As Trump Mulls Iran Intervention, MAGA Is Angry
Weeks after his with Elon Musk, US president Donald Trump is now facing unprecedented backlash from other erstwhile admirers – influential figures in the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement.
Trump has invited the wrath of his most reliable support bastion over a likely US military intervention in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Iran.
On Tuesday, Trump made an early exit from the G7 meeting in Canada, leading to many including the French president Emmanuel Macron to speculate that he is working on a ceasefire between Israel and Iran. However, Trump had other plans.
He and said that he's working on something even bigger. The same day Trump announced on his Truth Social account that 'we have total control over Tehran's skies.' In a series of follow-up posts, Trump demanded a ' total surrender ' from Tehran whose ten million residents he had told to leave the city a day earlier. He also said that the plan to assassinate Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei was not off the table.
On Wednesday, however, he seemed to backtrack slightly, making his stand ambiguous. 'I may do it. I may not…Nobody knows what I am going to do,' he said at a White House event. And yesterday (June 19), he said that he will decide in two weeks.
But Trump's initial plan of directly getting involved in Iran militarily and then the eventual suspense over the course of his actions haven't gone down well with many in his own support base – popular traditionalist influencers and media figures who had rallied behind his MAGA politics.
Conservative influencer and author Charlie Kirk wrote on X, 'No issue currently divides the right as much as foreign policy.' Kirks suspects that a US intervention in Iraq would cause a massive rift among MAGA. It could 'disrupt our momentum and our insanely successful Presidency,' he wrote.
Consider what Trump's former campaign strategist Steve Bannon told Tucker Carlson on the Bannon War Room podcast to contextualise why MAGA – a term that has also come to mean his support base – is upset with Trump. Bannon said the three prominent promises from Trump in the run-up to his election were to 'stop the forever wars, seal the border and deport the illegal aliens invading our country, and redo commercial deals around trade and bring back high value manufacturing jobs.' He added that all three promises are being broken.
Carlson has been even more unrelenting. His defiant opposition to an American military intervention in Iran is receiving tens of millions of views and is slowly turning into a headache for Trump who called Carlson '' in a post on Truth Social and later said, 'I don't know what Tucker Carlson is saying. Let him go get a television network and say it so that people can watch.'
, 'The real divide isn't between people who support Israel and people who support Iran or the Palestinians. The real divide is between those who casually encourage violence, and those who seek to prevent it – between warmongers and peacemakers. Who are the warmongers? They would include anyone who's calling Donald Trump today to demand air strikes and other direct US military involvement in a war with Iran.'
Carlson's most significant intervention till now is his viral takedown of Senator Ted Cruz. In an interview on the Tucker Carlson Network, he asked Ted Cruz, a staunch supporter of US intervention, to point out the ethnic mix of Tehran. The senator had no answers. He asked Cruz the total population of Iran. Cruz couldn't answer this as well. At one point, Tucker mocked a rather clueless Cruz for saying the US is bound by the Bible to protect Israel to which Carlson sarcastically asked if the Biblical reference to Israel is the same as the modern Israeli state run by Netanyahu. 'Yes,' Cruz replied.
Carlson also asked Cruz if he agreed that Iran was going to assassinate Trump to which Cruz replied, 'Yes, but they don't have good hitmen.'
Carlson received flak from Trump and other influential MAGA supporters like influencer Laura Loomer who said, 'The Muslim Brotherhood, HAMAS, and foreign lobbyists are now all defending @TuckerCarlson and Iran…You can tell a lot about a man by the people who come to his defense and the company he keeps.' She accused Carlson of being funded by Qatar, a charge Carlson's team called a lie. She threatened to snitch on influencers criticising Trump and personally deliver such screenshots to the president.
But Carlson has received support from many MAGA influencers. Alex Jones, the host of the infamous show InfoWars wrote, "Trump attacking @TuckerCarlson for not supporting a new WORLD WAR is not something any sane person should support! This is the stuff NIGHTMARES are MADE of…'
Podcaster Theo Von who has hosted Trump on his show and 'anti-woke' YouTuber Candace Owens have spoken against intervention too. Von said that Israel 'cannot be trusted."
Owens said, 'the same people say Iran can't have a nuke because they are religious fundamentalists are the same people who hold the heretical belief that we must support Israel's non-stop campaign of murder, blackmail, land theft bombing & starvation of the innocent because 'God will bless those who bless the 1948 created nation of Israel'.'
In a separate post on X alleging US involvement in Iran, she wrote, 'Aaron Bushnell self-immolated back in 2024 to alert the American people to the fact that our military was involved in the ethnic cleansing of Gaza. He committed suicide to reveal that truth.'
Although there are republican senators like Majorie Green Taylor, Josh Hawley, and Rand Paul who've disapproved of Trump's intervention in Iran, the backlash from influencers is more significant for two reasons.
First, Trump came to power arguing that the big media – TV and newspapers – is compromised and serves the agenda of 'forever wars.' Musk has repeatedly said he bought X to break the cycle of media control. In the run-up to his election, Trump appeared on several podcasts and online spaces with the same people who are now criticising him.
While the likes of Loomer have defended Trump, more and more loyalists are jumping ship over Iran. Interestingly, Musk has neither expressed support nor opposed Trump's comments this time. But his old tweets against wars and US intervention in West Asia have resurfaced.
This week US vice-president J.D. Vance announced to his four million followers on X that he's moving to Bluesky, X's rival platform in the US, which Vance said 'has become the place to go for common-sense political discussion and analysis.'
Earlier, in a long post on X, Vance defended Trump and said that he's shown great restraint. He said, 'Having seen this up close and personal, I can assure you that he is only interested in using the American military to accomplish the American people's goals. Whatever he does, that is his focus.'
Replying to Vance, the former UFC champ and MAGA supporter Sean Strickland , 'We want you to run for president. If you go through with this and tow () the line, you will lose all support.'
Amid escalating opposition and the fear of yet another 'forever war' spilling across West Asia, Trump has backed down from his initial suggestion of a likely US military intervention in Iran. However, can the possibility of a US intervention still be ruled out? It's hard to predict what happens next but we'll get the answers soon.
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