Don Jr. Calls Out Dad Over Major Broken Campaign Promise

The president’s eldest son says Republicans need to be honest about why they just got “smoked.”

Donald Trump Jr.

President Donald Trump’s eldest son has been surprisingly candid in calling out why his father’s candidates got “smoked” in the midterms.

Donald Trump Jr. admits MAGA voters turned on Republicans because his dad launched a war with Iran after promising on the campaign trail that a vote for him was a vote for no new wars.

“I’ve seen a few talking heads—guys like, you know, Mark Thiessen out there trying to claim that the Iran war had nothing to do with Republicans losing, right? There’s no downside to the Iran War,” Don Jr. said on his Triggered podcast. “Disgusting, actually.”

He continued, “Whether you think it was the right decision or not, the Iran War is largely what shifted voter sentiment and caused this wave, right? It jacked up the price of gas. That’s the thing that people feel most immediately in their pockets, and it changed their minds.”

The younger Trump, 48, suggested that voters do not care whether the war is the right thing to do or not—they care that they did not get what they voted for.

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“We also campaigned on not getting into these things, and we don’t have to debate whether it was the right thing or the wrong thing,” Don Jr. said. “I don’t have any of the details. I’m not privy to any of that in terms of the intelligence. But it was definitely something after Afghanistan and Iraq that we probably didn’t want to be into.”

He added, “Even though I don’t believe this is going to be one of those forever wars, and I bring this up mainly just to say that we’re only going to rebuild if we’re actually honest about what happened. It’s frankly vital that the Republican Party understand that voters aren’t just going to give them the benefit of the doubt, especially in a midterm when my father himself isn’t on the ballot.”

Don Jr. called Tuesday’s results a “blue tsunami” and a “wake-up call.” To swing the pendulum back for Republicans in two years, he says the party has to be honest with how they got here. He has endorsed Vice President JD Vance’s Election Day postmortem, which said it was war with Iran that cost Republicans all-important Senate seats in typically ruby-red states like South Carolina, Kansas, and Iowa.

A provision of the deal for President Donald Trump to drop his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS gave him and members of his family sweeping tax amnesty. Trump's sons Don Jr. (pictured) and Eric along with the Trump Organization were plaintiffs in the original lawsuit brought against the IRS earlier this year.

Donald Trump Jr., 39, says he agrees with 42-year-old JD Vance’s postmortem of the election, which blames the Iran war and gas prices for Tuesday’s blue wave.

Annabelle Gordon/Annabelle Gordon/Reuters

“The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump-Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in ‘26,” Don Jr. said. “Honestly, no excuses here. A lot of our voters showed up, but we lost a lot of them, too.”

Don Jr. said Trump voters do not owe MAGA anything if they are not pleased with the results.

“Was every voter thrilled with how enforcement has been handled as it relates to immigration? No, and I’m not going to sit here and pretend otherwise,” Don Jr. said. “The exit polls say 57 percent thought it went too far, but here’s the thing: we really need to understand these voters don’t owe us anything. They can make up their own minds. A lot of them were Democrats 10 years ago. A lot of them never voted before 2016. They didn’t sign up for a party. They signed up for Trump and the MAGA movement.”

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