‘Un-American’ critics of war represent the majority of Americans

“Absolutely disgusting and evil.”

This is how Tucker Carlson reportedly described the Trump administration’s decision to strike Iran. Carlson would add, "This is going to shuffle the deck in a profound way."

Carlson was talking about Donald Trump’s original “MAGA” or “America First” movement, of which he has been a prominent voice and also a personal friend of the president, even visiting the White House last week.

But voices like News Nation’s Batya Ungar-Sargon say Carlson is a gadfly oddity who does not represent the majority of the Trump base, which is, according to Ungar-Sargon, absolutely thrilled that the president has launched a war against Iran with Israel and “decapitated” the regime.

She called Carlson’s comments “evil and disgusting,” adding, “Expect to see lots of ‘MAGA fractures over Iran strike’ headlines in coming days — especially in the anti-Trump, pro-Ayatollah leftist media.” (calling opponents of an Iran war “Pro-Ayatollah” is a classic neoconservative smear.)

“The evidence will be 4 podcasters on one side vs. 93% of Trump's base on the other,” Ungar-Sargon said. “Don't believe the wish-casting. Believe your own eyes.”

On one hand, Ungar-Sargon has a point. Recent polling has shown that self-identified MAGA, the core of Trump’s base, approve of Trump’s war on Iran, similar to their support for his kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro and “take over” of Venezuela.

A CNN survey taken after the Saturday attacks found that MAGA respondents are 30 points more likely than non-MAGA Republicans to say they strongly approve of the Iran attacks, and 34 points more likely to say the war will reduce the threat of Iran to America.

Meanwhile, many of Trump’s biggest supporters on and off Capitol Hill fell in line after the Saturday attacks.

MAGA Republican Rep. Nancy Mace (S.C.) was on board with Trump’s decision, sharing in a post, “For decades, the Iranian regime has bankrolled Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis — terrorist organizations responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans and thousands of innocent people around the world.”

“We are cutting off global terrorism,” Mace added.

The perpetually hawkish journalist Josh Hammer claimed that “Donald Trump isn't starting a new ‘forever war’ in the Middle East. He is ending one.” This echoes the rationale given by Trump and others that the U.S. somehow has been at war with Iran for 47 years and the president’s actions now are simply the grand finale.

Hammer said of Carlson and MAGA, “In decrying the heroic operation, fifth column useful idiots like Tucker Carlson speak for America's civilizational enemies — not for Trump's MAGA base.”

The seemingly always hyperventilating MAGA personality Laura Loomer sounded the same chord after the president’s strikes. “Just spoke to President Trump and congratulated him on another successful combat mission eradicating one of the world’s most evil Islamic terrorists! I also told him everyone who loves America and hates terrorism is cheering for him and celebrating today, with the exception of the Woke Reich, Tucker Qatarlson, Thomas Massie, Marjorie Traitor Greene and the communist Democrats.”

In a new monologue video released Monday, Carlson described how restrainers among original MAGA are being purged by neocons and hawks who now recalibrate the movement to their own liking.

Carlson says these people are ruthless and compared the parameters of this foreign policy debate to a tennis match where typically the winner might show grace to the loser. Carlson said that instead, “No, they want to kill the people they vanquished.”

“What you see in the advocates of this war, in the neocons…you’re seeing this crazed, hysterical in fact, effort to purge anyone in the conservative movement or MAGA… To purge anyone who had any doubt in/about the wisdom of this war.”

During Trump’s 2016, 2020 and 2024 White House campaigns, which Carlson supported, Trump vowed to end “endless wars,” to not pursue regime change wars based on “lies.” He routinely condemned the neoconservatism of Bush-Cheney that had seemed to become de facto Republican foreign policy prior to Trump’s rise.

Perhaps they don’t self-identify as MAGA in polling, but conservatives demanding a less interventionist foreign policy for the sake of American interests do exist, and some very influential voices are speaking for them today. And by the way, according to these polls, they speak for most Americans today, at least where this war is concerned.

Former Republican congresswoman and MAGA moral compass, Marjorie Taylor Greene, pulled no punches in recalling her time campaigning with the president. “We said ‘No More Foreign Wars, No More Regime Change!’ We said it on rally stage after rally stage, speech after speech. Trump, (Vice President JD Vance), basically the entire admin campaigned on it and promised to put America FIRST and Make America Great Again.”

Greene appeared to cite Vice President JD Vance because he was supposed to be a force for U.S. restraint inside the administration, too.

“Thousands and thousands of Americans from my generation have been killed and injured in never ending pointless foreign wars and we said no more.” Greene said. “But we are freeing the Iranian people. Please.”

Trump supporter and Blackwater co-founder Erik Prince didn’t take long to reject the war. He told MAGA OG Steve Bannon on Sunday that he had “a real issue” with "subjecting our foreign policy to Israeli foreign policy.”

“I said it before,” Prince said. “This should not be the path forward. And the president chose to do it."

Megyn Kelly said during her podcast monologue Monday that “my own feeling is no one should have to die for a foreign country. I don't think those four service members died for the United States. I think they died for Iran or for Israel.”

She was referring to the six American service members who were reportedly killed on Sunday in Kuwait.

“But our government's job is not to look out for Iran or for Israel. It's to look out for us,” Kelly continued. “And this feels very much to me like it is clearly Israel's war. Mark Levin wanted it. It's his war. Ben Shapiro, Lindsey Graham, Miriam Adelson…they're the ones who've been pushing us into this.”

The American Conservative’s Executive Editor Curt Mills told Megyn Kelley, "This looks like an open betrayal of the MAGA base. What Bush-era neocon is not for this today?”

“John Bolton is pleased as hell,” Mills added.

The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh, who was in favor of the Trump administration’s regime change efforts in Venezuela in January, admitted that the Iran initiative left him befuddled. “So far we’ve heard that although we killed the whole Iranian regime, this was not a regime change war,” Walsh wrote.

“And although we obliterated their nuclear program, we had to do this because of their nuclear program. And although Iran was not planning any attacks on the U.S., they also might have been, depending on who you ask,” he added. “And although we are not fighting this war to free the Iranian people, they are now free, or might be, depending on who seizes power, and we have no idea who that will be. The messaging on this thing is, to put it mildly, confused.”

Bannon ran down poll numbers on his “War Room” program after the strikes, “This is the New York Times, but they've done a poll, and the poll's pretty brutal. I think only 40% of Republicans are in favor of this.” He was right, and only 21% of Americans overall.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll over the weekend also found that 55% of Republicans approved of the strikes but 42% say they would be less likely if U.S. troops started incurring casualties. Overall only 27% of respondents in that poll said they approved of the strikes.

As Greene points out, it may not be useful to make this about parties, or even left and right. Trump’s core base have an interest in him succeeding politically; they are more inclined to support everything he does for the sake of the MAGA movement. Others are more principle-driven conservatives who cannot abide by his choices to take the country to war. They are fighting it out right now.

“And just like that we are no longer a nation divided by left and right,” Greene shared Monday, “we are now a nation divided by those who want to fight wars for Israel and those who just want peace and to be able to afford their bills and health insurance.”

Could it be that simple? Keep your eyes on public opinion and not on those desperate to smear the dissenters.