Sen. Mark Kelly believes Trump would hit ‘reset button’ on Iran war if he could, offers solution

U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly said Sunday morning he believes President Donald Trump would hit a “reset button” on the war with Iran if he could, and followed by offering his own solution.

“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,” Kelly said on CBS News’ Face the Nation Sunday. “He’s trying to get us back to February, and I think if he could, if he had a big reset button he could hit, he would certainly take that option.

“We’ve got 18 dead Americans. Prices have skyrocketed across the country for American people.”

The Arizona politician continued by criticizing Trump’s war strategy and the Department of Defense’s usage of munitions.

“Here’s a guy who got us into this without a strategic goal, without a plan, without a timeline,” Kelly added. “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.”

Kelly did offer a solution. He suggested putting the right people in control of the negotiations with Iran.

“I would suggest to him, though, that the solution is not to do the same thing that he’s been doing,” Kelly continued. “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 (to) 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.”

This isn’t the first time Kelly has called out the president and the Department of Defense during Trump’s second term. He is currently in the middle of a lawsuit with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that’s gone on since February.

Mark Kelly explains stance on $1.5 trillion defense budget request

During the senator’s appearance on Face the Nation, Kelly was also asked about the Department of Defense’s $1.5 trillion budget request, to which he explained why it’s a complicated matter.

“Last year, we passed a defense budget that was over $1 trillion. That was the first time ever. It was sold to us as a one-time, generational investment in the department,” Kelly said. “In my view, they squandered that. Now, they’re coming, and they’re asking for $1.5 trillion plus a supplemental.

“We’re approaching the amount of money that every other country on the planet spends on defense in a year. This is irresponsible, and now they want a blank check.”

Kelly noted he’s going to make sure American troops have the resources they need to defend themselves and the United States.

However, he said there needs to be a different approach.

“They need to come to us with a reasonable approach here. The $1.5 trillion — that has systems that I’m very confident aren’t going to work,” Kelly continued. “They need to understand that we do not have unlimited resources in this country.

“We’ve got $39.5 trillion in debt, and the defense budget that they’re requesting is twice what it was when I got to the United States Senate in 2021. It’s twice that budget.”

The 2021 defense budget was about $750 billion.

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