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Podcaster Joe Rogan said Tuesday that many of President Donald Trump’s voters feel betrayed by the military operation in Iran because Trump campaigned for years on avoiding wars.
Discussing the conflict, Rogan said it “just doesn’t make any sense to me, unless we’re acting on someone else’s interests, like particularly Israel’s interests. It just didn’t make any sense to me. Like, if they had supposedly dismantled [Iran’s] chances of making a nuclear bomb — whether or not that’s true — or, I mean, it’s so hard to know.
“Well, it just seems so insane based on what he ran on,” Rogan later added. “I mean, this is why a lot of people feel betrayed, right? He ran on ‘no more wars’ and ‘these stupid senseless wars,’ and then we have one that we can’t even really clearly define why we did it.”
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“Well, but he said he’s against endless wars,” his guest, journalist and professor Michael Shellenberger, replied.
“Listen, man. They’re all endless,” Rogan said. “Do you ever hear [Donald] Rumsfeld talk about Iraq when it first happened? They were talking about like six weeks. Six weeks.”
The quote Rogan appeared to be referencing was former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld speaking to American troops at Aviano Air Base in February 2003, one month before the Iraq War began.
“It is not knowable if force will be used,” Rumsfeld said. “But if it is to be used, it is not knowable how long that conflict would last. It could last, you know, six days, six weeks, I doubt six months.”
Shellenberger noted that Americans were concerned about another “endless war” and about potential terror attacks in retribution for the U.S. military action.
“If they did, I don’t think support for the war goes up. It goes down,” he suggested.
“For sure,” Rogan agreed, noting that some unvetted illegal immigrants in recent years were undoubtedly from the Middle East.
“The whole situation internationally has been so tense already with what’s going on in Gaza, with what’s going on in Ukraine,” he said. “It’s like — and to add this to the pile, it’s like, I mean, it genuinely feels like there’s a real possibility that we might be entering World War III.”
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During the 2016 campaign, Trump sparred with candidate Jeb Bush over former President George W. Bush’s legacy during a primary debate, saying the Iraq war was a mistake.
Trump later doubled down at a town hall event in Bluffton, South Carolina, saying, “If Bush is insulted, I don’t care if he’s insulted,” and he declared the Iraq War was “one of the worst decisions in the history of the country.”
During his first term in office, Trump said in a speech that the wars in the Middle East after 9/11 were a “sacrifice of blood and treasure” and that “the American people are weary of war without victory.”
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During the 2024 campaign, Trump vowed, “I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.” And he described his opponent, former Vice President Kamala Harris, as “the candidate of endless wars.”
A White House spokesperson told Fox News Digital that Trump is “courageously protecting” the country from the Iranian regime.
“President Trump is courageously protecting the United States from the deadly threat posed by the rogue Iranian regime, and that is as America First as it gets. The entire administration is working together to end Iran’s ability to possess a nuclear weapon, use or develop ballistic missiles, arm proxies or use its now-defeated navy,” the spokesperson said.
“The president has called attention to the Iranian regime’s threat prior to ever holding office, and his predecessors have talked about doing something for 47 years. Thankfully, President Trump had the courage to finally do something about it, and Iran is being completely crushed under the weight of the United States military.”
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