Fox News contributor and Marine combat veteran Joey Jones criticized President Donald Trump’s Iran war strategy after two American service members were killed in an Iranian airstrike in Jordan on Friday. A third is missing in action.
That brings the number of U.S. military personnel killed in the Iran war to 16.
“Simply dropping bombs isn’t working,” complained Jones, who called the fallen fighters “heroes” and “gladiators” in a Fox News interview on Saturday.
Jones said Americans are wondering how Iranians could kill U.S. service members when Trump insisted months ago, and has emphasized repeatedly since, that Iran’s military capability has been decimated. And then “reality hits us in the face,” Jones added.
“What we do understand very well is when two Americans are killed in an airstrike,” Jones said. “Most Americans say: ‘How is that even possible?’”
Jones said it may be time for Trump to “drop a big stick,” rather than just carry a big stick. That could involve walking away completely from negotiations and “picking targets methodically, not just a bunch of them at once, and scaring the will out of the leaders of Iran,” Jones envisioned.
Jones warned that time is running out, but appeared to be setting his sights on the November midterm elections and the next general election, rather than on death counts—and Republicans’ dwindling chances of victory if the war drags on.
“We’re running to November right now, running to 2028, politically… running away from the gas pump. It takes time, a little bit of leverage, and I think both of those things the president has less and less of every week this moves on,” Jones emphasized.
The White House did not immediately return the Daily Beast’s request for comment.
Jones is not the only Trump ally voicing frustration. Tucker Carlson, another one-time steadfast Trump supporter and Fox News host, openly expressed his disillusionment with Trump and his Iran war strategy in an interview with Bloomberg journalist and broadcaster Mishal Husain on Friday.
It’s a “factually verifiable statement that Israel pushed us into this [war], and Trump allowed them to do that. The secretary of state himself said that on camera,” Carlson told Husain.
“The United States is unwilling to, or maybe unable, who knows, to restrain Israel,” he added. “I’m not talking to Trump anymore. I haven’t spoken to him since late February, so I don’t really know. But I have a newsfeed. So I know that we did not restrain our ally and partner in this war, Israel. And so, of course, it was never going to work.”
Carlson claimed he counseled Trump against launching a war against Iran. “You’re getting led around by the nose by Israel. Everyone can see it,” he recalled telling the president. “Nobody cares about the Iran nuclear program. There are a lot of bad people with nuclear weapons. We don’t want more of them. But this is not about nuclear weapons. This is about sucking us into a regime change war against Iran.”
Carlson insisted: “I’m not even attacking Israel, by the way. They have a different view of what the end of this should look like. They have a different set of interests. They’re a different country. They have a different goal.”
Just weeks after Trump hailed the beginning of a historic deal with Iran, the Trump administration has launched seven straight days of strikes against the country as the deal has dissolved.
When asked by NewsNation correspondent Hannah Brandt about the escalation in Iran, and what he thought of Iran declaring it no longer plans to follow the previously established ceasefire, Trump replied: “I couldn’t care less.”
