Israel First Has Severed MAGA

In July of 2023, long before it became clear that Israel would become a defining topic of MAGA 2.0 and the Trump presidency, Tucker Carlson gave a speech at a Turning Point USA event when it was still uncontroversial for him to be there.

“What are the crimes that are punished?” Carlson asked the crowd. “Thought crimes. Thinking the ‘wrong’ thing. Having the ‘wrong’ beliefs. Saying unapproved words. And those words are always true.”

“How do you know what’s true? That’s a great question,” Carlson continued. “Who are the thought criminals and what are they saying?”

Tucker Carlson has certainly become the thought criminal he presciently described over two and a half years ago. And he’s perhaps committed the greatest sin of all in America: telling the truth when powerful people are not.

At the time of his speech, Oct. 7 hadn’t happened, Charlie Kirk was still alive and leading TPUSA, and Carlson had not yet campaigned alongside Donald Trump.

Fast forward to January 2025 and Trump — with the support of Carlson and a bipartisan coalition of other independent thinkers, like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, and Marjorie Taylor Greene — arrived back at the White House with truly a once in a generation opportunity and the political capital to do the radically unthinkable in Washington: focus on America and the problems that ail us here. (RELATED: Pete Hegseth Asked Why US Helping Israel If They Are Pursuing Their Own Objectives)

That feels like a distant memory of what could have been thus far in this second Trump term.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and House Republican leadership hold a press conference on the Capitol steps calling on the Senate to consider the Israel Security Assistance Support Act, Washington, DC, May 16, 2024. The legislation is controversial because it would require the President and executive branch to provide military assistance to Israel, even if the Administration determines that Israel is violating the rights of Palestinians and interfering with humanitarian aid, in contravention of existing law. (Photo by Allison Bailey / Middle East Images / Middle East Images via AFP) (Photo by ALLISON BAILEY/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)

Original MAGA is out. Carlson, Greene, Matt Gaetz, and former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Joe Kent were banished to the edge of the kingdom for wrongthink and wrongspeak on one topic: Israel.

New MAGA, or “Make Israel Great Again (MIGA),” as Greene described it, consists of former never-Trumper Mark Levin heaping pejoratives or screaming to cancel Tucker “Qatarlson,” along with Ben “I would gladly waive the born in USA requirement for presidency for Bibi” Shapiro and Sen. Lindsey Graham. (RELATED: ROOKE: Lindsey Graham Playing For Both Sides)

Graham allegedly called on police to use guns against Jan. 6 protesters, appeared to support the total flattening of Gaza and suggested American troops take Kharg Island like Iwo Jima. He always talks tough when it involves other people dying, and he was recently spotted vacationing in Disney World as a 70-year-old bachelor holding a child’s toy.

I wrote a piece shortly after Oct. 7 for the Daily Caller cautioning against escalation as many voices, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, stated things like “this is our 9/11.“

It was clear then that Israel was going to operate as a hammer to the region, but suggesting that prompted backlash.

The “right to defend itself” was the slogan used throughout the last two and a half years as hospitals, humanitarian stations, churches and journalists became part of “collateral damage,” a phrase Netanyahu has used. An estimated 70,000 Gazans are dead, with 80% reportedly civilians.

MAGA loves Trump for his ability or willingness to blurt out the obvious truth and say the unsayable. In October 2019, he slammed the U.S. decision to spend trillions of dollars “policing the Middle East.”

The United States has spent EIGHT TRILLION DOLLARS fighting and policing in the Middle East. Thousands of our Great Soldiers have died or been badly wounded. Millions of people have died on the other side. GOING INTO THE MIDDLE EAST IS THE WORST DECISION EVER MADE…..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 9, 2019

Well said, Mr. President.

Now, what is left of MAGA parades around in a war mongering skin suit and clamors for a regime change in Iran that Charlie Kirk described as “pathologically insane” in June.

If midterms do prove to be a disaster for Republicans, Trump and the seeming inability to decouple Israel’s foreign policy from America’s will be the reason why.

Somehow that honest assessment is taboo, because the worst thing you can do in American media or Conservative Inc. is tell the truth. (RELATED: Joe Kent Tells Tucker Carlson Why He Didn’t Think Iran Posed Imminent Threat)

As the war in Gaza waged on, people were fired, ostracized, kicked out of Ivy League Schools or the “club” and called traitors for ideas, thought crimes or words. MAGA started behaving like Leftists on this sole issue of criticizing Israel.

It is contentious to even notice these things.

When Joe Kent directly named “Israel and its powerful American Lobby” in paragraph two of his resignation letter as the root cause of our involvement in the war in Iran, he was immediately assailed with accusations of antisemitism.

Jeffrey Epstein’s former lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, even referred to Kent as a “Neo Nazi” for the sin of being against the war.

So, it is both humiliating and untenable.

Working Americans wonder if they can “afford” children, and we now average over 1 million abortions in a year. Heroin and fentanyl have killed a generation of people and finished hollowing out small parts of forgotten America, rendering the alleged superpower, the United States, powerless to stop it. There is even a nauseating statistic floating around claiming that 1.4 million  American women participate in OnlyFans — a subtle form of prostitution marketed as empowerment.

Our money is increasingly worthless because we print it out of thin air (for wars or COVID-19 bailouts) and when the prices of houses doubled as a result, the proposed solution has been a 50-year mortgage.

Mr. President, our problems are domestic not foreign, and your true supporters watched you campaign on a platform of peace.

Trump wrote “The Art of the Deal.” Surely he can see that the Iranian war is a bad one for the American people and Trump’s legacy, even if it benefits Israel?

If telling the truth about that is still a crime, then at least at least tell us the least damaging lie: declare “victory” and bring the troops home.

 Matt Keener is a writer and small business owner from Ohio. His work has also been featured at The Federalist, American Spectator, American Greatness, RealClearPolitics, American Thinker and WND. You can find him on Twitter @keenermb and Truth Social @mattkeener

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.