Trump’s Iran war messaging is not winning over Americans – or their representatives

Donald Trump has two things to say about his war with Iran. The first is that it’s already over. And second, a symbolic congressional vote to end it – carried by four members of his own party – is a stab in the back that could derail the peace talks he’s conducting for the war that’s already over. By a 215-208 margin on Wednesday, the US House of Representatives voted to direct the president to withdraw US forces from hostilities with Iran, the first time either chamber has passed such a measure in the little over three months since Operation Epic Fury began on 28 February. By Thursday morning, Trump was on Truth Social calling the vote “unpatriotic” and blaming it on “Trump Derangement Syndrome”. The four Republicans who crossed the aisle, each with different ideologies, don’t exactly fit the bill for such a diagnosis. Thomas Massie of Kentucky is a libertarian-leaning constitutionalist who has opposed the war from day one, lost his primary to a Trump-backed challenger, and has, in Trump’s estimation, nothing left to lose. Warren Davidson of Ohio is a West Point graduate, former army ranger, and ex-Freedom Caucus member who voted against the war with Massie in March, but flipped back until recently. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, a former FBI agent representing Philadelphia’s suburbs, is well known as a moderate who framed his vote in the plainest possible terms “You either follow the law, or you change the law,” he said. “You can’t violate the law. …