Israel-Iran conflict splits Trump's MAGA backers

NBC News

a day ago

As the percussion of Israeli munitions rattled Tehran on Thursday night, President Donald Trump's MAGA movement observed a rare silence — a sign, influential Republicans say, of the divide within their own party when it comes to the prospect of a war between Israel and Iran.
It took Trump, who comments publicly more often than any president in recent memory, about 10 hours to put out a statement on his Truth Social platform, in which he urged Iran to give up its nuclear weapons program.
The first official U.S. assessment had been issued by the White House under Secretary of State Marco Rubio's name, and it emphasized that America was 'not involved' in the strikes.
In the meantime, Charlie Kirk, the co-founder of Turning Point USA, polled his 5 million X followers on the question of whether America should 'get involved in Israel's war against Iran.' By Friday afternoon, the poll showed more than 350,000 votes, with an overwhelming proportion in the 'No' column.
When Kirk read Rubio's statement on the strikes during a podcast Thursday night, Jack Posobiec, a right-wing activist popular with the MAGA audience, interjected that it was 'not a supportive statement at all.' Earlier Thursday, before the strikes, Posobiec had warned on X that a 'direct strike on Iran right now would disastrously split the Trump coalition.'
And Steve Bannon, host of the 'War Room' podcast, which is influential with MAGA adherents within the administration and outside of it, steered clear of public commentary Thursday night.
It all adds up to a demonstration of the quandary facing Trump as he and other elected Republicans seek safe political turf.
Trump's electoral success owes in no small part to his isolationist-leaning 'America First' platform and his fierce criticism of drawn-out U.S. engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan that were launched by Republican President George W. Bush and continued by Democratic President Barack Obama.
But Israel's latest action pits traditional Republican support for the Jewish state — and antipathy toward Iran — against the MAGA base's fear that the U.S. will be drawn into a new foreign war. And even within Trump's MAGA wing, there's a long-running split over American backing of Israel. Trump has always been on the pro-Israel side of the divide.
'Republicans are a pro-Israel party, and the president hasn't wavered on that,' said one longtime Trump adviser who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivity within the MAGA movement. 'I think the challenge here is not how to move forward. The question is how to sell that to the recalcitrant base.'
If Trump is able to do that, it will be despite powerful voices on the other side of the debate weighing in. Tucker Carlson, one of Trump's most influential supporters, wrote in his newsletter Friday that the U.S. should "drop Israel."
"If Israel wants to wage this war, it has every right to do so. It is a sovereign country, and it can do as it pleases,' Carlson wrote, according to Jewish Insider. 'But not with America's backing.'
Israel launched its attack to forestall Iran's development of a nuclear weapon and perhaps pressure Tehran into giving up that goal. Trump has been trying to construct a new version of an Obama-era nuclear deal that he shredded during his first term, and he articulated his hope Friday that Israel's campaign will help serve as a catalyst for Iran to sign a new pact. But it is not at all clear that the fighting won't have the opposite effect and spark a broader war between the two Middle Eastern powers.
That's a showdown that establishment Republicans like Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., have been itching for.
'Game on,' Graham — whose hawkish worldview predates the rise of the MAGA movement — wrote on X on Thursday night as video of explosions in Tehran bounced around the world.
On the other side of the spectrum, Infowars host Owen Shroyer, one of the hundreds of people pardoned by Trump in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, posted a video to X that framed the new conflict as an existential question for the president's base.
'America, the Trump movement, MAGA — however you want to say it, there's going to be a lot of soul-searching as these events go on, because a lot of MAGA is anti-war,' Shroyer said. 'What good is 'Make America Great Again' if we can't even be isolated from this war-torn region of the world, if we can't even be isolated from these foreign countries and these foreign conflicts that are just filled with hate?'
'We'll never be able to make America great again,' he added, 'as long as we're entangled in the Middle East.'
With Trump signaling approval for how Israel conducted strikes while cajoling Iran to make a deal Friday morning, some of the president's MAGA faithful seemed to settle on a narrative that U.S. involvement is acceptable to a point: troops on the ground.
On a call with reporters Friday, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., asserted his own opposition to U.S. involvement in foreign conflicts while expressing confidence that Trump feels the same.
'It's one thing to support our ally, which we're doing, and we should do, unequivocally,' Hawley said. 'It's one thing to provide them with arms for their own self-defense, which we have done and should do. But I can't imagine a world in which we would send United States troops, in which we would be involved in any kinetic activity, as the defense people like to say, there in the region, unless it's just defending our own installations.'
Israeli airstrikes on Iran are a far cry from American troops invading a nation that has been far more vulnerable to internal revolution than foreign conquest over the course of thousands of years of existence. Even the Republicans who are most aggressive when it comes to Iran talk about missiles and bombs rather than staging an incursion with American ground forces.
But drawing a line on that is a middle ground that may satisfy most, if not all, Trump supporters for the moment.
In the hours after the strikes, Trump allies hewed closely to the administration's sparse talking points.
Alex Bruesewitz, a Republican consultant with close ties to the White House, shared Rubio's statement on X, emphasizing that the 'US WAS NOT INVOLVED IN STRIKES AGAINST IRAN.'
Meanwhile, Laura Loomer, the right-wing conspiracy theorist aligned with Trump, posted several messages supportive of Trump and Israel.
'Iran,' Loomer wrote, 'must never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.'
Mehek Cooke, an attorney and pro-Trump political commentator active in the MAGA movement, said Friday that her recent visit to Israel opened her eyes to the 'devastation of Iran's Oct. 7 proxy war' there.
Israel's strikes, Cooke added, 'were not just justified; they were inevitable. This matters to every American, including the MAGA movement. You can't negotiate with regimes chanting 'Death to America.''
Cooke also pointed to recent polling from Rasmussen, a right-leaning firm, that found that 57% of respondents favored U.S. military action to combat Iran's nuclear weapons program. She said she believes MAGA loyalists will 'remain united' behind Trump.
'MAGA wants peace, but we're not blind,' Cooke added. 'Yes, some in MAGA lean isolationist. But appeasement is not an option. Iran's leaders just threatened both Israel and the U.S., bringing us to a dangerous tipping point. Trump's 60-day deadline — blatantly ignored by Iran was followed by real consequences.'
Still, the political perils of taking sides in the early stages of what Israel says could be a sustained campaign were underscored by the reluctance of some MAGA figures to deal with the question head-on.
Asked to explain the tension within the MAGA movement, former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., a close Trump ally, texted: 'MAGA is more concerned with the Battle for Los Angeles,' where Trump has deployed the National Guard and Marines in a standoff with Americans protesting against immigration raids, 'than the Battle for Tehran.'
What the White House appears to be most concerned about, at least in terms of Trump's domestic politics, is portraying the U.S. as uninvolved in the Middle East conflict.
The word that trickled out overnight from the White House, and from a phone interview Trump gave to Fox News, emphasized that U.S. military had no role in the strikes.
It wasn't until Friday morning that Trump weighed in directly — and ominously.
'There has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal, come to an end,' Trump wrote on Truth Social. 'Iran must make a deal, before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire. No more death, no more destruction, JUST DO IT, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE. God Bless You All!'