One of President Donald Trump’s allies in the Senate, Sen. Jim Justice (R-WV), has a dire warning for his party — namely, that the Iran war is poised to dearly cost them in the upcoming midterm elections.
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“This situation in Iran is causing repercussions like you can’t imagine,” Justice told journalists according to a post on X by Punchbowl News reporter Andrew Desiderio. “And I’m a real believer that once we decided to go, we gotta win.”
Desiderio also reported that Justice also referenced the USS Abraham Lincoln’s “record time at sea. There are complaints of inadequate food and a bad climate for mental health aboard the ship.
“I always call the voters Toby and Edith,” Justice elaborated in his statement. “Right now, Toby and Edith are standing on their front porch and they’re selling their dishes … They’ve done everything right, and they’re selling their dishes. Sad, isn’t it?”
Although Justice slammed Democrats for having “a nothing hand” for the upcoming midterm elections, he suggested that Republicans were not helping their own case.
“Republicans have done so much good, it’s unbelievable, and are so horrible at marketing themselves, that they’re scared to death about the midterms,” Justice argued. “How can you be that if you haven’t done a lousy marketing job?”
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Justice also pushed back against the arguments made by some Republicans, including Trump himself, that anguish over the economy and war in Iran are exaggerated. He did not, however, mention the president by name.
“Everybody’s sat back [and] said it’ll be ok,” Desiderio said. “I’ve been the voice that’s been saying, ‘You people are living in a cave if you don’t see that the folks out there … are hurting.’”
He added, “Whether it be gas prices or food prices or whatever it may be, they’re hurting[,] And we need to absolutely be more in tune with them.”
This is not the first time that Justice has parted ways with the Trump administration. In 2025, after reviewing the massive cuts to food stamps and other forms of welfare in Trump’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill, Justice argued that “if we don’t watch out, people are going to get hurt, people are going to be upset. It’s going to be the No. 1 thing on the nightly news all over the place.”
Despite occasionally criticizing Trump, Justice overwhelmingly votes with the president on every major agenda item. The Trump administration dropped a 2023 Justice Department investigation into Justice’s coal empire.
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