Trump calls Iran conflict 'small potatoes,' plays down war

Skylar Woodhouse, Bloomberg News on Sep 4, 2026

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WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump called the war in Iran “small potatoes,” the latest comment from a top U.S. leader downplaying the scope of a conflict that has lasted more than six months.

The comments come a day after Vice President JD Vance said he would not describe the armed hostilities as a “war” given that major combat operations ended months ago. Asked Friday about those remarks, Trump concurred.

“I call it a military conflict because it’s small potatoes for us. It’s not a big thing,” the president said. “You know, we do intermittent strikes. So I heard what he said, and it was interesting because I think that there’s a lot of truth that we’re not fighting right now.”

Trump again compared the death toll of 18 U.S. service members to the wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan, which lasted years and led to the deaths of tens of thousands of American troops, though he acknowledged “we lost 18 great souls.”

“One is too much. But in Vietnam, we lost tens of thousands of people. In Afghanistan, we lost a lot,” he said. “What we’ve done is amazing. We took over Venezuela, and we have essentially taken over Iran.”

Polls show Americans have given Trump poor marks for his handling of the war, which has spiked energy prices for Americans, putting his fellow Republicans in danger of losing control of Congress in the November midterm elections.

Efforts by some Trump officials to minimize the effects of the war have drawn blowback from Democrats. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Thursday said he “misspoke” when he incorrectly said a day earlier that no American service members had died in the war in Iran.

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