Trump calls the Iran war “small potatoes.” The pump, and the dead, disagree.

President Trump on Friday called the six-month fight with Iran “small potatoes” for the United States — a military conflict, he said, not a war, and a very intermittent one. He was defending Vice President Vance, who had already tried to keep the word “war” off the midterm ballot. He compared the American dead to Vietnam’s. He said Venezuela had cost nobody. He said this one had cost eighteen.

A reporter told him it did not feel like small potatoes. Eighteen service members are dead. Deployments have run long. Diesel set a record at dawn. AAA says Labor Day drivers will pay the highest holiday gasoline prices ever printed. The White House’s answer was a vegetable.

Eighteen dead is not a potato. It is a war that will not say its name.

Tehran says a U.S. strike hit a wedding in Kuhetto; the death toll there includes a six-year-old boy. Vance said he was extremely skeptical. Reuters, the Times and the BBC treated the munition as a direct hit. The Politics desk files the vocabulary. The pump files the rest.