Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro called the U.S.-Iran conflict on Wednesday “a war of choice” and questioned whether President Trump had achieved anything meaningful, even after the two sides agreed to a two‑week ceasefire.
“The president’s going to do everything in his power today to spin us and tell us different tales and make up a whole bunch of stuff,” Mr. Shapiro said in a fireside chat with Rev. Al Sharpton in New York City. “If you don’t know why you went in, you sure as heck don’t know when it’s time to come out or how to get out. He destroyed a whole lot of innocent lives.”
The Sharpton event is doubling as an early audition for likely 2028 Democratic contenders. Former Vice President Kamala Harris, ex‑Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona, and Govs. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, Andy Beshear of Kentucky, and Wes Moore of Maryland are slated to appear.
The four-day gathering opened a day after Mr. Trump announced the ceasefire, hours before his deadline for Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz or face renewed strikes. The deal pauses U.S. and Israeli bombing and reopens the strait for two weeks while talks continue.
Before that, Democrats eyeing 2028 blasted Mr. Trump’s decision to launch joint strikes with Israel, accusing him of trampling Congress’s war powers and breaking his promise to avoid new foreign entanglements. They’ve said the money spent on an “unnecessary” war should go to struggling U.S. families.
Democrats are well aware that two of the likely top contenders for the 2028 GOP nomination — Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio — will struggle to distance themselves from the war and its fallout.
Patrick Griffin, a Republican strategist, said Democrats have found a potent line of attack by turning Mr. Trump’s own anti‑interventionist rhetoric against him, but warned it may not last.
“The worst thing in politics you can do is be a hypocrite,” Mr. Griffin said. “When you can flip the script on someone who is a hypocrite and who is damaging you from a policy standpoint, it’s even more effective.”
Still, he said, “Nothing’s worked against Trump yet. The Democrats have found no garlic, no silver bullet.”
Some Democrats have taken a harder line than others.
Mr. Pritzker and Reps. Alexandria Ocasio‑Cortez of New York and Ro Khanna of California say Mr. Trump is unfit to serve and must be removed from office.
“Let’s be honest, there is something genuinely wrong with this man, and the 25th Amendment must be invoked before it’s too late,” Mr. Pritzker said in a social media video posted Wednesday.
Ms. Ocasio‑Cortez said Tuesday that Mr. Trump is jeopardizing the “safety and stability of the United States.”
“Whether by his Cabinet or Congress, the president must be removed from office,” she said. “We are playing with the brink.”
Ms. Harris, the party’s 2024 nominee, has been more measured.
Before the ceasefire announcement, she had said Mr. Trump started a “disastrous war” with “no plan and no strategy for how to end it.”
“Trump’s recklessness is needlessly putting our brave service members in harm’s way,” she said. “We must all stand against this and oppose funding this illegal war of choice.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Mr. Trump “repeatedly made a promise to the American people: no new wars,” and “Now, he’s threatening to wipe out an entire civilization.”
On Wednesday, Mr. Shapiro zeroed in on the administration’s stated objectives. He said Mr. Trump had failed to make a definitive case that Iran’s nuclear program was destroyed and questioned whether replacing what he called a “90‑year‑old dictator” with a younger one amounted to progress.
“It is just the latest example of the kind of chaos Donald Trump brings to everything he touches,” he said.
On the Strait of Hormuz, he said Iranian coordination under the ceasefire undercut the rationale for keeping energy prices in check.
“The Strait of Hormuz, which used to be open, which was a key reason why we could keep gas prices low, is now somehow being controlled by the Iranians,” he said. “Not sure that’s a good idea.”
“The manner in which the president of the United States has gone about this, I think, makes us less safe, not more safe,” he said.
Democratic criticism has been building since late February, when Mr. Trump ordered U.S. forces to join Israel in coordinated strikes on Iran’s nuclear and missile infrastructure.
Mr. Griffin, meanwhile, said Democrats may still undermine their own case. “They’re going to overplay their hand, which they always do,” he said. “They’ll lose the very case that they could have gotten some traction with.”
