US strikes on Iran open rift in Trump's support base
Donald Trump's decision to strike Iran has been cheered by mainstream Republicans but it has exposed deep fissures between the hawks and the isolationists in the "MAGA" movement that swept the self-styled peacemaker US president back to power.
Trump ran as an "America First" Republican who would avoid the foreign entanglements of his predecessors, tapping into his movement's unease about prolonged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as more recent conflagrations in Gaza and Ukraine.
Establishment Republicans -- and in particular the congressional party -- rallied behind their leader after Saturday's military action, welcoming what many see as an about-face and rejecting claims that the president had violated the Constitution.
Beyond Washington's Beltway, some of the die-hard members of Trump's "Make America Great Again" coalition who follow him on the rally circuit also appear willing -- for now, at least -- to give him the benefit of the doubt.
"I don't think we're going to end up in war. I think Trump is leader, and he's going to just obliterate them, and there won't be any war," 63-year-old Jane Sisk, a retired mother-of-six from Richmond, Virginia, told AFP.
But the louder, more visible, more online faction of MAGA influencers and media personalities who oppose their government reaching beyond the US shoreline are desperate to sway Trump's supporters in the opposite direction.
In a long post on X Monday, far-right lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene bemoaned having traveled the country campaigning for Trump, only to see him break his anti-interventionist covenant with his supporters.
- 'Bait and switch' -
"Only 6 months in and we are back into foreign wars, regime change, and world war 3," she thundered on the social media site.
"It feels like a complete bait and switch to please the neocons, warmongers, military industrial complex contracts, and neocon tv personalities that MAGA hates and who were NEVER TRUMPERS!"
While the post was astonishing for its uncompromising language -- Greene appropriated a Democratic talking point to add that Trump was "not a king" -- it was far from the first sign of MAGA dissent.
Thomas Massie -- a House conservative who has piqued Trump's irritation with anti-war posts -- told CBS that members of his faction within MAGA were "tired from all these wars."
And as Trump gave his televised address confirming details of strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, his former top strategist Steve Bannon told viewers of his online "War Room" show that the president has "some work to do" to explain his decision.
Other figures among Trump's right-wing support base have started to come around after initially voicing shock.
Far-right influencer Charlie Kirk -- a leading MAGA anti-war voice before the weekend -- warned his millions of YouTube viewers that US involvement in the Iran-Israel conflict would cause "a major schism in the MAGA online community."
- 'Trust in Trump' -
But he appeared to have shifted his stance over the weekend, praising Trump for "prudence and decisiveness."
The U-turn is symptomatic of a broader trend, analysts argue, among the softer MAGA isolationists to fall into line and simply embrace the White House's "trust in Trump" mantra now that they have lost the argument.
Conservative Hoover Institution fellow Lanhee Chen believes the president will hold his coalition together as long as they see Saturday's action as more akin to the 2020 US assassination of Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani than the start of a protracted war.
"I think you saw some of that disagreement leading up to last night. I haven't seen a lot of disagreement since then," Chen told NBC on Sunday.
Trust in Trump could be eroded, his allies warn, if Iran retaliates, dragging the United States into an escalating cycle of violence. But, for now, the president's coalition is on board with his warnings over Iran's nuclear threat.
Polling conducted after the US strikes will take several days to filter through, but in the latest J.L. Partners survey just ahead of the mission, 67 percent of "MAGA Republicans" agreed that "Israel's war is America's war" while only 20 percent wanted the country to remain on the sidelines.
"I don't think Trump's going to send soldiers over there," said Sisk, the Virginia supporter interviewed by AFP. "I don't think he's gonna get us involved in the war, just like he said."
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