Donald Trump Jr. greets people at a campaign rally ahead of midterm elections, at Eugene F. Kranz Toledo Express Airport, in Swanton, Ohio, November 2, 2026. Tom Brenner/Pool via REUTERS
Trump Organization executive Donald Trump Jr. was blasted for endorsing a post blaming his father’s Iran war for Republican midterm losses, with one critic calling it the “latest MAGA scam.”
“Every word of this is 💯💯💯,” Donald Trump Jr. wrote on X on Wednesday, sharing a post by Vice President JD Vance that came after Democrats won control of both the House and Senate on Tuesday.
“The reason we lost is the war,” Vance wrote, adding that the administration had also not focused enough on the economy, inflation, "America First," and breaking with Israel.
Critics, including many conservatives, immediately attacked the posting as disingenuous.
“‘[A]nti-my-own-war’ is … the latest MAGA scam,” Mark Ames, a co-host of the Radio War Nerd podcast, wrote in response. Minutes earlier, he argued that Vance “could’ve resigned if he was at all serious about opposing the Iran War.”
“[P]ut down the coke spoon, grifter boy,” John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary magazine, wrote.
In 2023, Donald Trump Jr. denied that he used the drug after some was found at the White House.
“Luckily, I don’t snort cocaine,” he told a conference.
Daniel Horowitz, a senior editor at the conservative outlet TheBlaze, wrote that Donald Trump Jr's Wednesday agreement with Vance was "circling of the wagons. No humility. No responsibility. Arsonists as the firefighters."
“Anyone who can read knows that Vance dumped the s--- buckets over Trump after the election. And then there are those who are just as clever as Daddy,” Thomas Jäger, a professor of international politics at the University of Cologne, wrote in German, according to X’s translation.
“My reading of this is the Vice President is blaming the policy of the President. And the son of the President is tweeting agreement,” Conor Burns, a former British minister for trade policy, wrote. “Is there a really clever play at work here or is someone dense?”
“I don’t think he could make that move on his own,” Jonathan V. Last of The Bulwark said of Vance in a clip the outlet posted Wednesday under the line “JVL called it.”
“He would need to have, like, Elon and Tucker and Don Jr. saying, ‘Hey, you gotta do this. We’re gonna ride with you. Don’t worry. We can pull it off,’” Last added.
Corruption appears nowhere in the post the president’s son endorsed, and three critics raised it.
“Don Jr. endorsing an election postmortem that doesn’t mention corruption as a motivating factor for voters,” Jesse Singal, co-host of the Blocked and Reported podcast, wrote.
“Oh, and the ridiculous blatant corruption that many Americans, particularly Republicans with a sense of law and order, see as disqualifying, didn’t get airtime in the VP’s post,” AQR Capital Management co-founder Clifford Asness wrote.
“Vance is never going to be president and Democrats are going to investigate you and your whole family for corruption btw,” writer Pedro L. Gonzalez replied to Donald Trump Jr. The White House has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
The Atlantic reported on Oct. 20 that the president’s son had opposed the war from the start and had told his father so, citing two people who spoke with him.
“Remember when they said Trump would get us into a full-blown war with Iran?” Donald Trump Jr. wrote on X in April 2024, as Iran attacked Israel.
“If you’d like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so,” Vance wrote in the post Donald Trump Jr. endorsed on Wednesday.
Seeming defeated, Donald Trump also agreed with Vance's post on Wednesday.
“Yeah, I thought it was good,” the president said, according to ABC News.
“But at the same time, if I had it to do again, I’d have to do it again because long term, it’s the only answer,” adding that Vance’s analysis was “largely true.”