A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
President Trump is once again ramping up aggression towards Iran, threatening to bomb Iranian bridges and power plants, including ones near the capital city, Tehran. And he's rejecting the idea of making another deal with Iran.
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Trump is selling the war as a success. He was in Marietta, Georgia, yesterday.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Venezuela, Iran. America is back. It's stronger than ever before. And I'm telling you, it's only going one way - it's going up.
MARTIN: But support for Trump's actions abroad is going down even among his own supporters. NPR's Deepa Shivaram joins us now. So let's start with a new polling out from Politico that shows President Trump's own base is getting tired of the war.
DEEPA SHIVARAM, BYLINE: Yeah. I mean, these polling numbers from July show some bad news for the president. The poll asked Trump's MAGA base whether the U.S. should continue the war, even if it increases costs. And just 37% said yes. And that number is down from two months before, when the base was split on this 50-50. So there's a pretty significant decline here among the supporters who, keep in mind, back Trump staunchly.
And, of course, this is happening as costs continue to rise, right? Gas prices are going up again. Inflation is up. And at the same time that Americans are struggling with these higher prices, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said this week that the Iran war so far has cost $37.5 billion, that's with a B, which is pretty big for a price tag for a war that Trump said would end months ago. And, you know, not to mention American troops who have been killed and injured in action as well.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. How is the president addressing economic issues?
SHIVARAM: Yeah. So Trump in his speech yesterday made one argument that I thought was kind of interesting, A. He was trying to set up almost a side-by-side comparison of the U.S.' operations in Venezuela to Iran. So after U.S. forces captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro earlier this year, the U.S. started to control Venezuelan oil exports, and the Trump administration says that the U.S. is benefiting from this economically. Though I will say there isn't much transparency around that. So Trump is saying that operations in Venezuela basically have paid for themselves, and he's sort of trying to convince Americans that Iran will be something like that, that it'll be worth it in the end.
At the same time, though, he's also continuing to mock the idea that affordability is important. He's saying that he just inherited inflation and a bad economy from former President Biden. At the same time, he also did kind of ask for a bit of patience from voters and some time to try to lower costs.
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TRUMP: Oil will be coming - it's going to be tumbling down. It was three weeks ago. They thought we had a deal. I said, I don't think we have a deal with these guys. They break every deal they make. But I said, you know. But people thought the geniuses on Wall Street - they came down, really down. And goes back up a little bit. But it's going to come down maybe lower than when we even started. But just give me a little time.
MARTÍNEZ: Yeah. And that's something that President Trump has been asking Americans to give him time for a while now.
SHIVARAM: Yeah.
MARTÍNEZ: His party, though, is starting to run out of time before the midterms. So is the president factoring that in at all?
SHIVARAM: You know, it seems like no. Earlier this week, the president himself said that the midterm elections weren't a part of his decision-making process on Iran, and it's putting members of his own party in a complicated position when addressing the president's economic agenda. And it's not just with Iran. For example, Trump has recently announced more tariffs on Canada, and that's left Republicans in states like Maine trying to distance themselves from the president's plans.
MARTÍNEZ: All right. That's NPR's Deepa Shivaram. Deepa, thank you very much.
SHIVARAM: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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