The votes had barely been counted when the fight over who was responsible for the 2026 Republican “thumping” began. Vice President JD Vance was among the first to offer an explanation. Echoing Tucker Carlson, Vance argued:
The top four answers (for why the disaster), accounting for nearly all of the responses were: 1) End the war 2) Focus on cost of living/inflation 3) Put America First 4) Change our relationship to Israel.
Vance’s dovish analysis implicitly suggests that Israel and its supporters—including many American Jews—persuaded, manipulated or pressured President Donald Trump into attacking Iran. That decision, the argument goes, drove up inflation and ultimately produced the blue tsunami.
For full disclosure, I am an American Jew who supports Israel and takes a hawkish position on Iran, so I am not naturally inclined toward this explanation. Still, it deserves to be examined objectively. Are the three central claims behind Vance’s argument actually supported by the facts?
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Did Israel and its allies persuade, manipulate or pressure Donald Trump into going to war with Iran?
The first problem with this theory is Donald Trump’s longstanding hostility toward Iran’s ruling regime. His opposition dates back to 1979, when Iranian authorities seized U.S. Embassy personnel—an act of war. Since then, the Iranian regime has killed and wounded thousands of Americans, either directly or through its proxies. Those, too, were acts of war. Iranian operatives have also targeted prominent Americans for assassination, including Trump himself.
Sam Nunberg, who worked with Donald Trump for years, has personally told me that Trump has a deep and intense hatred of the Iranian regime.
The president is also known to be highly emotional and capable of holding a grudge. He rarely forgives an adversary unless that person makes an effort to repair the relationship. Iran’s repeated plots to kill him—including one reportedly carried out before his second term—hardly suggest that Tehran was trying to make amends.
Another fact undercuts the claim. Vance was not the only prominent Trump ally to oppose the war; Donald Trump Jr. has also resisted military action against Iran from the outset. Both men are plainly influential within the president’s inner circle. Is it really plausible that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, conservative commentator Mark Levin, Israeli-American philanthropist Miriam Adelson, former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen or the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) carried more weight with Trump than his own son, his vice president and their allies? That seems unlikely—unless Trump already held a firm view that differed from the doves.
Taken as a whole, this portion of the vice president’s case appears to be plainly false.
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Did the war with Iran cause the increase in inflation and gas prices?
The Iran war has certainly contributed to higher inflation and gasoline prices by restricting oil supplies and disrupting international trade. But it is not the only factor—and it may not even be the most significant one.
RedState’s Shipwreckedcrew points to another conflict that has worsened the economic pressure:
The “Iran War” simply became a vessel into which a lot of other complaints could be poured even though their connection to war was tenuous. Fertilizer and diesel prices are impacted more by the Ukraine War than Iran, and those two huge drivers if continuing high prices in stores.
The BBC reaches a somewhat different conclusion, finding that the Iran conflict has had a slightly greater effect than the war in Ukraine:
The figures suggest the conflict with Iran has had a greater impact on the global drop in diesel export volumes than the Ukraine war. Exports from Russia are down around 670,000 barrels a day compared with a fall of around 810,000 from the Middle East.
Tariffs are another important part of the inflation story. President Trump has revived a tradition associated with the early Republican Party, whose presidents often supported high tariffs to shield American industry. But tariffs can also raise consumer prices. A New York Federal Reserve paper concluded:
The cost of many everyday items would have declined last year and early this year without President Donald Trump’s tariffs… The cost of 67 categories of goods was 2.9 percentage points higher as of February thanks to tariffs… Without the levies, the team found that prices for the products they studied would have pulled back by almost 1%.
Higher federal spending can also add to inflationary pressure. As the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis explains, “An increase in government purchases might drive up the cost of production. In turn, this would drive up inflation.” In 2024, during the Biden administration, the federal government spent $6.8 trillion. That figure rose to $7.04 trillion in 2025 and $7.40 trillion in 2026.
CONTINUE READING: T. Cullen Davis, Texas Oil Tycoon Acquitted in 1970s Murder Trial, Dies at 93
For that reason, blaming the entire inflation increase on the Iran war is a major oversimplification. At most, the conflict may have been the largest single contributor. It almost certainly was not responsible for most of the increase. At the other extreme, its effect may have been considerably smaller than the impact of tariffs.
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Was the Iran war the main force behind the blue tsunami?
Vance does not identify the pollster behind the figures he cites. That individual is reportedly Mark Mitchell, the former—and allegedly dismissed—chief pollster for Rasmussen Reports. Yet Ryan Girdusky, a conservative commentator and a more credible analyst within the dovish camp, has made a similar case. Girdusky points to Democratic data analyst David Shor, who has demonstrated objectivity in the past. Summarizing Shor’s position, Washington Examiner chief political correspondent Byron York wrote that the “war elevated a run-of-the-mill loss into a historic defeat.” Shor wrote:
And there was a giant structural shift in public opinion. His approval ratings on the cost of living plummeted. To put some numbers on this, the day before the Iran war, Donald Trump had a 49 percent approval rating on gas prices. Within a week, it was 33 percent.
Other polling, however, points in a different direction. Atlas had Democrats leading by 16 percentage points in December 2025, before the war began. The RealClearPolitics average also fails to support that conclusion. In addition, a review of roughly 50 midterm polls and surveys—including national averages and state-level exit polls—found that Iran was not the top issue. It ranked behind government corruption, the cost of living—which may itself reflect the war’s impact on gas prices—and immigration. Fox’s exit poll also found that Democratic voters were more angered by the war.
Exit polls, of course, capture only those who voted and exclude nonvoters who are part of the Republican coalition. Still, Republicans turned out at a solid level for a midterm election. Their central problem was that Democrats produced unusually strong turnout while independents moved against the GOP. Vance was therefore wrong to say, “Our voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats.”
Vance’s explanation also leaves out the possible political damage caused by tariffs. Rick Shaftan, the conservative pollster and media consultant I interviewed, believes tariffs were the primary problem. National Review’s Dan McLaughlin has similarly written:
In 183 polls taken between “liberation day” 2025 and the start of the Iran war, Trump’s approval on the economy averaged 41.5 percent approval and 54.5 percent disapproval. And things were not recovering…Trump suffered a net 24.5 point decline on the economy between Election Day 2018 and the start of the Iran war.
The contrast is especially clear in a chart tracking Trump’s economic approval during the implementation of the tariffs on “Liberation Day” and throughout the Iran war. The graphic has circulated widely online.
Here’s a simpler, more truthful, and more accurate data-based explanation of what happened, Che D. https://t.co/jOI8EaE7WA
— Phil Magness (@PhilWMagness) November 4, 2026
A separate chart shows how voters in each state viewed the tariffs’ economic effects.
This same poll (the AP 2026 Voter Poll) has granular data in 45 states. Every state polled had more voters say tariffs hurt their local economy than helped, by a minimum gap of 19 pts and a median gap of 46 pts. Swing states also had large gaps (TX+44, OH+47, MI+50, IA+47). https://t.co/wcLbLfeXUq
— Andrew Lautz (@andrew_lautz) November 5, 2026
History offers another warning. Voters across the Midwest, the West and the South have long been skeptical of tariffs. Earlier Republican tariff policies sometimes triggered major backlash against the party. In 1890, for example, William McKinley’s steep tariff increase contributed to a Republican revolt that cost him his own House seat.
This is the most difficult part of the argument to assess because experts on both sides offer competing interpretations. Even so, it remains an oversimplification to claim that the Iran war alone was the principal cause of the blue tsunami.
Conclusion: Jennifer Van Laar, RedState’s managing editor, has described the vice president’s explanation as “simplistic.” I would go further: It is largely wrong and plainly biased. I also believe it is remarkably disloyal to the president it claims to defend.
Part 3, examining the aftermath, is coming soon…
Editor’s Note: The mainstream media continues to gaslight, distort and misrepresent President Trump, his administration and conservatives.
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