‘Unhinged.’ Kentucky Senate Democrats bash Trump for statements on Iran
The news of President Donald Trump’s stance on the ongoing war in Iran was changing right as four Democrats running for U.S. Senate took the stage for a candidate forum on Tuesday night.
But those candidates were unflinching in their stark criticism of how Trump is carrying out that war, with the president claiming a “whole civilization will die tonight” on Tuesday morning, then announcing a two-week ceasefire a few minutes before the debate began.
Former U.S. Senate candidates Amy McGrath and Charles Booker, alongside Louisville horse trainer Dale Romans and Kentucky House Minority Floor Leader Pamela Stevenson, D-Louisville, all presented their cases on why they were best suited to take the Democratic nomination to fill outgoing Sen. Mitch McConnell’s seat in the forum hosted by Louisville television station WHAS11 and the Louisville Courier-Journal.
With the Iran situation top of mind, all four teed off on Trump to start.
McGrath said she would lean on her military background as a Marine veteran to turn around the current “doormat” state of Congress when it comes to checking Trump. She also expressed doubt about the two-week ceasefire.
“We’re going to be in the exact same position two weeks from now. (Trump) is unhinged. He’s out of control. He is threatening to kill civilians in ways that we have never seen in this country,” McGrath said.
Booker called for drastic action.
“To respond to the news that we’re still dealing with, Donald Trump needs to be impeached. He needs to be removed, and he needs to be arrested,” Booker said.
Stevenson referenced her time as a U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General working in the Middle East.
“What needs to happen is that we need to be adults and say, ‘Not on my watch will you risk my country, my democracy, and the young people that he’s sending to Iran,” Stevenson said.
Romans made his disagreements with the president clear, but oriented the question around electability — as he did with many other questions.
“One senator is never going to change Donald Trump, but 51 senators can, and that’s what we need to focus on, is taking back the House and Senate... We don’t need a Republican candidate winning Kentucky that can just be a puppet to the president, like all the other Republican senators have proven to be,” Romans said.
So far, the leading Republican candidates to replace McConnell — Rep. Andy Barr, former AG Daniel Cameron and Lexington tech entrepreneur Nate Morris — have expressed alignment with Trump in his Middle East military campaign.
The overarching response among Democrats is that the war is a waste of time and money.
McGrath distilled that with a one-liner.
“If we can spend a billion dollars a day in an unnecessary war in the Middle East that nobody wants, we can spend money to make life more affordable here at home,” McGrath said.
Relatedly, the candidates were also asked about the U.S.’s relationship with Israel, a longtime ally and a particularly key one in the war against Iran. None of the four were fans of the administration of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but they took different stances on issues related to Israel. All except Romans said they would not take money from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a bipartisan group lobbying for strong U.S. ties to the country.
McGrath asserted that Israel has a “right to defend itself” but made clear she was “no fan” of the current administration in charge.
“I am absolutely furious to hear reports of our president being dragged into this war somehow with Iran. We are creating a humanitarian crisis right now in the Middle East. We have already created an energy crisis in the likes of that I have never seen in my lifetime, and it’s got to end,” McGrath said.
Stevenson said she’d seek to “put Israel on a short leash” and offered criticism of the deaths of non-combatants in Gaza.
Booker used his answer on AIPAC to go after the role of “big money” in U.S. politics.
“We have to get big money out of politics so that the people of Kentucky are actually at the front, at the center of our politics, and not cast aside and thrown off the cliff,” Booker said.
Romans said Israel was a “key ally” and reasserted that he would take money from AIPAC because “it’s a lot of money to win this race,” citing the millions that Morris, Barr and Cameron have brought in. That doesn’t mean he steered clear of calling out Israel’s actions in Gaza, where 75,000 people have died in Israel’s response to the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed about 1,200 Israelis.
“I would support Israel as an ally. I do not support Netanyahu. I do not support the genocide that he has done on the Palestinian people.”
Michael Faris, a fourth candidate in the Republican primary, was invited to speak at a GOP forum also scheduled with WHAS11 and the Courier-Journal. Since no other candidates accepted, Faris was interviewed for 15 minutes in a segment aired on WHAS11 after the Democratic forum.
Other issues
Tuesday’s forum was not the first time the four Democratic candidates shared the stage. They took similar stances on issues like health care, electability and immigration to the ones they shared in a debate hosted by Spectrum News last month.
Electability was the most salient issue of last month’s debate given that, on the federal stage, the Kentucky Democratic Party has been in the been in the wilderness for more than a decade. No Democrat has held a U.S. Senate seat since the late Wendell Ford exited politics in 1998, and no Democrat outside of Louisville’s 3rd Congressional District has held a U.S. House seat since 2012.
In both events, Booker tried to find a lane as the most progressive of the bunch, pointing to specific proposals of his like raising the minimum wage and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Stevenson was not dissimilar, using sweeping language to chastise Republicans and leaning on her military service to speak about current events.
McGrath has said she’s the most proven candidate at winning over moderates and independents, while refraining from branding herself as too moderate or too progressive.
Romans said he was the most moderate of the bunch, and that combined with his unorthodox background as a horse trainer, could carry the day in November in a way that the party hasn’t come close to doing since 2004, when a Democrat nearly defeated late Sen. Jim Bunning.
When asked about the partial government shutdown, Romans said he would never side with an effort to shut the government down for any reason, as most Democrats have during the latest shutdown over the actions of ICE as well as Customs and Border Protection officers.
ICE was an area that divided the candidates, with both Romans and McGrath shying away from a total abolition of the department and Stevenson and McGrath calling for just that.
The candidates also threw in some jabs at the Republicans running for McConnell’s seat.
Booker hit Cameron on “weaponizing faith to justify” the actions of ICE, and said “the closest thing Andy Barr could ever get to affordable housing is me living rent-free in his head.”
Romans said that as president of the Kentucky Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association, he worked with Barr on “total, comprehensive immigration reform.”
“We even had a senator say he was going to attach it, a congressman say he was going to attach it, to a bill that couldn’t fail. He decided to run for Senate in Kentucky, and when they called him an amnesty candidate, he dropped us like a hot potato. It’s not a tough fix. We don’t need a path to citizenship, we just need work permits,” Romans said.
This story was originally published April 8, 2026 at 5:00 AM.
