Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) on Tuesday credited three conservative voices for helping the left push President Donald Trump into a two-week U.S.-Iran ceasefire.
Trump had threatened to bomb civilian targets if the Strait of Hormuz wasn’t reopened and had ratcheted up his violent rhetoric for several days.
“I am relieved that Donald Trump has accepted a ceasefire and withdrawn his threat to destroy Iranian civilization,” Khanna said afterward in a video shared on X. “But let’s be clear, this did not happen because of Congress, which barely made a whimper.”
He said, “This happened because of the force of the American people, not just progressives and liberals, but conservatives like Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene and even Ann Coulter spoke out against the horror of threatening genocide against another people.”
Ex-Fox News host Carlson and former Rep. Greene (R-Ga.) were at the forefront of influential conservatives to publicly oppose Trump’s threat of bombing Iranian power plants and bridges — attacks that would amount to war crimes under international law.
Trump’s war on Iran has already killed at least 13 U.S. military service members and more than 2,000 Iranians and has led the besieged nation to effectively close the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil passes, threatening a global energy crisis.
The MAGA leader sparked outrage with a profanity-laced warning on Easter Sunday, writing on his Truth Social platform, “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastard, or you’ll be living in Hell.”
The president doubled down Tuesday, writing, “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will. … We will find out tonight, one of the most important moments in the long and complex history of the World.”
Trump announced a “double sided” ceasefire less than two hours before his 8 p.m. deadline.
His Easter Sunday post spawned a MAGA mutiny of sorts, with far-right talk show host and former Trump ally Alex Jones calling for the president to be removed from office and right-wing pundit Coulter stating that he is “actually committing war crimes.”
Greene said Tuesday that Trump threatening civilian targets was “evil and madness.” Carlson, a former ear-bender of Trump’s who has advocated against the Iran war since its start, urged U.S. officials close to Trump “to say no” if ordered to launch said strikes.
Khanna used this momentum to galvanize like-minded voices from both sides of the aisle.
He concluded Tuesday in his video, “This tells me one thing: The only thing that will save this country, the only thing that will save our democracy, is a broad, populous social movement — anti-Epstein class, anti-war, pro-working class.”
