MAGA Divided Over Trump Iran Bombing: “America First” Coalition Fractures

Sig­nif­i­cant ten­sions with­in Trump’s MAGA move­ment have erupt­ed over his deci­sion to strike Iran­ian nuclear facil­i­ties. On June 22, 2025, The Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed that Trump’s airstrikes on three nuclear sites marked a stark rever­sal from his anti-war cam­paign rhetoric, with key allies like Steve Ban­non express­ing uncer­tain­ty and Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene declar­ing she does­n’t “want to fight or fund nuclear-armed Israel’s wars” in a 600-word social media post. The arti­cle begins:

Stephen K. Ban­non sound­ed uncer­tain as he absorbed Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s strikes on Iran and his nation­al address explain­ing it. “An inter­est­ing talk,” Ban­non said war­i­ly on his “War Room” pod­cast, adding that he was not quite sure that it was what “a lot of MAGA want­ed to hear.” Oth­ers were more blunt: “I don’t want to fight or fund nuclear-armed Israel’s wars,” Rep. Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene (R‑Georgia), one of Trump’s staunchest allies in Con­gress, declared in a more than 600-word social media post.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/06/22/trump-iran-bombing-maga/

Key Points

• Ban­non warned “there are def­i­nite­ly some peo­ple in MAGA that are not exact­ly ecsta­t­ic” as pod­cast lis­ten­ers flood­ed com­ments with objec­tions to the airstrikes.
• Con­ser­v­a­tive activist Arnie Her­nan­dez called Trump a “hyp­ocrite” for break­ing anti-war promis­es, say­ing the strikes make him less like­ly to sup­port JD Vance in future primaries.
• Lau­ra Loomer defend­ed Trump by attack­ing crit­ics as “John­ny-come-latelys and grifters,” declar­ing “Amer­i­ca First is what­ev­er Trump says it is” while prepar­ing a list of dis­loy­al influencers.
• White House offi­cials main­tained close con­tact with influ­en­tial base lead­ers like Ban­non and Kirk through­out the week, with both vis­it­ing the White House before the strikes.

National Conservatism & Foreign Policy: Sovereignty, Strategy, and Geopolitics

Nation­al con­ser­vatism ele­vates sov­er­eign­ty, cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty, and reli­gious her­itage as cor­ner­stones of for­eign pol­i­cy, fre­quent­ly reject­ing mul­ti­lat­er­al frame­works in favor of uni­lat­er­al real­ism. A glob­al per­spec­tive on nation­al con­ser­vatism traces how the movement’s lead­ers, includ­ing Vik­tor Orbán and Nigel Farage, advo­cate nation­al inter­est as the pri­ma­ry lens for inter­na­tion­al engage­ment, often attack­ing EU insti­tu­tions and transna­tion­al coop­er­a­tion. In the U.S., JD Vance reflects this ori­en­ta­tion through his sup­port for cut­ting mil­i­tary aid to Ukraine and repri­or­i­tiz­ing strate­gic focus toward China—moves aligned with what AEI calls a shift toward “restrained strength” in U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy, where pow­er is used selec­tive­ly and in defense of nar­row­ly defined nation­al goals.

This ide­o­log­i­cal shift is part of a broad­er con­ser­v­a­tive realign­ment; as Col­in Dueck has argued, nation­al con­ser­v­a­tives are reassert­ing for­eign pol­i­cy tra­di­tions root­ed in nation­al­ism, skep­ti­cism of lib­er­al democ­ra­cy abroad, and a pref­er­ence for bilat­er­al or ad hoc alliances over insti­tu­tion­al com­mit­ments. The GIOR report on Russ­ian influ­ence under­scores how this world­view inter­sects with Krem­lin pro­pa­gan­da, as Rus­sia exploits nation­al con­ser­v­a­tive nar­ra­tives in Hun­gary and else­where to weak­en lib­er­al inter­na­tion­al norms. As out­lined in Wikipedia’s entry on nation­al con­ser­vatism, this move­ment often com­bines cul­tur­al tra­di­tion­al­ism with mil­i­ta­rized nationalism—emphasizing nation­al sur­vival over glob­al cooperation—and in doing so chal­lenges the assump­tions of post–Cold War diplomacy.

This inter­nal strug­gle was recent­ly on dis­play in a clash between two promi­nent voic­es in the move­ment, as a media bat­tle erupt­ed between Tuck­er Carl­son and Mark Levin over a poten­tial U.S. war with Iran, high­light­ing the deep divi­sions with­in nation­al con­ser­v­a­tive ranks over the lim­its of mil­i­tary interventionism.

External References:

• Nation­al con­ser­vatism – Wikipedia
• Con­ser­v­a­tive Nation­al­ism and U.S. For­eign Pol­i­cy – Amer­i­can Enter­prise Institute
• The Future of Con­ser­v­a­tive For­eign Pol­i­cy – Texas Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Review

 Disclaimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.