Many people were too relieved to say anything.
Even though Trump was essentially promoting the proposal that Iran made a few weeks ago, which, according to experts, does not achieve Trump’s stated objectives and actually strengthens Iran’s hold on the Strait of Hormuz, the Democrats held themselves back.
The usual rush to point out that “Trump Always Chickens Out” — on Tuesday, no less — was met with more silence than memes.
As Rep. Yasmin Ansari, D-Ariz., pointed out online, this was no time for jokes.
Ansari, the first Iranian-American Democrat in Congress, wrote, “I don’t appreciate anyone – Democrat or Republican – using this moment to call Trump ‘chickened out’ to make TACO jokes.”
He reminded readers that the president was threatening genocide against “an entire civilization” – 90 million people – and said he was grateful that a ceasefire had occurred and that “hundreds of innocent people did not die tonight.”
Other Democrats echoed Ansari’s sentiment, emphasizing the extraordinary threat made by the president.
“When it comes to war and peace, I don’t think about it in political terms,” Rep. Sarah Jacobs, D-Calif., told MS Now.
“I don’t think anyone should do that,” she said.
Rep. Sarah McBride, D-Del., expressed a similar sentiment. “There is nothing celebratory or humorous about the tragic situation that we find ourselves in, that the Iranian people find themselves in,” he said.
And one House Democrat, who granted permission to remain anonymous to speak candidly about the political dynamics, said the widespread polling about the war and the Trump administration is already bad enough. Given the gravity of what was – at least for the time being – averted, there is no need to pile on.
“We don’t need additional victories,” the Democratic lawmaker told MS Now. “We’ve had a lot of wins there.”
The lawmaker said, “You don’t have to win every battle to win the war.”
That doesn’t mean Democrats are necessarily praising the president for pulling America back from the brink or portraying him as some tactical tactician who knows the art of the deal.
In fact, Democrats are aware that – if the roles were reversed and a Democratic president had arranged this ceasefire – there is no doubt that Trump would reject the agreement. Trump was one of the strongest voices opposing President Barack Obama’s Iran deal in 2015 and 2016. Now coming back to that agreement would be a major diplomatic achievement for America.
According to Trump, the new agreement was contingent on Iran agreeing to “the full, immediate and safe opening of the Strait of Hormuz” – the closure of which has, in recent weeks, caused a dramatic increase in the price of oil.
So far, that part of the bargain has not held up, with Iran maintaining operational control over the strait on Wednesday and closing it even as Israel continued attacks on Lebanon.
Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., told MS NOW that there is no doubt that Trump would have “screwed up” the ceasefire if Democrats had struck a deal.
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The top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Representative Gregory Meeks of New York, also called for the Obama-era agreement. “What I’m hearing so far — we’re hearing more and more — it’s going to be less than what we got from the JCPOA,” Meeks said, referring to the Iran deal and its official acronym.
“I’ve heard my Republican colleagues praising it,” Meeks said. “This seems somewhat hypocritical to me.”
And Jacobs said, “The fact that you have this armistice agreement, which, frankly, is not very good for the United States, just shows why we should have never started this war.”
Of course, some Democrats suggested to MS Now on Wednesday that messaging is tricky.
“We need to be in favor of a ceasefire. Of course, we should not be in favor of war,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif.
“But,” he told MS Now, “we must point out that the world was safer before Donald Trump started this malicious, illegal war.”
McBride said that if Trump were not currently president, he would be “rightly criticizing this deal, condemning this deal and blaming everything the president has done for plunging the United States into yet another quagmire in the Middle East.”
He said that, if Iran has the ability to toll boats passing through the strait, it means that – because the oil market is global – “every time Americans go to the gas pump, a portion of their money will be spent rebuilding what was destroyed in Iran by the American military.”
There are a lot of unanswered questions about what’s really in this deal.
“No one really knows what’s going on,” Rep. Greg Landesman, D-Ohio, told MS Now. “And that’s entirely because of the anarchy of Donald Trump.”
Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., a senior House Democrat who has served in Congress since 1997, said the ceasefire “doesn’t alleviate my concerns at all about his mental stability and about how erratic his policy is and how dangerous it is.”
McGovern said he was choosing his words carefully.
“I wouldn’t call him a chicken for backing down, I’m relieved for the world that he backed down,” he said. “I wouldn’t call him TACO; I’d call him crazy.”
Maya Eaglin contributed to this report.
Kevin Frey
Kevin Frey is a congressional reporter for MS Now.
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