The MAGA Civil War Over Iran Is a Made-Up Media Fantasy

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The unholy alliance between the dregs of the Republican and upper crust of the Democratic coalition is something to behold.

Everywhere you look, the regressive progressives in the media are suddenly and predictably eager to parrot the likes of Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Steve Bannon while heralding a MAGA crack-up.

The Atlantic reported that President Donald Trump’s foreign policy philosophy had shifted “From ‘America First’ to ‘Always America Last’” in the eyes of his base.

NPR suggested his coalition was balking at his decision.

Will Sommer of The Bulwark went further, insisting that “MAGA Already Hates Trump’s Iran War.”

They all cite the same sources — Carlson, Kelly, Greene, Bannon, Nick Fuentes, and Curt Mills of The American Conservative — using this unsavory group of online personalities, all of whom traffic in anti-Israel, and oftentimes overtly anti-Semitic tropes and conspiracy theories, as a stand-in for Trump voters.

It’s a lazy, self-serving, and unscrupulous heuristic.

Consider the data. A new CNN poll found that a majority of the country opposes the military operation Trump has authorized against Iran (other surveys suggest otherwise) but a supermajority-plus of Republicans (77%-23%) approve. They also believe it renders Iran less rather than more of a threat by a 58%-27% margin and trust that the president “has a clear plan” moving forward by an 83%-17% margin.

Here’s the kicker. Self-identified “MAGA Republicans” are actually far more hawkish on Iran than their non-MAGA counterparts.

“MAGA Republicans are 30 points more likely than non-MAGA Republicans to say they strongly approve of the decision to take military action, 34 points likelier to say it will reduce the threat Iran poses to the US and nearly 50 points more likely to say they have a great deal of trust in Trump to make the right decisions about US use of force in Iran,” noted CNN’s write-up about its findings.

This isn’t a new phenomenon. An NBC News poll conducted last June found that 84% of Republicans who counted themselves among the MAGA faithful approved of Operation Midnight Hammer, the successful strikes on the Iranian nuclear program. That compared favorably to the 72% of traditional Republicans who were in favor.

So why are liberals in the media so eager to hold up disreputable figures like Carlson and Greene as proof that Trump’s lost control of his movement? After all, to do so is to misserve audience and stain their own reputations as journalists.

Because they agree with the anti-American, anti-Western sentiments and premises of the far-right commentariat’s vanguard.

They agree that the United States is, principally, a force for evil in the world. They cringe at any and every exercise of American military might. They rely on the same moral relativism to make excuses for the atrocities committed — and downplay the threats posed — by the Russian-Iranian-Chinese axis. And they blame Israel, a multiethnic democracy and the American ally most willing to risk its own blood and treasure for Uncle Sam, for all that has goes wrong in the Middle East — or at least all that they don’t blame on the U.S. itself.

This is not true, of course, of most critics of Operation Epic Fury or interventionism more generally. There are any number of principled reasons to oppose both, and the arguments for such opposition are vital to public debate.

But scratch beneath the surface of what Carlson, Fuentes, their audience, and many Democratic elites’ — including those who pose as newsmen — rhetoric, and you will find that their worldview is shaped by an anti-American instinct that animates their every move and/or an unhealthy, ancient obsession with Jewish influence, both of which are anathema to both MAGA adherents and traditional conservatives alike.

For Trump’s reflexive enemies on the left, it is a comforting, even pleasurable thought that he may have created a monster that will eat him. It’s also a fantasy better suited for a diary than a respectable publication.

The far-right, isolationist content creator space is a profitable industry, but unrepresentative of any meaningful political constituency. Anyone who tells you otherwise is engaged in wishcasting, not journalism.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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