{"id":498035,"date":"2026-03-01T19:45:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T19:45:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/498035\/"},"modified":"2026-03-01T19:45:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T19:45:07","slug":"trumps-iran-strike-tests-the-maga-vow-of-no-more-wars-donald-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/498035\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump\u2019s Iran strike tests the Maga vow of \u2018no more wars\u2019 | Donald Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump had come to Fayetteville, near Fort Bragg military base in North Carolina<\/a>, with a promise. \u201cWe will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn\u2019t be involved with,\u201d the then US president-elect said in December 2016<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Trump has pushed his isolationist message in the decade since, repeatedly assuring his \u201cAmerica first\u201d base that there would be no repeat of the forever wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.<\/p>\n

But the president\u2019s decision to strike Iran with massive force<\/a> on Saturday \u2013 killing supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei<\/a> \u2013 quickly became an acid test for his core support, triggering criticism among some high-profile Maga movement figures.<\/p>\n

Among the early dissenters was Marjorie Taylor Greene<\/a>, formerly one of Trump\u2019s fiercest loyalists who broke with him last year<\/a> and quit Congress over what she said was his lack of focus on domestic issues.<\/p>\n

Greene wrote in a lengthy post<\/a> on the X social media platform: \u201cWe said \u2018No More Foreign Wars, No More Regime Change!\u2019 We said it on rally stage after rally stage, speech after speech. Trump, Vance, basically the entire admin campaigned on it and promised to put America FIRST and Make America Great Again.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added: \u201cThere are 93 million people in Iran<\/a>, 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. It\u2019s always a lie and it\u2019s always America Last. But it feels like the worst betrayal this time because it comes from the very man and the admin who we all believed was different and said no more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reagan Box, among a dozen Republican candidates seeking to replace Greene in Georgia, said she is a Trump supporter but does not back the strikes on Iran. While she views Iran\u2019s leadership as \u201cheinous\u201d, she told the Reuters news agency, \u201cevery time we\u2019ve tried to do a regime change, especially in the Middle East, we just destabilize it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The discontent was echoed in the rightwing media sphere. The influential host Tucker Carlson described the assault<\/a> on Iran as \u201cdisgusting and evil\u201d, according to Jonathan Karl, an ABC News correspondent.<\/p>\n

Blake Neff, who was a producer of the rightwing activist Charlie Kirk\u2019s popular podcast, noted that Kirk had opposed regime change in Iran. \u201cTrump\/Vance ran on a peace platform, and it was popular,\u201d he wrote on X<\/a>. \u201cRight now some of my right-leaning friends are messaging me: \u2018F*** this.\u2019 \u2018This is extremely depressing.\u2019 \u2018Never voting in a national election again.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Neff added: \u201cIf this war is a swift, easy, and decisive victory, most of them will get over it. But if the war is anything else, there will be a lot of anger. The American people were not given a strong explanation of why this was necessary. But success can override bad explanations. So we must pray for success.\u201d<\/p>\n

Others were less ambivalent. Millie Weaver, a political commentator, complained on X: \u201cI don\u2019t remember voting to \u201cFree Iran\u201d. I voted to Make America Great Again.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Hodge twins, a conservative podcast duo who have generally backed Trump, condemned the strikes in a post to their 3.5 million followers as antithetical to his 2024 campaign. \u201cFreeing the people of Iran is not why I voted for Trump,\u201d the post said.<\/p>\n

Breck Worsham, a former Trump supporter and campaign worker known as \u201cThe Patriotic Blonde\u201d, posted<\/a>: \u201cIts official. Jimmy Carter is no longer the worst president in American history. Mission accomplished, @Potus. Another record broken.\u201d Worsham shared several posts suggesting that the war is intended to deflect attention from the Jeffrey Epstein<\/a> files.<\/p>\n

Opinion polls consistently show Americans\u2019 top concern is the rising cost of living. Yet much of Trump\u2019s first 13 months in office has been dominated by foreign policy<\/a> issues. In January, he urged Iranians to keep protesting and promised \u201chelp is on its way\u201d, only to leave them vulnerable for weeks before telling them to \u201ctake over your government\u201d even in the absence of a coherent opposition movement.<\/p>\n

The dubious logic of such interventions, with their echoes of the Iraq war and the fear that it could lead to US boots on the ground, represent a huge election-year gamble that heightens the risks for Republicans as they try to stay in power in Congress in November.<\/p>\n

Jack Posobiec, a rightwing activist, commented<\/a>: \u201cLast year, Charlie Kirk told us all that younger generation of Americans are far more interested in domestic policy that pursuing international conflicts and we can\u2019t forget that in a midterm year.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, JD Vance had told<\/a> the Washington Post newspaper this week that there is \u201cno chance\u201d that the US could get sucked into a Middle Eastern war for years with no end in sight.<\/p>\n

Other Maga figures rallied to the president\u2019s defense and supported the bombing campaign. Laura Loomer, a close Trump ally, posted on X<\/a>: \u201cIran has been attacking the US for over 47 years. And now, the 47th President of the United States is ending their reign of terror.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Republican National Committee released a statement supporting the Iran operation, while reaction in Congress largely broke down along party lines, with exceptions such as the libertarian-leaning conservative Republican, Thomas Massie, who posted<\/a>: \u201cI am opposed to this War. This is not \u2018America First.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Mike Davis, head of the Article III Project, a pro-Trump legal advocacy group, said the strikes were justified, citing a recent video message in which he said Khamenei warned that Iran could sink US warships. \u201cThat video right there is all the justification that the president needs to flatten the supreme leader\u2019s home and take him out,\u201d Davis told former Trump strategist Steve Bannon on his War Room podcast<\/a>, which is popular with the Maga base.<\/p>\n

The disquiet, at least for now, is more rumble than revolt. Michael Traugott, a political scientist and professor emeritus at the University of Michigan, told Reuters that criticism has come mainly from the \u201cchattering class\u201d of the Maga base and not from Republican elected leaders.<\/p>\n

It was too early, however, to say how supporters will feel in the longer term. \u201cFor the popular Maga base, this is pretty much a direct violation of a major campaign promise to stay out of foreign engagements,\u201d Traugott said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump had come to Fayetteville, near Fort Bragg military base in North Carolina, with a promise. \u201cWe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":498036,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-498035","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/498036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}