{"id":551750,"date":"2026-03-29T05:08:17","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T05:08:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/551750\/"},"modified":"2026-03-29T05:08:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T05:08:17","slug":"trump-fans-at-cpac-hope-for-the-best-in-iran-but-worry-over-the-cost-at-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/551750\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump fans at CPAC hope for the best in Iran but worry over the cost at home"},"content":{"rendered":"

At CPAC, various speakers and conferencegoers said that the better outcome in this war would be for the Iranian people to do the hard work of ousting the theocratic regime. So far, the popular uprising that Trump encouraged at the start of the war hasn\u2019t happened.<\/p>\n

In one panel devoted to Iran, moderator Mercedes Schlapp, a senior White House official in Trump\u2019s first term, said that a \u201cprolonged\u201d war is \u201cnot where I think the American people want to be.\u201d She asked a panelist, Hiva Wallace of the nonprofit, nonpartisan United Against a Nuclear Iran, what her message would be to those who hold that view.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can promise you, the Iranian people are ready to go back on the street,\u201d Wallace said.<\/p>\n

Still, one of MAGA world\u2019s best-known personalities cautioned that the war may just be in its beginning phase. Steve Bannon, who was a senior White House official in Trump\u2019s first term, told the CPAC audience: \u201cYour sons, daughters, granddaughters, grandsons could be on Kharg Island<\/a> and holding a beachhead on the Strait of Hormuz.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bannon said that people need to have Trump\u2019s \u201cback\u201d but should decide for themselves that the war is worth fighting.<\/p>\n

\"SteveSteve Bannon, left, onstage with Mike Lindell \u2014 aka “the MyPillow guy” \u2014 and a moderator on Friday.Zackary Canepari for NBC News<\/p>\n

A former Naval officer, Bannon told the CPAC audience that he once transited the Strait of Hormuz on a destroyer and suggested the experience was harrowing.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet me tell you, it looks like the surface of the moon,\u201d he recalled. \u201cIt couldn\u2019t be more foreign to folks in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

CPAC is a rampart of Trump\u2019s political movement, and it wasn\u2019t hard to find attendees who are all-in for what Trump has at times<\/a> called a war, at others an \u201cexcursion\u201d and, more recently, a \u201cmilitary operation<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

One was Rafael Cruz, the 87-year-old father of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we need to cut the head of the snake and make sure the people take over Iran,\u201d he said in an interview, \u201cbecause otherwise they\u2019ll reconstitute again and they still have the idea they want to build a bomb.\u201d<\/p>\n

The elder Cruz figured in the 2016 presidential race, when his son was a candidate running for the GOP nomination against Trump. At the time, Trump invoked a National Enquirer photo<\/a> purporting to show Rafael Cruz in the company of Lee Harvey Oswald, President John F. Kennedy\u2019s assassin, before the murder. The tabloid\u2019s ex-publisher later admitted the photo was a fake.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t carry grudges,\u201d Rafael Cruz told NBC News. \u201cIn the political arena, people speak against their opponent. I support Trump 100%.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At CPAC, various speakers and conferencegoers said that the better outcome in this war would be for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":551751,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-551750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551750","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=551750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551750\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/551751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}