The president ran on ending forever wars. But Israel’s Thursday night strike on Iran could force his hand.
President Donald Trump campaigned on ending what his base has long derided as U.S. foreign adventurism, leading the rebellion against an establishment that long favored international interventions.
Now some of his most vocal supporters fear Israel may have trampled his ability to make good on that promise.
The Jewish nation’s decision to conduct a pre-emptive strike on Tehran’s nuclear facilities on Thursday night threatens to draw the United States into a Middle East conflict — and split the MAGA coalition that catapulted Trump back into the Oval Office.
The entire situation is infuriating the MAGA base, whose leaders had been imploring Trump to stop Israel in recent days. But the president either tried and failed, highlighting his lack of sway with Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu — or he privately greenlit the campaign against the warnings of his base (which the administration firmly denies).
Either way, the president who insisted his negotiating prowess would usher in a new age of world peace, now finds himself in perhaps the diciest situation of his presidency: facing down the possibility of leaving Israel to fend for itself — or joining it in going toe to toe with Iran.
“What the president does from here could end up defining his presidency,” MAGA scribe Matt Boyle of Breitbart told me just after news of the strikes. “He has to balance protecting America’s greatest ally in the region in Israel with avoiding getting the USA drawn into war.”
Others in the MAGA-sphere already had an answer: Stay out.
“Israel has now made a mockery of the United States,” said Breaking Points host Saagar Enjeti, who earlier in the day predicted on X that “a war with Iran would make the disastrous war in Iraq look like a cakewalk.”
Israel’s offensive came after pleas to the president from the MAGA base reached a fever pitch on Thursday. Some of the most high-profile figures of the movement took to social media, podcasts and television imploring Trump to intervene to stop it, believing that he actually could.
Kirk — the Turning Point USA leader who’s become a de facto whip for the administration— warned that a strike on Iran “will cause a massive schism in MAGA.” Mollie Hemingway, editor-in-chief at the right-wing publication, The Federalist — who frequently lavishes praise on Trump on Fox News — argued that allowing the Israeli strike “would be seen as an unforgivable betrayal by millions of American voters.”
Right-wing activist Jack Posobiec warned that the midterms are nearing and wondered: “What do you think a new Middle East conflict with Iran would do to summer gas prices?” And on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast two days in a row, Boyle insisted that “it’s incredibly important that President Trump resist the pressure” for military action.
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