Sen. Mark Kelly said President Donald Trump has moved from shifting rationales for his war with Iran to a search for how to “save face” in ending a conflict draining American military resources and consumers.
Speaking to about 70 veterans at Chandler’s VFW Post 7401, Kelly, D-Arizona, joked about his ongoing legal battle over the “illegal orders” video that angered Trump and Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth and suggested the Iran war could stand alongside those in Vietnam and Afghanistan.
“The administration took us into this war without a strategic goal, without a plan, without a timeline, without a way to get out of it,” said Kelly, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “We’ve seen other times when this has happened that we wind up in a conflict for years or, even in some cases, decades.”
Wearing his familiar military fatigues-green jacket with an array of military and NASA patches, Kelly repeatedly went after Trump, whose approval ratings are setting modern lows and as Kelly faces more public questions about a 2028 presidential run.
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He punted on the White House question at least three times with the group, but remained on the attack with Trump.
“They’re flailing,” Kelly said. “The president painted himself into a corner. It’s really hard to get out because we have a secretary of Defense that, in my view, is not qualified for the job. His goal in this conflict was just to drop as many bombs and shoot as many high-end missiles as we possibly can at as many targets.”
Now Trump “is trying to figure out is how does he save face,” Kelly said. “I’m going to continue to push this administration to try to get them to make smarter decisions. What I’ve seen so far has been (an expletive).”
The war in Iran may have entered a new, grayer phase on May 8 after the United States and Iran traded fire in the Strait of Hormuz amid a fraying ceasefire and peace negotiations that have yet to offer clear signs of an end. Congress has yet to approve prolonged fighting in Iran and the White House has asserted a pause in fighting stops the clock on needing it.
Trump, Kelly said, is the man who as a candidate said he was smarter than the military’s leaders.
In a June 2016 appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Trump was asked if he knew more about the terrorist organization called the Islamic State than U.S. generals did.
“They don’t know much because they’re not winning. That I can tell you,” Trump said then. “I think they’re not winning for a different reason. I think (President Barack Obama) is hurting them. From what I hear, it’s being run from the White House.”
Kelly noted that Trump’s military experience amounted to attending a military high school.
“In my view, the problem is he doesn’t take advice, and a lot of those folks around him are also ‘yes’ men,” Kelly said. It doubled down on an assertion Kelly made about Hegseth as well and it is among the items the government claims Kelly has said to undermine the military’s chain of command.
Kelly drew a smattering of applause when he joked that “you may have seen recently in the news with me. I said something the president didn’t like.”
It was a reference to the November video he made with five Democratic colleagues directed at military personnel. That video reminded them of the longstanding military rule that no one is obligated to follow illegal orders.
The video didn’t suggest what, if anything, is illegal, but its timing and its messengers ensured its political overtones. Trump and Hegseth have called it “seditious,” a crime punishable by death, and Hegseth moved to censure and demote Kelly, who is a former Navy combat pilot.
That led to Kelly’s lawsuit blocking the Pentagon from taking steps to reduce his pension and limit free speech. Kelly won a preliminary injunction on the matter in February, and the Pentagon argued its case May 7 on appeal.
The video appeared less than two months after the United States started military strikes on suspected drug boats in international waters. Over nearly 50 strikes since September, the U.S. has killed an estimated 163 people.
In Chandler, Kelly again vowed not to back down to an administration he sees as intent on silencing dissent.
“We’ll see how long this goes,” Kelly said of a case that could make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. “But I’m not going away because it is really important to 2 million retired service members and even beyond. We’ve got to stick up for our rights. The First Amendment — the right of free speech — is the one that guarantees the other rights.”
Cindy McCain, the retiring executive director of the United Nations’ World Food Programme, introduced Kelly at the facility named in honor of her late husband, former Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona. She and Kelly shared a hug before he spoke.
Cindy McCain announced in February she is stepping down from the agency because she had not recovered from a stroke in October.
