NO APOLOGIES — President DONALD TRUMP hit back at MAGA World critics of his Iran gambit in a phone call with “The Inner Circle” Monday night, arguing that MEGYN KELLY and TUCKER CARLSON aren’t “MAGA.” That he is.
While writing about the crescendo of prominent MAGA voices expressing skepticism on the merits, I picked up the phone to ask the president whether he believed the criticism constituted a sizable portion of his base. Trump initially said, “I don’t know.”
“I have to do what’s right, number one — and you can’t have Iran getting a nuclear weapon. That’s predominant to me,” he said.
But then Trump went on to express confidence that MAGA is with him. He pointed out that Kelly had been critical of him before, but had come around to supporting him. Then he argued that her skepticism doesn’t matter. (“It’s all right. I don’t mind. She was critical of me for years and I didn’t lose. I won all three times by a lot.”)
“I think that MAGA is Trump — MAGA’s not the other two,” Trump said, referring to Kelly and Carlson. “MAGA wants to see our country thrive and be safe. And MAGA loves what I’m doing — every aspect of it… This is a detour that we have to take in order to keep our country safe and keep other countries safe, frankly.”
TRUMP’S COMMENT COME AS the White House is flooding the zone to defend its attack on Iran, an offensive that peaks as early public polling suggests Americans disapprove of the campaign.
On Monday night, Vice President JD VANCE — the administration’s senior-most anti-interventionist, who cut his teeth in politics by blasting the war in Iraq — took to Fox News with a clear message: This is NOT Iraq or Afghanistan 2.0 The situation in Iran, he argued, is “so different” from wars of the past because “the president has clearly defined what he wants to accomplish… Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon and has to commit long-term to never trying to rebuild the nuclear capability.”
“There’s just no way that Donald Trump is going to allow this country to get into a multi-year conflict with no clear end in sight and no clear objective,” Vance said. “And I think that means that we’re not going to get into the problems that we’ve had with Iraq and Afghanistan.”
I’m told by the White House that the P.R. push will pull in other high-profile administration officials, too, including STEVE WITKOFF and MICHAEL WALTZ. And we should expect frequent, if not daily, briefings by the Pentagon.
THE DAMAGE-CONTROL EFFORT follows some Trump World allies questioning the need for the operation at all. On Monday, Kelly became the latest to assail the administration for fighting a war that she argued is not “America First” priorities.
“Why are we doing this now? What was the catalyst?” Kelly asked her millions of followers, adding that “I don’t think those four service members died for the United States. I think they died for Iran or for Israel.” “I have serious doubts about what we’re doing. I support the president… I campaigned for the president… But that doesn’t mean… you have to accept another Middle East war without question — and anybody who tells you that can suck it.”
(Service member deaths have now reached six.)
Read some of Kelly’s comments, Trump in our phone call said the podcast host “outta study her history book a little bit.”
“Megan was opposed to me for years when I ran the first time and nothing stopped me,” Trump said. “And so, you know, some people are against — and they always come back. She came all the way back. But now I guess she maybe doesn’t like the idea of this war, but I do because I have to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of the Iranians.”
Kelly isn’t alone. TUCKER CARLSON sent a warning sign to the White House over the weekend, arguing that the campaign was “evil,” in a call with ABC News. (Trump told me that Carlson “can say whatever he wants; it has no impact on me.”) STEVE BANNON has, meanwhile, been stoking the fire as well, hosting guests on his famous “War Room” podcast, questioning what the administration is doing.
“Look, Steve, I’m not happy about the whole thing. I don’t think this was in America’s interests,” ERIK PRINCE said on the show yesterday. “It’s going to uncork a significant can of worms and chaos and destruction in Iran now.”
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THROUGH IT ALL, the White House has sought to calm the waters. There’s a belief among some insiders that Republicans will give the president the benefit of the doubt and eventually come around. A senior White House official told me this afternoon that “we are in the first inning of a nine-inning game.”
“The panicans need to relax,” this person said, referring to Trump’s nickname for worrywart Republicans. “The President and Cabinet will continue to make the case about why this was necessary.”
Meanwhile, White House Press Secretary KAROLINE LEAVITT has used her X account throughout the day to respond to criticism on the right. One of those was this post by conservative podcast host MATT WALSH, of the Daily Wire:
“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. And although Iran was not planning any attacks on the US, they also might have been, depending on who you ask. 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.
Leavitt responded by citing Iran’s terror over the past nearly 50 years.
“Prior American leaders were too weak and cowardly to do anything about it,” she wrote, listing a number of objectives for the mission. “Now, President Donald J. Trump is correcting decades of cowardice and holding those responsible for the deaths of Americans accountable.
Secretary of State MARCO RUBIO didn’t exactly assuage MAGA skeptics’ concerns today when he suggested that the U.S. entered the fray because of Israel. Rubio implied that the Jewish nation was going to strike with or without America’s help, and he said the administration determined U.S. assets and service members would be caught in the crossfire of a retaliatory strike, thus had to act.
THERE ARE QUESTIONS IN TRUMP WORLD about how deep the MAGA fracture actually runs. Some argue that while these voices of dissent may be loud, with large followings, they don’t constitute a majority of Republicans.
“Expect to see lots of ‘MAGA fractures over Iran strike’ headlines in coming days—especially in the anti-Trump, pro-Ayatollah leftist media,” NewsNation host BATYA UNGAR-SARGON tweeted, giving voice to the arguments I’ve also heard privately. “The evidence will be 4 podcasters on one side vs. 93% of Trump’s base on the other. Don’t believe the wish-casting. Believe your own eyes.”
But other Republicans argue that logic merely papers over GOP fractures that now need to be repaired ahead of the midterms.
“Even if, say, 30 percent of Republicans are on the other side of this issue from the [White House], that could cause major problems for the electoral coalition,” one Republican operative involved in multiple statewide races across the country told me. “That doesn’t even get into voters who feel queasy about the bombing, but still tell pollsters they support Trump on it for now.”
This person argued that “it’s hard to see how the politics play out favorably” — and the real question is how fast the admin can wrap up the job and pivot.
“The nature of these things is the longer they go on, the more unpopular they get. The real question is whether this is simply a short-term liability or a long-term one, and that is largely dependent on how long it lasts. If it’s all over in a month or so, it will likely only cause short-term damage, but if it is still going on three months from now, all bets are off.”
Meanwhile, longtime Trump pollster JIM McLAUGHLIN told me this afternoon that none of this means anything to the president.
“He really doesn’t care about the polls,” McLaughlin told me. “I think he’s trying to fix things. He was left with a lot of problems, and I think — whether it’s this, whether it’s Gaza, whether it’s the work-in-progress that is Russia and Ukraine — he’s not doing it because of the polls. He’s doing it because it’s the best thing not just for the country, but for the world.”
