President Donald Trump is facing a backlash from some conservatives over his military strikes against Iran, the Washington Post reports.
“This is Israel’s war. This is not the United States’ war,” former Fox News host Tucker Carlson said Tuesday on his weekly podcast.
“No one should have to die for a foreign country,” Megyn Kelly, another former Fox News host, said on her podcast Monday.
Daily Wire podcaster Matt Walsh called on fellow conservatives to stop supporting Trump’s military campaign.
“I can’t take the gaslighting, guys. I really can’t,” Walsh wrote on X.
MAGA supporters are having trouble reconciling the military action with the “America First” rhetoric that was a focal point of Trump’s successful 2024 campaign for the presidency.
With Trump saying that the military action against Iran could continue for as long as five weeks, conservatives have also pointed to Trump’s previous statements against costly and protracted military interventions.
“I think to them it feels legitimately like a betrayal on a fundamental tenet of Trumpism,” said Matthew Dallek, a professor at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management.
But the president has scoffed at the notion that these right-wing critics speak on behalf of the “Make American Great Again” movement founded by Trump.
“MAGA is Trump,” the president said in an interview with independent journalist Rachael Bade on Monday.
When asked about the mutiny among his supporters, Trump said that he alone speaks for MAGA.
“MAGA wants to see our country thrive and be safe,” the president told Bade. “And MAGA loves what I’m doing – every aspect of it.”
