Politics

Trump speaks on behalf of fallen U.S. troops in brazenly self-serving display

Published

2 months ago

July 23, 2026

When it comes to U.S. service members who have made the ultimate sacrifice during the Iran war, Donald Trump has struggled to know what to say — and how to say it.

In early March, for example, the day after he launched combat operations, the president posted a prerecorded video to social media in which he tried to comment on the deaths of U.S. troops. “Sadly, there will likely be more,” Trump said. Appearing to break from the text on his teleprompter, he added“Before it ends, that’s the way it is.”

A few days later, Time magazine asked the president whether Americans should be worried about possible retaliatory attacks from Iran. “I guess,” Trump replied. By the end of the first week of the war, the president had attended the dignified transfer of six fallen U.S. service members as they were returned home, but he defied American tradition and wore a baseball cap as caskets were carried from the plane.

The image that came into focus was a leader who appeared to be approaching his responsibilities with an unmistakable mix of disrespect and a blasé attitude about developments that he should have taken with a sobriety that he just couldn’t muster.

This week, as the U.S. death toll reached 18, the Republican appeared to use his social media platform to suggest that the total number of fatalities wasn’t that bad because other modern wars were even deadlier. On Wednesday morning, he again traveled to Dover Air Force Base to attend another dignified transfer (he didn’t wear a hat this time), but before departing for the event, the president spent a couple of minutes speaking to the press.

“We’re going to Dover … to honor our heroes, and they are indeed great heroes, actually,” Trump said. Referring to the troops who were killed, he added, “They said, and all of them said very strongly, ‘We can’t let, we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.’”

There’s obviously nothing wrong with honoring fallen troops, and if the president wanted to say that their sacrifice was not in vain, it wouldn’t have been controversial in the slightest.

But Trump went far further, claiming that the soldiers who were killed abroad had somehow expressed personal support for the war he launched and endorsed his dubious rationale for the conflict.

As a piece in The New Republic summarized“For Trump to claim that soldiers who are no longer alive were in full agreement with his war is astounding and insulting to their memories. Trump has no idea how the fallen soldiers felt about the war or if they agreed with it, and the opinions of U.S. troops are as diverse as those of any other group of Americans. The soldiers honored in Dover Wednesday were simply doing their duty and following orders.”

A New York Times report added that Trump “did not say how he knew the fallen soldiers’ views, but he decided to speak for them at a perilous political moment.”

It’s a simple rule: Presidents shouldn’t put words in the mouths of fallen soldiers, especially ones they did not know. It’s common sense and common decency that Trump continues to lack.

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

Politics

Supreme Court rejects bid to revive Missouri’s pro-GOP redistricting before midterms

Published

33 minutes ago

September 8, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

A ruling from the Supreme Court on Tuesday means Missouri voters will likely go to the polls this fall under the same congressional map used two years ago, not one Republican state lawmakers adopted to try to pick up an additional House seat for the GOP.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh turned down a Republican-backed emergency appeal that sought to block a Missouri Supreme Court ruling last week restoring earlier district lines and ordering voters to weigh in on the redistricting plan in November for use in future elections.

Kavanaugh issued the ruling because he handles urgent matters arising in the 8th Circuit, which includes Missouri. Kavanaugh issued no explanation of his decision, nor did he indicate that he referred the matter to the full court, as is customary in significant cases. Missouri officials could ask another justice for relief, but such requests are almost never granted.

The justices rarely disturb state courts’ decisions about matters like the referendum petitions in Missouri that sought to put the redistricting before voters for approval.

However, lawyers for Missouri Secretary of State Denny Hoskins warned the Supreme Court that the state faced “disaster” and “unprecedented chaos” in part because primaries already took place under the new lines last month.

Democrats argued any last-minute chaos to Missouri’s election administration was intentionally created by Hoskins, pointing to Republican leaders in the state arguing that delaying the decision on the redistricting referendum would benefit Republicans.

President Donald Trump denounced the state supreme court ruling last week.

“The Election Process, as usual, is being disturbed in America!” he wrotein a post on Truth Social. “Missouri must be able to use the map that was in effect just a couple of months ago, in the Primary. This is a Dark Day for “Justice” in Missouri!”

Politics

Gavin Newsom’s first 2028 test: This fall, in Nevada

Published

1 day ago

September 7, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

LAS VEGAS — If California Gov. Gavin Newsom runs for president in 2028, next-door Nevada will be a crucial test. This fall’s governor’s race is offering a preview.

As GOP Gov. Joe Lombardo runs for reelection, he’s trying to pin high Nevada fuel prices — a majority of which is imported from California — on “Gavin Newsom’s energy policies.” He lambasts California as too expensive and too regulated. And he’s hammering his Democratic opponent, Attorney General Aaron Ford, for accepting Newsom’s endorsement, betting that it will turn off Nevada swing voters.

“The contrast is simple: I’m fighting Gavin Newsom’s agenda and Aaron Ford is trying to import it into Nevada,” Lombardo said in a statement to Blue Light News.

This could be a test run for 2028, when Newsom may call upon Nevadans — one-fifth of whom were born in California — to deliver him a primary victory in the early-voting state, and possibly a presidential victory.

“They understand California costs more,” Donna West, chair of the Nevada Democratic Party’s senior caucus, said of Nevada’s California expats. “They also understand that California is the fourth-largest economy in the entire world, and that Gavin Newsom ran that as effectively as he possibly can.”

Newsom’s office declined to comment. A person close to the governor, granted anonymity to discuss the sentiment in his orbit, said they are “thrilled” Republicans are spending money to “plaster Newsom’s name across a key early state.”

“Republicans seem awfully concerned about an endorsement from someone who leads the 2028 Democratic field in Nevada by nearly 2-to-1,” the person said, pointing to a November 2025 Emerson poll of a hypothetical 2028 Democratic primary field.

Ford, for his part, shrugs off the attacks.

“Lombardo tries to cast blame elsewhere, but everyone knows that when the war started in February, that we saw our gas prices increase almost immediately,” Ford told Blue Light News after a recent town hall in Las Vegas. “People believe their own eyes, and they remember their experiences.”

The demonization of California is nothing new in Nevada politics: For years, Republicans have blasted their western neighbor as too expensive and too woke.

But the stakes are higher, and the connection more palpable, this year, as Newsom explores a presidential bid. He would likely need to perform very well in Nevada, now second on the Democratic calendar, to build early momentum toward the party nomination. And come November 2028, he’d need to fare well in Nevada again, this time among the state’s general electorate, a plurality of which are independents.

Newsom has stumped for Democrats across the country this cycle, and he blitzed through the South this week, including a swing through South Carolina, whose Democrats will vote first, right before Nevada, in 2028.

But Republicans are looking to weaponize Newsom’s Silver State swing in July, where Ford introduced him at a new Las Vegas field office as “the governor of the great state of California.”

“Our next president!” an audience member shouted, eliciting cheers.

The Lombardo-aligned Better Nevada PAC shared polling with Blue Light News in July showing Newsom’s favorability 20 points underwater in Nevada and losing a hypothetical 2028 head-to-head with Vice President JD Vance. Shortly thereafter, the PAC began an ad blitz tying Ford to the California governor.

Billboards touting Newsom’s endorsement of Ford, paid for by the PAC, now line highways across Nevada, and digital and streaming ads have run consistently since the visit. “Newsom and Ford: Shared vision. Shared values,” one ad says.

A person familiar with the PAC’s internal polling, granted anonymity to discuss private data, said it shows Newsom’s endorsement is now the second-most-known datapoint about the attorney general.

“Gavin Newsom is the singular most unpopular elected official in Nevada,” said Jeremy Hughes, a longtime Nevada GOP strategist running the Lombardo-aligned PAC. “Aaron Ford brought him into the state. … There’s no better way to help him out than to put up these signs and run ads, letting people know that he’s excited about being endorsed by Gavin Newsom.”

Republicans in the state have long blamed Californian expats for housing shortages and rising prices and connect their opponents to California liberals. A surge of ex-Californians leaving the state during the Covid-19 pandemic, some fleeing high taxes and cost of living, accelerated the trend.

Sam Brown, the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate in 2022, blasted the “energy policies of Gavin Newsom”; in 2018, GOP governor nominee Adam Laxalt lamented the “Californization” of Nevada, even as Californians bankrolled his campaign. During Lombardo’s first run for governor in 2022, he slammed incumbent Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak for taking his cues from Newsom: “Don’t let Steve Sisolak turn Nevada into California,” one post said. Republicans tied their opponents to Nancy Pelosi for decades.

Lombardo’s argument this time around is more focused. He notes that the vast majority of Nevada’s gasoline comes from California, and argues that California’s efforts to cut carbon emissions have caused fuel prices to soar. A gallon of gas in Nevada costs nearly $5, according to AAA, one of the highest prices in the nation.

“The policies coming from Gavin Newsom and California Democrats … don’t stop at their state line,” Lombardo said in a statement. “Nevada and other states import a significant portion of our fuel from California, so when Governor Newsom shuts down refineries and imposes regulations that reduce supply and increase costs, Nevada families feel the consequences at the pump.”

It’s a strategy that allows Lombardo — running in a difficult national environment for incumbent Republicans — to acknowledge voters’ economic pain without blaming President Donald Trump or his own party. Indeed, Lombardo shared an April column in the Nevada Independent that placed blame at the feet of both Newsom and Trump. (Lombardo, in his post, blamed only Newsom.)

Democrats don’t think voters will buy it. ‘“As far as gas prices, it’s so obviously increased since the war,” Rep. Dina Titus said. “People in Nevada aren’t stupid.”

Ford has his own millstone to saddle Lombardo with: the president. At a recent town hall in Las Vegas, he repeatedly blasted the “Lombardo-Trump economy” that is “making everything too expensive.”

“Voters absolutely tie the handling of the economy to Trump,” said Mike Noble, an independent Phoenix-based pollster who works in Nevada regularly. “Instead of blaming Trump, why not tie it to the boogeyman next door and blame California?”