Trump Downplays Worsening Conditions Aboard USS Lincoln and Defends Rising Energy Costs From Iran War

The president says he will “never apologize” for the Iran war even as sailors jump overboard and gas eclipses $4 per gallon

Photo of the USS Lincoln by Eric Powell on Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

As Donald Trump’s war against Iran nears its sixth month, we are finally beginning to learn more about the physical and emotional toll it has had on our service members.

Aboard the USS Lincoln in particular, an aircraft carrier whose sailors have endured 240 uninterrupted days at sea, setting a modern-day deployment record, conditions are especially dire.

Family members have expressed concern regarding rumors of severe supply shortages, food scarcity, deteriorating hygiene, and exhaustion throughout the ship’s crew. The awful conditions are being blamed for declining morale and a rise in suicidal ideations, with multiple service members reportedly attempting to go overboard during their extended deployment.

On August 3, US officials revealed that one sailor had to be recovered from the water after suffering what was described as a mental health episode, according to CNN.

Making matters worse, the wife of the sailor believes the administration had engaged in an intentional cover-up of the incident, telling MS NOW that she was not informed about what had happened to her husband until almost a week later. “I think that it was handled very poorly because they didn’t inform me and they didn’t want me to know,” she said. “They’re just trying to cover this up.”

Nevertheless, Trump has dismissed the crew’s hardships, arguing on Friday that the Lincoln’s deployment had not gone “nearly long enough.”

Said, no less, by a draft dodger who has never lived in the shoes of those who are being asked to fight his war.

Democratic US Senator Mark Kelly, who served as a Navy captain and NASA astronaut, condemned the president’s dismissive comments, explaining that Trump’s privileged and carefree lifestyle has precluded him from understanding the daily sacrifices being paid by our service members.

“The president’s comments are just uncalled for,” Kelly told MS NOW on Monday. “I mean, he’s a guy that has spent a good portion of his adult life sitting on gold toilets and doesn’t know what hardship is and doesn’t understand our service members.

“He doesn’t understand sacrifice.”

Likewise, Democratic US Senator Ruben Gallego, a retired Marine, criticized the White House’s complete lack of leadership and planning throughout the conflict.

“I was just speaking to a [sailor’s] spouse just about three days ago, and this is the current problem right now,” he said on ABC News’s This Week. “The deep, deep, deep problem here is that this administration did not plan for this war, did not plan how to get out of this war, [and] did not really understand how this war was going to escalate.”

Of course, sailors aboard the USS Lincoln are not the only ones paying the price for the president’s lack of judgment. From the dinner table to the gas pump, every American is starting to feel the war’s effects on the economy.

Namely, gas has exceeded the highest prices ever recorded for August as the war continues without end, with Trump even threatening to expand the conflict to include strikes against Oman — another regional oil supplier and US ally.

The national average for gas has now surpassed $4 per gallon, a full $1 increase compared to prices this time last year. According to congress, Americans have now spent over $56 billion more for gas since the war started, averaging out at around $477 more per household.

Nevertheless, the president says he will “never apologize” for the Iran war and its impact on energy prices, a statement that should surely cost him this November.

While he insists that $4 per gallon gas is a small price to pay to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb, experts maintain the regime was nowhere close to developing such a weapon, with little evidence of any dedicated military program existing in the Islamic Republic since 2003.

“We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that [the supreme leader] has not reauthorized the nuclear program he suspended in 2003,” the US intelligence community noted as recently as 2025.

Moreover, after the president ordered airstrikes against the regime’s uranium enrichment facilities in Operation Midnight Hammer, Trump’s former hand-picked national intelligence director, Tulsi Gabbard, told Congress the remnants of Iran’s nuclear capabilities had been “obliterated.”

“There has been no efforts since then to try to rebuild their enrichment capability,” she wrote. “The entrances to the underground facilities that were bombed have been buried and shuttered with cement.”

Whether you believe the assessment of senior intelligence officials or the word of Trump’s own sycophants, there was no imminent nuclear threat posed by Iran until the president needed a convenient narrative to excuse his reckless aggression.

This war should never have started, yet here we are — forced to watch from the sidelines as its mishandling scars another generation of American service members and drives up the cost of living back at home.

But make no mistake, every one of the president’s congressional allies shares equal responsibility for enabling this nonsensical foreign policy and the disrespectful treatment of our men and women in uniform. This election, we have an opportunity to send them a clear and concise message: enough is enough.

Those who volunteer to serve our country deserve better than to be used as pawns in a game Donald Trump doesn’t know how to play. This year, it is time to fix that.

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