President Donald Trump has a message about the casualties in the six-month-old war he started with Iran: It’s “small potatoes.”
That was Trump’s description Friday of a military conflict that has already cost the lives of 18 U.S. service members.
Trump made the remark during an exchange with reporters in the Oval Office after ABC News reporter Rachel Scott asked him about Vice President JD Vance’s insistence that the ongoing fighting should not be called a war.
“Can you explain to the American people, if this is not a war, what exactly is it?” Scott asked.
Trump said he preferred the term “military conflict.”
And then came the part that immediately stood out.
“It’s small potatoes for us. It’s not a big thing,” Trump said.
Scott fired back saying: “It certainly doesn’t feel like small potatoes. 18 service members have died. We’re seeing record long deployments.”
“Why is it record long?, Trump replied. “How long were we in Vietnam?”
The president pointed to what he described as the intermittent nature of the U.S. strikes and compared the conflict with previous American wars.
“We did Venezuela, and we did this,” Trump said. “In Venezuela, we lost nobody, and this, we lost 18 people.”
“In Vietnam you lost 100,000 people and in other conflicts, you lost tens of thousands of people,” Trump said.
But it doesn’t make the phrase any less striking.
For the families of the 18 service members who have died, this isn’t a comparison on a spreadsheet.
It’s a dead son or daughter. A dead husband or wife. A dead parent.
And the “conflict” isn’t necessarily over.
Trump himself said Friday that the United States could carry out additional strikes against Iran, including a possible attack on an underground nuclear facility known as Pickaxe Mountain.
So the president is simultaneously insisting that the conflict isn’t a war, describing it as intermittent and calling it “small potatoes,” while U.S. service members continue to be killed and the military operation continues to cost billions of dollars.
Whatever label the administration chooses to use, the human cost is real.
