Whether or not America is actually engaged in war with Iran has become a point of contention among President Donald Trump’s MAGA allies.
On Tuesday, one Republican senator inadvertently appeared to argue both sides of the question — within an awkward matter of seconds.
Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) — who on Monday went viral with his “smell” of war remark, despite never having served in the military — at first defended the U.S.-Israeli military operations against Iran when he told reporters: “This is war and we’re taking out the threat.”
CNN’s Manu Raju noted: “You will concede this is war.”
Mullin defensively responded: “We haven’t declared war. They declared war on us but we haven’t.”
Raju pointed out that Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth have both referred to the attacks as “war.”
Mullin repeated: “We haven’t declared it.”
Another journalist said: “Just now you said, ‘This is war.’”
“They called it war,” Mullin countered, before admitting about what he’d just said: “OK, well, that was a misspoke but I was saying that they’ve declared war on us. But war is ugly. It always has been ugly. But we’re taking out a regime that’s been trying to attack us for quite some time.”
“You’re not conceding this is war,” Raju pushed.
Mullin replied: “We haven’t declared war. So if we haven’t declared war, then I don’t see that. The president hasn’t asked us to declare war yet, but they have declared war on us. We’re just simply fighting the threat that’s been at our door for 47 years.”
The exchange quickly went viral on social media, where authoritarianism expert Timothy Snyder likened it to rhetoric from Russia after the start of its invasion of Ukraine.
“This ‘it’s not a war but a special military operation’ is very Kremlin March 2022,” he said on X. “As is the propaganda that we are not starting a war but ending one. As is the confusion of oligarch media as it tries to be faithful in the confusion…”
