Chuck Schumer
Role at the time: U.S. senator from New York and Senate Democratic leader, in a post on X
Condemned
Response to this claim
Vice President JD Vance said he would not call the U.S. fight with Iran a war, saying there is no active shooting right now and that major combat operations lasted about six weeks.
““Small potatoes.” That’s how Donald Trump feels about the war he started in Iran. Tell that to the families of the 18 troops we’ve lost, the hundreds of wounded servicemembers, and the Americans suffering every single day from record high prices. There's nothing small about it.”
Read the original post (opens in a new tab)Chuck Schumer post on X, September 4, 2026Full X post, published September 4, 2026 at 20:44 UTC
Schumer's post on his X account, @SenSchumer. It quotes an exchange from Trump's September 4 Oval Office remarks in which a reporter asks what the fighting is if it is not a war.
Why we used this label
Schumer rejects the small-potatoes framing that Trump used while defending Vance's description, and he calls the fighting "the war he started in Iran." He criticizes the characterization directly, so condemns fits better than challenges the characterization.