Ex-GOP operative warns of 'looming war' as Trump blusters for 'peace that does not exist'

A former Republican operative warned that Trump not only lost the Iran war but set in motion a larger conflict.

Steve Schmidt argued in an episode of The Warning podcast that Trump lost the war with Iran because he failed to achieve any of his aims. However, Schmidt added that the consequence will be more conflicts breaking out.

"We should appreciate that there are consequences for great powers losing wars," Schmidt said. "And in the manner that Trump has lost this war, and the lies that he told about a peace that does not exist, we should all understand that what he has set in motion is cataclysm, a larger war, a looming war, a building crisis, a deadly one."

Although Schmidt stopped short of predicting where another war or conflict will take place, he warned that conflicts will carry on after the Iran campaign, which will "be Donald Trump's legacy of ruination," Schmidt added. "In part, it will be the lost wars and the next wars."

Schmidt pointed to Iraq and likened Trump's assertion about winning the Iran war to George W. Bush standing below a banner that read "Mission Accomplished."

"And Iraq today is a fragile democracy," Schmidt said. "We have lost a war to Iran, and what's amazing about the tolerance of the American people for Donald Trump is that he's hung his 'Mission Accomplished' banner on his forehead at least 500 times over and over."

Even though "Trump tells you his lost war is over, the fighting rages on," Schmidt said. "The American people, stupefied, somehow hypnotized, numbed, as if they had a cattle prod zap them in their frontal lobes, seem detached."