Iran war exposes fractures in Trump’s MAGA base

The joint U.S.-Israel military campaign against Iran has done something few political events in recent memory have managed: It has turned some of President Trump’s most prominent and loyal supporters against him.

Since the strikes began on Feb. 28, a vocal contingent of conservative media figures and former Trump allies have broken sharply with the president, calling the operation a betrayal of the “America First” principles they say defined his movement. The backlash has forced a public confrontation between Trump and some of the same voices that helped put him in the White House.

Tucker Carlson, one of the most-watched figures in right-wing media and a frequent White House guest, wasted little time. In an interview with ABC News the morning of the strikes, Mr. Carlson called the joint attack “absolutely disgusting and evil,” and warned that the campaign would “shuffle the deck in a profound way.”

Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia was equally blunt. “The Trump admin actually asked in a poll how many casualties voters were willing to accept in a war with Iran??? How about ZERO,” she wrote on X. “We voted for America First and ZERO wars.”

Ms. Greene, who resigned from Congress in January following a falling out with Trump over the Epstein files, doubled down later in the week, suggesting on X that Mr. Carlson would beat Mr. Trump if the two ran against each other. “Trump doesn’t even know what MAGA is anymore,” she wrote, “and turned it into MIGA.”

Radio host Megyn Kelly has also been critical, saying on her SiriusXM show that she would like to be “better convinced that this is worth the sacrifice of American blood treasure.” Commentator Matt Walsh, meanwhile, took aim at the administration’s shifting rationale for the campaign, posting on X that the justifications from the White House were contradicting each other in real time.

Fueling the anger in particular was a comment from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who told reporters Monday evening that the U.S. had known Israel was planning to act against Iran and that this influenced American involvement. For critics within the base, the remark amounted to an admission that American forces went to war on behalf of a foreign ally. “Make America Great Again was supposed to be America first, not Israel first,” Ms. Greene said on Ms. Kelly’s show.

Mr. Trump has not taken the criticism quietly. In an interview with journalist Rachael Bade, he dismissed Mr. Carlson and Ms. Kelly as fringe voices disconnected from his coalition. “I think MAGA is Trump,” he said. “MAGA’s not the other two.” He went further in a separate ABC News interview, saying Mr. Carlson “has lost his way” and is “not smart enough to understand” what America First means.

The White House has echoed that message. “President Trump is MAGA and MAGA is President Trump,” spokesperson Olivia Wales told the Christian Science Monitor.

Polling suggests Mr. Trump may be right that his core base remains largely behind him, even if the broader public is not. An NBC News poll found 90% of self-identified MAGA Republicans backed the strikes — but that support fell to 54% among Republicans who don’t identify with the MAGA label. Overall, 54% of voters disapprove of Trump’s handling of Iran. A separate Angus Reid survey put overall opposition to the strikes at 47%, with just one in three Americans in support.

The divide is not simply about Iran. It reflects a deeper and longer-running tension over what “America First” actually means. On one side are conservatives who see Mr. Trump’s military actions as necessary steps to protect U.S. security interests. On the other are those — including Mr. Carlson, Ms. Greene, Mr. Walsh, and others — who argue the movement was built on a promise to end the interventionism that defined both Republican and Democratic foreign policy for decades.

Brandan P. Buck, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, put it plainly: “I think the America First movement, as encapsulated by the president, died on Feb. 28.”

Whether that assessment holds will likely depend on how the conflict unfolds. As one former producer for Charlie Kirk’s show noted on X in the hours after the strikes began: “If this war is a swift, easy, and decisive victory, most of them will get over it. But if the war is anything else, there will be a lot of anger.”

With six U.S. service members already killed in the campaign and Trump acknowledging the conflict could last longer than initially anticipated, that question is very much open.