The Real Risk to Trump’s Coalition Over Iran | The American Spectator

As the conflict between the United States and Iran enters into its second month, criticism of the conflict and the president’s handling of it from online influencers such as Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson has intensified. In turn, those attacks by the so-called podcasters have been the subject of intense debate and criticism on the right, including at The American Spectator.

While much of the criticism of the war is unserious and hyperbolic, one voice that deserves to be considered more carefully is Christopher Caldwell. Caldwell, perhaps the most sophisticated intellectual expositor of “Trumpism,” if there is any such thing distinct from the president himself, recently declared “The End of Trumpism” in a provocatively titled essay in the U.K. Spectator (no relation to The American Spectator).

According to Caldwell, “The attack on Iran is so wildly inconsistent with the wishes of [Trump’s] own base, so diametrically opposed to their reading of the national interest, that it is likely to mark the end of Trumpism as a project. Those with claims to speak for Trumpism — Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly — have reacted to the invasion with incredulity. Trump may entertain himself with the presidency for the next three years (barring impeachment), but the mutual respect between him and his movement has been ruptured, and his revolution is essentially over.”

The common retort from defenders of the Iran war is thus: While there has indisputably been a split among conservative elites over the president’s handling of the war, there is no such split among the president’s base. Despite some anecdotes to the contrary, the data is clear: Republicans in general, and Republicans who identify with MAGA specifically, back the war and the president’s handling of it.

For example, a recent CBS News poll found that 84 percent of Republicans, including 92 percent of self-identified MAGA Republicans, supported the strikes on Iran. CNN found that 85 percent of MAGA Republicans supported the strikes, as did YouGov. Most eye-poppingly, NBC News found that 90 percent of MAGA Republicans approved of Trump’s handling of Iran, and 100 percent approved of him overall.

However, those numbers aren’t the end of the story. To gauge fractures in the Trump coalition, many commentators have been looking for a distinct block of voters on the right — to the right of Trump, that is — who disapprove of the war and the president’s handling of it. Since that isn’t manifesting in polling, they say, the Trump coalition stands strong.

The problem is that MAGA Republicans are, definitionally, the president’s strongest supporters. To say that Trump’s strongest supporters support him is a tautology: definitionally, that has to be the case. Whether “Trumpism without Trump” could win out was put to the test in the 2024 Republican primary; the answer was a definitive “no.”

A closer look at the data, however, reveals warning signs. While MAGA represents the core of the president’s 2024 coalition, it’s much more broad than that. It also includes many who hadn’t supported him in 2020 or 2016, which is how Trump went from receiving 63 million votes in 2016 to 74 million votes in 2020 to 77 million votes in 2024.

In December 2025, the Manhattan Institute conducted a study that sought to analyze this new Republican coalition, which it described overall as the “Current GOP.” It defined that category as including “(1) all 2024 Trump voters, regardless of party registration, and (2) all registered Republicans, including those who did not vote for Trump.”

It divided the party into two distinct groups: “Core Republicans,” those who have “consistently” backed GOP candidates since at least 2016, and “New Entrant Republicans,” who either voted for Democrats in either 2016 or 2020 or were not old enough to vote in those years.

What they found differentiated the two groups was striking. New Entrant Republicans were more likely than Core Republicans to believe conspiracy theories, such as the notions that the moon landing was faked and that the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust was exaggerated. They were also more likely to self identify as racist: Nearly one in three did so, compared to fewer than one in ten Core Republicans. 

Views on political violence was another faultline: 54 percent of New Entrant Republicans said political violence could sometimes be justified, compared to just 20 percent of core Republicans. Astonishingly, according to the study, “One in three in the Current GOP who believe that political violence can be justified are 2020 Biden voters (34%). And six in ten (60%) supporters of political violence previously voted for Obama, Clinton, or Biden, compared with 32% who have never voted for a Democrat.”

And yet, among these same New Entrant Republicans, the study says that they “hold less conservative views across a broad range of policy areas — including transgender issues, DEI, and taxation. Given that many of these voters are younger and former Democrats, more progressive policy tendencies are unsurprising.” This holds true even looking specifically at new entrants who have a high tolerance for racism and antisemitism.

The Manhattan Institute summarizes its findings by saying that “younger and newer members of the GOP coalition contain a frustrated, alienated subset that is often hostile toward institutions and norms — but not reliably conservative. Some are far-right or otherwise ideological, but many are not conservative at all.”

In short, it does not make sense to conceive of these voters as a distinct, far-right block. They are, in the parlance of the internet, normies. They’re normal people with real jobs and real lives who don’t follow politics all that closely, and aren’t as keyed into norms and taboos as traditional Republicans.

Normal people are weird. It can be easy to forget, but many Americans lack political knowledge as basic as who the Speaker of the House is. These sorts of voters often have an ideologically incoherent hodge-podge of beliefs that range from far right to far left to everything in between.

Therefore, when looking for any directional influence of the much-maligned podcasters, it makes sense to consider not just a discrete, far-right group, but also defections to the Democrats and abstentions. After all, this portion of the Trump coalition is disproportionately likely to hold left-wing beliefs and to have voted for Democrats in the past. And there, things do seem a bit more worrying.

Put simply, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average, Trump’s job approval has declined quite a bit since he took office. In January of 2025, the president’s average job approval stood at 50 percent approve, 44 percent disapprove. That number has now been turned on its head: The current average stands at 41 percent approve, 56 percent disapprove, down notably from the beginning of the conflict on Feb. 28.

These losses have been especially severe with Hispanic voters, with independents, and with voters aged 18 to 29. In short, the exact sorts of voters overrepresented among New Entrant Republicans in the Manhattan Institute study. These fractures are also showing up within the GOP: Pew Research recently found that just 49 percent of Republicans ages 18 to 29 approved of Trump’s handling of the Iran war, versus 84 percent of those 65 and older. 

The Trump 2024 movement was an ideologically diverse coalition that was much more expansive than just MAGA. When looking at both special elections and polling data, one cannot help but see the outlines of a New Entrant Republican revolt.

Trump’s political obituary has been written more times than can be counted over the last decade. With all due respect to Caldwell, and that is a great deal, writing it now seems foolish. But it seems clear that the Iran conflict is damaging his standing, and that damage will compound the longer the war and the economic pain associated with it goes on.

So mock the podcasters all you like: On the merits, I certainly am not taken by their arguments. But you cannot look at the facts objectively and not be worried.

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