Republican Senate challenger Justin Murphy told President Trump to finish the Iran fight with cowboy-hat resolve, leaving Sen. Cory Booker mouthing “Wow” and slamming the approach as Yahoo foreign policy.
At Thursday’s New Jersey Senate forum, former Tabernacle Deputy Mayor Justin Murphy did not hedge when the moderator asked what advice he would give President Donald Trump on the Iran conflict.
Fox News reported that Murphy, the GOP nominee who won his primary Tuesday night, said he would tell the president to finish the war in a positive manner and refuse to quit halfway.
Murphy framed the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as the core problem and tied the fight to the suffering of ordinary Iranians.
"We can't wait halfway through and decide we don't want to do this anymore. The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is a radical terrorist organization that has deprived the Iranian people, the Persian people, of their history and of a decent life."
He added a plain closer: four decades is enough, and the Iranian people have suffered enough. Then came the line that lit up the exchange.
"And I would say, ‘Mr. President, put your cowboy hat on and get out there and kick some a**, and get this done and done right’."
Split-screen coverage captured Sen. Cory Booker’s reaction in real time. The Democrat mouthed “Wow,” shook his head, pursed his lips, and raised his eyebrows as Murphy spoke.
Moderator David Wildstein noticed Booker wanted in and turned to him. Booker did not praise the bluntness. He labeled it the kind of swagger that has kept the United States tangled in the Middle East.
"Honestly, This is the kind of ‘Yahoo’ foreign policy that has mired us in Middle East war after Middle East war, with false bravado leaders saying we're just going to go in there and kick a**. Well, you know what that's done to the treasury of our country?"
Booker also joked that the hypothetical put him in the odd spot of advising “a guy calling me for advice who has literally said ‘I know more than my generals’.” He reached for familiar attacks on Trump’s past New Jersey business record and an old meeting on the trans-Hudson rail tunnel project he has pushed with Sen. Charles Schumer.
Murphy is an attorney from the Pine Barrens and a former local deputy mayor. He is running in a state where no Republican has won a full U.S. Senate election since Clifford Case’s re-election in 1972. Brief appointed GOP terms in 1982 and 2013 did not change that streak. Trump flipped key New Jersey areas in 2024, and the race is now a test of whether voters want a different tone on national security.
The forum left little room for fog. Murphy named the IRGC a radical terrorist organization, rejected half-measures, and said the Iranian people have waited long enough. Booker answered with the familiar Democratic warning that tough talk drains the treasury and drags America into endless wars.
One candidate offered a finish-the-job message to the president. The other recoiled on camera and reached for the language of past quagmires. New Jersey voters now have a sharp contrast on the record heading into the Senate race.
When a challenger talks straight about finishing a fight against a terrorist regime and the incumbent’s first move is theatrical shock, the gap in seriousness notes itself.
