The MAGA base has forgiven President Donald Trump for a lot, but the latest strikes in Iran may prove to be a breaking point.
In the aftermath of the weekend’s launch of “major combat operations,” Trump repeatedly said something many of his supporters would never say: American casualties as part of regime change in a foreign country are necessary and worth the sacrifice.
Three Americans have died already, the Pentagon announced over the weekend. “Sadly, there will likely be more before it ends. That’s the way it is,” Trump said in an address posted to Truth Social.
Trump’s past military actions — the capture of Nicolás Maduro from his Venezuelan headquarters and the strategic bombing of Iranian nuclear sites — were deadly for the people on the receiving end of U.S. military might. But for the most part, those operations have not moved the needle in domestic politics. They simply weren’t enough like the Iraq war to hold public attention for very long.
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Trump’s operation in Iran could be different. Already, the president has gone from saying the war would last “four weeks to less” to saying it would last “four to five weeks,” all while suggesting contradictory ideas for who will lead Iran next — which is sure to concern those in his base who want to see the intervention limited to targeted airstrikes.
“Right now, some of my right-leaning friends are messaging me: F*** this,” Blake Neff, a close ally of the late Charlie Kirk, posted Saturday after Americans woke up to the news that war had started. He represents an anti-interventionist wing of conservatism that hoped MAGA’s “America First” meant Trump wouldn’t launch new conflicts.
“If this war is a swift, easy, and decisive victory, most of them will get over it,” Neff wrote. “But if the war is anything else, there will be a lot of anger.”
In just about every instance of his second term, Trump has been able to ruffle the feathers of his base and smooth them out quickly. This may be something else entirely.
Public polling before the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes already showed Americans broadly are not interested in a protracted war with Iran. One of the first public polls from after the new war began indicated 56% of Americans think Trump is “too willing to use military force to advance U.S. interests.” Just 27% said they approved of the initial strikes against Iran.
“I think the administration has to communicate to the American people how this serves American interests,” said one MAGA strategist who is close to the White House. “This has yet to be done.”
Skepticism came loudly this weekend from Trump-aligned corners of conservative politics. Natalie Winters, one of Steve Bannon’s War Room co-hosts, told the Washington Post, “Some of his donors are probably happy so congratulations to them.” Bannon’s show this weekend also featured Blackwater founder Erik Prince’s rant against the new strikes. And former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene expressed her dismay with the strikes Saturday in a lengthy screed on X, arguing it was a distraction from the administration’s affordability battle.
“We said ‘No More Foreign Wars, No More Regime Change!’ We said it on rally stage after rally stage, speech after speech,” Greene posted. “There are 93 million people in Iran, let them liberate themselves. But Iran is on the verge of having nuclear weapons. Yeah sure. We have been spoon fed that line for decades and Trump told us all that his bombing this past summer completely wiped it all out.”
Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton, a longtime Iran hawk who is now under investigation by the administration, dismissed the idea that MAGA-diehards should be surprised.
“Well, you know, anybody who believes Donald Trump has a philosophy is making a big mistake, and if they thought they saw a coherent pattern in his thinking, they’re just wrong,” Bolton told NOTUS. “That’s not what he does.”
To many Democrats, the political messaging is relatively simple here, and so is what comes next.
“From higher costs to more foreign wars, there really will be no reason left for anyone who voted for him last time to vote for his yes men this November,” Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson told NOTUS.
But how do Democrats play this moment? Many have focused on the way this war began — with unilateral action by the president and no meaningful involvement from Congress. Democratic lawmakers have welcomed the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader at the hands of coalition bombs but said Congress needs a say in what happens next.
“The fact that where they feel it, and can point to it, that this administration consistently tramples or steps on the Constitution, gives them a very safe space,” said Fred Hicks, a Georgia-based Democratic consultant. “And if I were advising Democratic leadership, I would say, really stick to that. Stand on that: ‘This is what the Constitution says. We were about to take a vote on it. … This is the gift that the administration has given them, and I would take it.”
Some Iraq War Rememberers warn that this is not going far enough — and the American public cares far less about the process of the U.S. provoking another conflict abroad than some lawmakers do.
“Focus less on the process of consulting,” said Jim Manley, a former top aide to the late Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid. When he retired, Reid said on the floor that the one thing he regretted most was his vote authorizing the war in Iraq because he believed what the George W. Bush administration said in the lead-up to it.
“Democrats should focus first of all on the lies that are coming out of this administration as they figure out how to justify this operation,” Manley said.
Rep. Eric Swalwell, who is running for governor of California, posted Saturday that Democrats need to stay focused on “values-based arguments against war” — and get back to talking about the economy as quickly as possible.
“If asked for permission to go to war with Iran we must make it clear the answer is HELL NO,” he wrote. “We need lower costs not costly wars.”
But the true legacy of the Iraq War moment may be less about the rifts it can still cause and more about the hard truth it revealed: It takes a lot of American deaths to turn the electorate’s head. A relatively small number of American casualties in Iran, and even this complete breach with the broad understanding of Trump’s campaign promises, could be forgotten by the time voting begins this fall.
“All the people who I think are going to be pissed off about this to the point where they would withhold their vote or switch to voting Democratic, I suspect they already moved in that direction some time ago,” veteran Republican strategist Liz Mair said. “And I think for those who haven’t, but who are cautious about this stuff, I think those people are going to give them a little latitude, and we’ll see what happens, like if he does turn this into some boots-on-the-ground situation.”
“I think Republicans are already pretty cooked just because of the cost-of-living stuff,” she added.
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