Cracks appear in Trump's MAGA base as leading figures criticize the Iran
war
[March 05, 2026]
By DAVID BAUDER, MEG KINNARD and ALI SWENSON
NEW YORK (AP) — For President Donald Trump, some of the sharpest
criticism he's faced in the early days of the Iran war has come from
once-loyal media figures far more accustomed to singing his praises.
Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly and Matt Walsh are among those to express
discontent. It's been noticed in the White House, which has been playing
defense on social media and in interviews.
To be sure, these critics are the minority of the media MAGAsphere,
where Fox News' biggest stars remain cheerleaders. But their words
illustrate conservative media's influence and how valuable it is to
Trump when all runs as a well-oiled machine — and, by contrast, how much
of a problem it can be if it fractures.
Much of the criticism has centered on Israel's influence on Trump's
decision to go to war. Carlson, the former Fox News star who has built
his own independent operation, told ABC News over the weekend that the
attack was “absolutely disgusting and evil.”
“It's hard to say this, but the United States didn't make the decision
here. Benjamin Netanyahu did,” Carlson said on his podcast, referring to
the Israeli prime minister.
‘No one should have to die for a foreign country’
Kelly, another former Fox anchor gone indie, said about American
casualties on her show that “no one should have to die for a foreign
country."
“I don't think those service members died for the United States,” Kelly
said. "I think they died for Iran or Israel.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio's remarks prior to a Capitol Hill
briefing were a flashpoint. Rubio said that Trump had given the go-ahead
for the operation knowing that Israel was prepared to strike and he
feared retaliation from Iran against U.S. bases in the region.
“We knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them, before they
launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties,” Rubio said.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said that if the Trump administration
had not acted, lawmakers would have wondered why.
Walsh, a Daily Wire host, wrote on X that Rubio was “flat out telling us
that we're in a war with Iran because Israel forced our hand. This is
basically the worst possible thing he could have said.”
The Republican president told journalist Rachael Bade in an interview
that he did not believe that the opinions of Carlson and Kelly are
shared by his base of supporters. “I think that MAGA is Trump,” he said.
“MAGA's not the other two.”
Republican former U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who has
fashioned herself as an influencer and media figure since bitterly
breaking with Trump, said on Kelly's podcast that she was furious over
the U.S. military action. “Make America Great Again," Greene says, “was
supposed to be America first, not Israel first.”
Will Trump supporters return to the fold?
Trump is probably right to think that most of his supporters will return
to the fold if they're unhappy with the Iran attack, said Jason Zengerle,
author of “Hated By All the Right People: Tucker Carlson and the
Unraveling of the Conservative Mind.” Given the consistency of his views
on the topic, Carlson is probably the most important of Trump's
conservative critics, Zengerle said.
“If the war does go badly, I think it strengthens the hand of someone
like Tucker,” he said. “All of this is a debate about what happens after
Trump is gone anyway.”
Carlson was at the center of a controversy last fall over antisemitism
in conservative media for giving attention to polarizing influencer Nick
Fuentes with an interview on Carlson's podcast. Fuentes has called Adolf
Hitler “cool,” suggested there is a genocide against white people and
said his young followers are “tired of hearing about slavery and the
Holocaust.”
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Megyn Kelly speaks at a campaign rally with Republican presidential
nominee former President Donald Trump at PPG Paints Arena, Nov. 4,
2024, in Pittsburgh, Pa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
There have been cracks in Trump's conservative media support prior
to Iran, notably with the vast and sprawling narratives around the
Jeffrey Epstein report. But this week's criticism unleashed some
startling internal vitriol. Ben Shapiro, of “The Daily Wire,” called
Kelly “wildly inconsistent” and a coward. Elisabeth Hasselbeck
denounced Kelly for her suggestion that American servicemen died for
Israel. “How dare you?” Hasselbeck said Tuesday on “The View."
Fox News' Sean Hannity said that Carlson was “not the person I knew
when he was at Fox.” Kelly denounced Hannity as a supplicant who
“would never say anything other than to puff Donald Trump up.”
It's worth remembering that most of what readers and viewers are
seeing in conservative media supports Trump. Howard Polskin,
publisher of The Righting newsletter, estimated Tuesday that about
95% of what he's monitored on websites is behind the president.
“Trump Stands Tall on Iran,” headlined The American Spectator.
The most popular personalities on Fox News — still the top dog among
conservatives — continue to be supportive. Hannity, Brian Kilmeade
and Mark Levin were among the most vociferous leading up to the
attack and after. “The president has shown more courage, and this
Pentagon, Pete Hegseth's Pentagon, has executed brilliantly once
again,” said Kilmeade, the “Fox & Friends” co-host.
“I think that MAGA gives him the benefit of the doubt, no question
about it,” Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary during the
early part of Trump’s first term, said on his podcast Tuesday. “I
think he’s built up a ton of credibility with the base. ... Look,
you’ve got PTSD from a lot of our former leaders between Iraq and
Afghanistan in particular, who only know forever wars, and so I get
it. But this president has proven now twice that he knows what he’s
doing.”
Criticism of war rollout draws specific White House rebuke
The podcast influencers who helped to drive many young men into
Trump's camp during the 2024 campaign have been largely quiet.
Some of Walsh's criticism this week appeared to sting so much that
it drew a specific rebuke from White House press secretary Karoline
Leavitt.
“So far we’ve heard that although we killed the whole Iranian
regime, this was not a regime change war,” Walsh wrote on Monday.
“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. 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 posted a lengthy response on X explaining Trump's rationale.
“Simply put," she wrote, “the terrorist Iranian regime would not say
yes to peace.”
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Kinnard reported from Washington.
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