PBS NEWSHOUR: NPR’s Tamara Keith and Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter join Geoff Bennett to discuss the latest political news, including the political fallout of military action in Iran, Trump’s focus on the Save America Act and how Republicans are feeling about the midterms.

GEOFF BENNETT, PBS NEWSHOUR: Tam, on Iran, there are reports that the White House was surprised by the scale of Iran’s retaliation in the Gulf, the number of drones and missiles fired at the UAE and fired at civilian targets. What does that say about how prepared the administration was for the series of consequences, intended and otherwise? TAMARA KEITH, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: Yes, and I would like to jump to another consequence that I think is very clearly weighing on the president, whether he admits it or not, and that is oil and gas prices. That is something that affects voters immediately the second they go to fill up their gas tanks. And it undercuts the affordability agenda that the president has been talking about. I mean, he’s mostly been dismissing affordability and he has repeatedly, including in his State of the Union, touted these record low, not really record, very low gas prices and low gas prices were going to be the solution to all of the ailments, everything that ails everyone on affordability. And he’s saying that they knew that oil prices would rise as a result of this war. But they are rising now, and he is suddenly talking about this as, oh, this is just an excursion, this is a very short-term excursion. We are going to fix this because we need to fix the oil prices, we need to fix the gas prices. BENNETT: The president trying to speak it into existence. AMY WALTER, COOK POLITICAL REPORT: Yes. And, look, it is true if this does indeed become something that is very short-lived, the military presence, the U.S. military presence in Iran, if we get gas prices, oil prices to go down, then, yes, this is not something that people will be talking about in November. However, it is just one more reminder, I think, to a lot of voters of the chaos that they are feeling in their lives when it comes to the cost of stuff. KEITH: Yes, repeatedly, polls — and this was before the Iran war, but polls have shown voters saying that they believe that the president isn’t focused on the issues that matter most to them. I have been talking to a lot of swing voters. Whether they support him or not, literally every single one of them has said that the economy is their number one issue. And this war is affecting, at least temporarily and maybe longer term, the economy in a way that is completely counter to what the president promised when he ran for office. WALTER: I talked to a Republican strategist the other day who — I’m paraphrasing, but basically said what we would really like as Republicans to see the president declare war on the price of groceries, rather than making the focus on Iran.

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