President Trump's attack on Iran is confusing the MAGA base that once bragged that he never started any wars, testing the limits of their trust in the president's foreign policy judgement.
There are, of course, many Republicans like Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) who have long advocated for the U.S. to take decisive action in Iran and take out the ayatollah, and they are thrilled.
But a significant portion of the MAGA base is made up of anti-interventionists and skeptics of forced regime change — those who were scarred by the drawn-out, expensive entanglements in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Several of those predictably panned the strikes.
Tucker Carlson, who The New York Times reported had tried to talk Trump out of action in Iran, told ABC News the war was "disgusting and evil." On his podcast Monday, Carlson said that this is "Israel's war" and it is "not being waged on behalf of American national security objectives." Megyn Kelly also said on her radio show that this feels like "clearly Israel's war" and voiced doubts about the move. Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and current Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) balked also, saying it was not "America First."
But Trump over the years has won over many of those in the more skeptical camp by practicing a "third way" of foreign policy that was neither isolationist nor sought to nation build, defined by limited strikes and surgical operations: the strike that killed Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in 2020; dropping bunker-busting bombs on Iranian nuclear sites in 2025; and capturing Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in January without toppling the entire Venezuelan regime.
But Operation Epic Fury is stretching the ability of the MAGA faithful to support an overseas intervention, given the uncertainty and mixed messaging from the Trump administration.
Trump in a video message Saturday seemed to explicitly call for regime change, encouraging the Iranian people to "take over your government" when the strikes stop, and later bragging that 49 members of Iranian leadership had been killed.
Yet Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in a Monday press conference said: "This is not a so-called regime change war, but the regime sure did change, and the world is better off for it." He insisted this will not be an "endless" war like Iraq — and that the U.S. did not start the war, but is responding to Iranian aggression and threats. This operation, he said, is the "opposite" of nation building.
Hegseth detailed the objectives of taking out Iranian military capabilities, and bristled when asked if there was concern about the war going longer than expected: "Did you not hear my remarks?"
Trump, meanwhile, told the New York Post he isn't ruling out putting boots on the ground in Iran, in keeping with never ruling out any military move.
None of this is calming the nerves of those who had long been skeptical of getting into a deeper entanglement in Iran, and confusing some of them.
Conservative commentator Matt Walsh of The Daily Wire vented on the social platform X: "So far we've heard that although we killed the whole Iranian regime, this was not a regime change war. And although we obliterated their nuclear program, we had to do this because of their nuclear program … The messaging on this thing is, to put it mildly, confused."
The Federalist co-founder Sean Davis similarly wondered: "Is the goal to eliminate the Iranian regime or free the Iranian people or degrade their nuclear capability or degrade the conventional weapons capability or eliminate their regional hegemony or to cut off their oil supply to China or to help Israel or what? The lack of any coherent message seems to suggest the lack of any coherent objective."
That prompted a rare coalition-policing response from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt to Walsh, laying out the administration's objectives of destroying Iran's military capabilities, slamming Iran for not making a nuclear deal, and saying that "killing terrorists is good for America."
And Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in an attempt to clear up confusion after a briefing on Capitol Hill, offered an explanation that only fueled critics who said the war was being waged on behalf of Israel: "We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties." (Various reporting has said that the U.S. and Israel acted in conjunction based on U.S. intelligence.)
Videos of slain Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk voicing skepticism of intervention in Iran circulated on social media over the weekend, articulating the prewar sentiment of those who had warmed to Trump's "third way" interventions and trusted in Trump's foreign policy calls while still urging restraint. Kirk had warned against regime change wars but said he supported Trump after the Iran strikes last summer.
But as "Charlie Kirk Show" hosts Blake Neff and Andrew Kolvet said Monday, Kirk was also a close ally and supporter of Trump, and it is impossible to know what he would have said about this action now.
Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.), a former Navy SEAL, captured the mood of cautious Trump supporters on the "Charlie Kirk Show" on Monday. He said he had been urging caution before the strikes when it comes to regime change. He expressed concern about the ability of the Iranian people to take hold of the government in a way that will benefit the U.S. when other forces like China are also looking to exert influence in the country.
"It's very dynamic, it's very hard to pull off," Crane said.
But with the war now here, there's little other choice for those who urged caution but to hope that those who cheered it are vindicated.
"Now that this operation is underway, I'm hoping, I'm praying, for not only the administration and the wisdom for their decisions going forward, but also for the people of Iran," Crane said. "I hope it works out."
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