Sen. Mark Kelly on ongoing war with Iran, midterm elections and Bill Pulte

(CBS, KYMA) - Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) spoke with Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation Sunday about the ongoing war with Iran.

The war with Iran hit a six month marker, and Brennan said Iran hit Egypt while Saudi Arabia joined the U.S. in "bombing Iranian-backed militias" in Egypt.

In addition, Brennan said President Donald Trump "used the term that he had been considering military action on levels unseen since World War II."

This prompted Brennan to ask Sen. Kelly if the Trump Administration shared anything in regards to its plans on Iran, to which the senator said:

"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."

Brennan then brought up a recent CBS News poll which asked Americans who has the better approach to Iran, with 32% of Americans saying the GOP while 30% say the Democrats, leading her to ask Kelly does Democrats need to offer an affirmative vision for ending the war, and Kelly said:

"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."

During the interview, Brennan and Kelly talked about the upcoming midterm elections, with Brennan bringing up a recent Quinnipiac polling, which showed Democrats having a 23% approval rating worse than President Trump's approval rating.

Brennan also said Republicans have an advantage over Democrats in terms of funding, as well as an interparty fighting in Minnesota and Michigan "with no real promise to unify Democrats over a common candidate."

When asked how concerned he is that the Democratic Party are going to lose the midterms, the senator said:

"I think we have an opportunity here, despite the Republican gerrymandering that started in the state of Texas, to try to you know rig the deck, so to say here, and make it more challenging. That provides an advantage to them. But this president is historically unpopular for a midterm president, and he's not meeting the needs of the American people. You know, gas is up over $4 a gallon. Half of Americans are having a hard time affording food, rent, home ownership is down. Rent is up. The American people are really struggling. So we have an opportunity to win back the House, and I am confident we will. On the Senate side, it's challenging. I'm not gonna paint this as a rosy picture, but we've got 90 days to go. We have opportunities in a lot of different places, more than we thought we had six months ago. And a year and a half ago, I would say we had no opportunity to win back the Senate. But because of the horrible job that Donald Trump has done for the American people, I think we have a chance we could win back control of the Senate, and that's why I'm here [in Ohio] supporting Sherrod Brown. You know, he wasn't successful in 2024. He could definitely win here in 2026, but it's going to take some effort."

Brennan and Kelly then talked about Bill Pulte, who is the Acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI), handing over the DNI role to Jay Clayton after the Senate confirmed him late last week.

This led Brennan to ask Kelly if the Democratic objections, as well as the getting the FISA authority passed, will melt away, he said:

"I can't speak for everybody, but for me they will. Bill Pulte was not qualified in any way for this job; should have never had it. He fired, according to him, about half of the director's office. And hey, I thought there were too many people over there anyway. But this guy was not qualified. Didn't even really understand what the Office of National Intelligence did. So I can't imagine he did a very good job at figuring out who to let go and who to keep. And because we're also in the middle of a war right now. So I suspect in fact, when we sort this out, we're gonna probably realize that he fired a bunch of the wrong people. So, hopefully on Monday he is out of the office and we can talk about FISA renewal."

To watch more of Brennan's interview with Kelly, click here.