members were killed in a missile strike on a military base in the Middle East. The Republican appeared to downplay the extent of the casualties in the conflict, suggesting that the death tolls suffered by the US military during the Vietnam and Afghanistan wars were far higher.
On Saturday, the US Central Command reported that four American service members had lost their lives after Iranian forces had pounded a military installation in Jordan and Iraq with ballistic missiles and kamikaze drones the previous day.
In a phone interview with the New York Post later on Saturday, Trump said that the recent losses were a “shame,” claiming that the American troops “died because they don’t want to see Iran have a nuclear weapon and they don’t want to see the Middle East blown up.”
EXPLORE MORE
How AI Aids Incident Response: Why Humans Alone Cannot Do IR Efficiently
AI accelerates incident response by correlating alerts and generating reports in minutes,…
Hackers abused Cisco SD-WAN zero-day since 2023 to gain full admin control
Cisco SD-WAN vulnerability CVE-2026-20127 has been exploited since 2023 to gain unauthenticated…
Endangered Missing Juvenile Ayden Clardy from the 15th District Has Been Located
The Philadelphia Police Department is seeking the public’s assistance in locating endangered…
Judge allows taxpayer-funded abortions to resume in Pennsylvania temporarily
HARRISBURG, Pennsylvania — Commonwealth Court Judge Matthew Wolf has declined to allow…
12 Million exposed .env files reveal widespread security failures
Mysterium VPN found 12M IPs exposing .env files, leaking credentials and revealing…
Lazarus APT group deployed Medusa Ransomware against Middle East target
North Korea’s Lazarus Group used Medusa ransomware in an attack on an…
Responding to criticisms voiced by Democratic members of Congress, the US president charged: “Have you ever asked how many people died in Vietnam? Have you ever asked how many people died in Afghanistan in one day? In one day, run by [former US President] Sleepy Joe Biden.”
Trump went on to argue that the US military has incurred far fewer casualties during the ongoing conflict with Iran and the January raid of US commandos in Venezuela, during which they abducted President Nicolas Maduro.
His remarks came after Democratic Representative Nikki Budzinski described the death of the two US service members in Jordan as the “cost of President Trump’s needless war.” Another Democratic lawmaker, Herb Conaway, similarly demanded in a post on X that “Trump end this war that he started.”
There have also been criticisms of Trump’s Middle Eastern policy from the conservative camp as well.
Former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who once was a fervent MAGA supporter but has fallen out with Trump over the Iran war, lashed out at US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, who said on X that the slain American service members’ “sacrifice only stiffens our resolve.”
In a post of her own, she wrote: “Sacrifice?? What the f**k are you talking about??”
“They did not willingly sacrifice themselves,” Greene insisted, adding that the US troops “were killed because of the war you, Trump, and the admin, are waging on behalf of a FOREIGN COUNTRY, Israel.”
Aside from Greene, several other prominent figures, including podcaster and journalist Tucker Carlson, commentator Candace Owens, and radio show host Alex Jones, have broken with the MAGA camp, citing their strong disagreement with the war on Iran.
The latest incident in Jordan and Iraq has brought the total death toll for US forces to 18 since the US and Israel launched their military campaign against the Islamic Republic in late February.
