WASHINGTON — Rob Wittman, a Republican congressman from Virginia, doesn’t think of President Donald Trump’s war in Iran as a war.
“Right now we are defending U.S. assets there, so there is no war as we speak,” Wittman told HuffPost after presiding over a “pro forma” House session at the Capitol. “There are sanctions that are being placed upon Iran, and we will defend ourselves there in the Gulf, and we want to make sure that we’re bringing this to a conclusion.”
Wittman’s attempt to downplay the significance of the war in Iran — which the president himself routinely refers to as a war — shows the political problem the conflict poses for Republicans ahead of November’s midterm elections. The war has shot up gas prices and voters are pissed, which is endangering Republicans like Wittman, who faces a tough Democratic opponent in a district Trump won by only 5 percentage points.
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Inflation last month surged to 3.7%, up significantly from when Trump took office, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this week, saying the increase in gas prices accounted for more than half of the overall rise of the consumer price index for September. Wages rose only 3% last month, meaning inflation is essentially diminishing workers’ pay.
“It’s all about fuel prices, so we have to look at ways we can reduce that,” Wittman said. “We have to produce more fuel in the United States. We are producing record amounts of oil. We don’t have refining capacity, so it’s not a rocket science figuring out what we need to do. It’s about producing more diesel fuel, more gasoline. We can do that. We need to build new refineries.”
Wittman is far from the only Republican looking to deflect blame from the leader of the Republican Party for high fuel prices. On Tuesday, Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) tried to blame it on Democrats.
“The facts are: Diesel prices have gone up. There’s no question about it. Why has it gone up? Because the Democrats have environmental regulations,” Harris said, before being drowned out by mocking laughter from the audience.
Even the president has acknowledged Iran’s retaliatory attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz have constricted the global oil supply, thereby pushing up prices for gas and diesel. Trump claimed Wednesday the war will end soon, which he’s said dozens of times since launching attacks on Iran in February, and also that there’s plenty of oil coming out of the critical Strait of Hormuz anyway.
“The prices are all coming down and when this war ends — it’s going to end very soon, by the way, very soon — but when the war ends the prices are going to ― they should be much lower now because we are getting tremendous amounts of oil,” Trump said at a rally in Arizona. “I mean, numbers like you had before the war are coming out of the strait.”
Wittman’s Democratic opponent, Shannon Taylor, has highlighted an anti-corruption message in her quest to unseat the nine-term incumbent. But Taylor, who serves as the top prosecutor in the populous Richmond suburb of Henrico County, has also faulted Wittman for voting against symbolic resolutions to end the war.
“Six times, Rob Wittman had a chance to end it. And six times, he voted no,” Taylor said on social media last month. “And now, farmers, truckers, and families across Virginia are paying the price.”