Trump says he could have won Vietnam War in a week, days before midterms

The rally remarks

Donald Trump spoke at a campaign rally in Dubuque, Iowa, on Sunday, 1 November 2026, two days before the midterm elections on 3 November. Looking back at earlier American wars, he described the Vietnam War as lasting 21 years and cited thousands, then hundreds of thousands, of dead. He said Washington never fought wars in Afghanistan to win them. He then claimed that under his leadership the Afghanistan war would have been won in three weeks and the Vietnam War in one week. Reports of the rally say the crowd shouted Agent Orange when he referred to the herbicide.

Agent Orange and Ho Chi Minh City

Trump described the herbicide as red and said it had been dropped from aircraft onto forests for years, when the US should instead have struck Ho Chi Minh City and other places. AFP, cited by Ziare.com, put the amount sprayed over the jungles of southern Vietnam at about 80 million litres between 1955 and 1975, used to destroy forest and crops that communist guerrillas relied on. naTemat noted that Ho Chi Minh City was called Saigon during the conflict, when it was the capital of South Vietnam. 7sur7 added that Saigon housed the headquarters of the South Vietnamese army, a Washington ally, while Hanoi was the capital of the North. The city was renamed in 1976, after the war had ended, in honour of the founder of North Vietnam, according to naTemat. 7sur7 also said the reunified country is governed from Hanoi.

Iran war and midterm pressure

The remarks came as the war Trump launched alongside Israel against the Islamic Republic of Iran at the end of February remains unresolved, according to Ziare.com. The conflict has stalled and is weighing on the US economy and on Trump's standing with voters, which was already weak in polls days before the midterms. Ziare.com described the Vietnam comments as a new attempt by Trump to legitimise the war. naTemat reported that polls point to a fall for Trump's camp in November, while Ziare.com said his party risks losing its majority in Congress. Explaining the continuing campaign, Trump said the only reason he has not finished with Iran is that he wants to be nice and save as many lives as he can. On Saturday, 31 October, at his Mar-a-Lago residence, he told reporters the US should deal with one or two more targets in Iran, including Mount Kolang, under which a nuclear complex is reportedly located. 7sur7 noted that he has not yet restarted a strike campaign and that it is unclear what he will do after the midterms.