August 2, 2026 / 12:51 PM EDT
/ CBS News
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The following is the transcript of an interview with Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on Aug. 2, 2026.MARGARET BRENNAN: We turn now to Arizona Democratic Senator Mark Kelly, who joins us from Columbus, Ohio, this morning. Good morning to you, Senator.SENATOR MARK KELLY: Good morning, Margaret.MARGARET BRENNAN: We're now in the sixth month of this war we had been told would last four to five weeks. In the past week, the targets have widened. Iran hit Egypt. We saw Saudi Arabia join the U.S. in bombing Iranian-backed militias there, and then late last night, President Trump used the term that he had been considering military action on levels unseen since World War II. You sit on Intelligence, you sit on Armed Services. Has the administration shared anything in regard to its plans on Iran?SEN. KELLY: I mean, not these latest plans, and I think what we're seeing here is a president who has an approach to this that's just rather erratic. He says one thing, he does another thing. It's escalatory. At this point, he's trying to get us back to February, and I think if he could, he would. If he had a big reset button he could hit, he would certainly take that option. Hey, we've got 18 dead Americans. Prices have skyrocketed across the country for the American people. I was here in Ohio- I'm here in Ohio now, but I met with some veterans the other day, and they're struggling. I mean, these are a lot of retired service members that can't afford to put gas in their car, can't afford groceries. Rent is going up, and this president is not dealing with the issues that the American people need him to deal with.MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, you know, in our polling, we see that this is a very unpopular war, and it's weighing on the president's own approval ratings. But Democrats are faring slightly worse. According to CBS polling, when asked who has the better approach to Iran, 32% say Trump and the GOP. Only 30% say the Democrats. So we are in this thing. Do Democrats need to offer an affirmative vision for ending it?SEN. KELLY: Well, I don't think it's the president's vision. Here's a guy who got us into this without a strategic goal, without a plan, without a timeline. He's got a Secretary of Defense that doesn't know how to manage this war, who decided a good metric at the beginning was just to drop as many munitions as he could on as many targets, and now we've got a munitions shortage. Big surprise. So they're flailing. They're stuck. They're responsible for this, and the president is the one that has to try to figure out a way out of this. I would suggest to him, though, that the solution is not to do the same thing that he's been doing, not to have his real estate buddy and his son-in-law in charge of a negotiation, to put some people in here that know how to do this, how to talk to the Iranians, and put a coalition together, bring our allies back together. He's alienated not only our GCC allies but our European allies as well, and it's just making this much harder for him to figure out a way out.
