Democratic Party leaders are doing nothing to oppose Trump’s war plans for Iran because they support those plans. They just don’t want to be the ones pulling the trigger.
Chuck Schumer has gone silent on Iran. (Victoria Pickering/Flickr)
By Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin’s Newsletter
Reading by Tim Foley
The Wall Street Journal reports that the U.S. has been gathering the most air power seen in the Middle East since the Iraq invasion in 2003.
CNN says the U.S. military is prepared to strike Iran as early as this weekend.
A Trump advisor has reportedly told Axios: “The boss is getting fed up. Some people around him warn him against going to war with Iran, but I think there is 90 percent chance we see kinetic action in the next few weeks.”
The U.S. is by every indication headed straight toward war with Iran, and Trump’s ostensible opposition has conspicuously little to say about it.
We’re seeing some pushback from House Democrats like Ro Khanna, but party leaders like Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer are completely missing from the scene on this issue of unparalleled urgency.
No one is asking democrats to “stop it”, they are asking the two most powerful democrats, Jeffries and Schumer, to issue a single word of opposition. Not responding to reporters with vague process criticisms, but issue firm and clear legal and moral objections to war with Iran. https://t.co/0PJLITv74r
— Adam Johnson (@adamjohnsonCHI) February 19, 2026
Schumer had last year said Trump needed Congreessional approval to strike Iran. But now he’s gone silent when it matters most.
It is fair to say that Democratic Party leaders are doing nothing to oppose Trump’s war plans for Iran because they quietly support those plans. They just don’t want to be the ones pulling the trigger.
When the attack begins they’ll do the same thing they did with Venezuela: publicly finger-wag about rules and protocol while providing no meaningful resistance and privately being glad the empire took out another unauthorized leader.
Democratic Party empire managers seem to secretly love Trump. They love having a bad cop who’s willing to get his hands dirty and slit the throats that need slitting while they sit back looking pretty and fundraise off his depravity.
Democrats hate having to be the bad guy. They hated trying to come up with excuses for why it was fine for Biden to aggressively back a live-streamed genocide in Gaza, and they were relieved to finally hand off that PR nightmare to Trump.
Now they get to just coast along and let Trump take the blame for all the imperial depravity.
On Wednesday, Democratic Senator Mark Warner told MS NOW’s Katy Tur, “I think it’s appropriate that the president has all the options on the table” with regard to war with Iran, complaining only that Trump was too incompetent to strike last month when Iranian domestic turmoil was at its peak.
Warner said that “seeing regime change in Iran would make sense” and made it clear that he would like to see the Iranian government removed, with his only criticism being that Trump was going about obtaining it in a clumsy and impolite way.
“First of all, remember the president said in our previous bombing that we had obliterated Iran’s nuclear program,” Warner said.
“While clearly our military did an exquisite job, we did not obliterate Iran’s nuclear program, number one. Number two, if the president is calling for regime change in Iran?—?and Iran is an awful regime?—?but he should make the case to the American public and to the world of how we’re going to go about doing that.”
This is such a perfect example of the Democratic Party’s relationship with all of Trump’s most depraved agendas.
Here’s this monstrous warmonger, poised to unleash violence in the middle east of potentially devastating consequence, and all Warner can do is hem and haw about proper war etiquette and criticize the president for failing to drop enough bombs on Iran’s nuclear energy infrastructure.
The United States has two right wing war parties: the polite one and the rude one. No party or faction which advances peace and human interests is allowed to flourish at the heart of the empire.
Trump is responsible for the war crimes of his administration, and he belongs in a cell in The Hague. But these Republican swamp monsters wouldn’t be able to do the damage they do without the assistance of the Democratic Party.
Caitlin Johnstone’s work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following her on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, YouTube, or throwing some money into her tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy her books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff she publishes is to subscribe to the mailing list at her website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything she publishes. For more info on who she is, where she stands and what she’s trying to do with her platform, click here. All works are co-authored with her American husband Tim Foley.
This article is from Caitlin’s Newsletter and re-published with permission.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Leave a Reply