Among the Democrats mulling a presidential run in 2028 — a group that is ideologically divided, each with their own diagnosis about what’s wrong with the Democratic Party and how to fix it — there was a unified reaction in February when President Donald Trump decided to attack Iran: opposition to a war they viewed as reckless and unconstitutional. 

As those Democrats respond to the U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding that Trump announced last week, another consensus is emerging, which holds that the deal is just another example of Trump’s ineffectual leadership — yet another instance, these Democrats argue, of Trump getting taken advantage of and undermining the American people. 

“They’re negotiating a deal that, truthfully, every single detail we continue to hear just looks like the Iranians continue to do better than us. I think they should have been the one to write The Art of the Deal, not Donald Trump,” Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said in a TV interview on Tuesday. 

Rahm Emanuel, the former U.S. ambassador to Japan, member of Congress and chief of staff to President Barack Obama, offered a similar quip at a recent Financial Times event after describing the deal as “the memorandum of misunderstanding.”

“While the president thinks he wrote a book called The Art of the Deal, they’re going to teach him a lesson, which is the Persian lesson: the art of the negotiation,” Emanuel said. “And he just got schooled, unbelievably.” He called the war with Iran “the single worst — and there’s a lot of competition for it — American national security mess that I’ve ever seen.”

The MOU offered immediate sanctions relief for the Islamic Republic and launched a 60-day window for nuclear negotiations. 

The 2028 contenders who have commented on the deal have generally done so without much detail. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro criticized the agreement in an interview with CNBC on Monday, though he shared little in the way of specific critiques or concerns.

“I think what’s clear is the Trump administration, the president, specifically chose to enter this war and had absolutely no plan when he went in, and that’s why he’s got no idea how to get out,” said Shapiro. “The president created a mess, and now he’s dispatched JD Vance … to try and figure out a way out of it, and seemingly both of them are getting played by the Iranians.”

A spokesperson for Shapiro declined to comment further. 

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has used the deal as a political talking point. He was asked by reporters on Monday and Tuesday to respond to a social media post where Trump called on Pritzker to seek his help in responding to gun violence in Chicago. In response, Pritzker referred to Trump’s Iran negotiations as a reason why he would never want to ask Trump for help.

“This is the president who wants to blame everybody else for algae that showed up at the Reflecting Pool in Washington, D.C.,” Pritzker told reporters during an event in Illinois on Tuesday, “the same president that thinks that after bombing Iran, that they should pick up the phone and call him, and indeed, who’s failing to put together an agreement that is anywhere near as good as the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action], that was the agreement that he ripped up as president of the United States.” 

Last week, he said at a Punchbowl News event that the deal sounds like it is “really just a cessation of hostilities and pushing off into the future negotiations about things.”

Some Democrats considering a 2028 run are avoiding the question entirely for now. 

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who on the day the U.S. began its campaign in Iran referred to the American actions as an “illegal, dangerous war,” has thus far not weighed on the MOU. Anthony Martinez, a spokesperson for Newsom, said that “Trump’s reckless war” has been costly to Americans. “That’s a bad deal for hardworking Americans, plain and simple,” Martinez said. He declined to comment on the MOU. 

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) have also criticized the war but so far refrained from discussing the agreement.

Most potential Democratic 2028 contenders view the Iran war as a hard-to-solve morass, with little offered in the way of alternatives to a war and deal that they oppose. Merely criticizing Trump for an unpopular war appears to be enough. 

Shapiro acknowledged that he wants the U.S. to come out ahead in the war, but he said he doesn’t see how that will be possible with Trump leading the negotiations.

“I’m on Team USA. I want us to win, but this is the problem when you have a president who is just hell-bent on creating chaos around the world,” Shapiro said on CNBC. “What we need instead is steady-handed leadership, and we don’t have that right now.”

Pritzker pointed to the 2015 Obama nuclear deal as the best-case alternative, although that deal is now defunct.

“It’s a real question whether there’s any advancement at all of U.S. interests,” said Pritzker. “I think the question I think we’re all going to have to ask is, is this any better than the JCPOA that was already in place when Donald Trump tore it up in his first term?” 

It was a line that former Vice President Kamala Harris, who is also mulling a presidential bid in 2028, echoed recently. 

“This is a president who has proven himself to be entirely self-indulgent. And we will see what happens in the coming hours and days in terms of the negotiation. And really, it’s a concept of an agreement,” Harris said last week at a speech during a conference in Vienna. “Whatever is being negotiated, this president is going to declare victory, and we’ll end up where we were after the JCPOA and call that a victory.” 

Far-left lawmaker Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), who has said he is considering a 2028 run, called the ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran “welcome news that Americans should support.” But he said it “delivers Iran a better deal” than the JCPOA that Trump “spent years ridiculing.” His message got a boost on X on Tuesday from former Secretary of State Tony Blinken.

“Wise words from my friend,” Blinken wrote.