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11:15 29.03.2026 •
Photo: publics
President Donald Trump has said: “I AM MAGA!”
Trump’s latest declaration of his MAGA-ness came in a long post on Truth Social defending the Israel-first blowhard Mark Levin, who has gotten into recent spats on social media with conservatives who criticize the war with Iran. Trump wrote:
“Those that speak ill of Mark will quickly fall by the wayside, as do the people whose ideas, policies, and footings are not sound. THEY ARE NOT MAGA, I AM!”, ‘The American Conservative’ quotes.
Many Trump voters have been surprised to learn that “MAGA is about” war on Iran. To be sure, Trump hasn’t always been rhetorically consistent on matters of war and peace, but in 2016 he distinguished himself in the Republican primary by lambasting the Forever Wars, in particular the one in Iraq. And in the 2020 and 2024 elections he bragged about not starting any new wars in his first term.
“We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end—and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into,” Trump said in the best line of his inaugural address last January. “My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier.”
Fourteen months later, Trump is proving a warmaker and divider. The MAGA movement and the Republican Party will suffer as a result.
No one denies that MAGA has stuck with Trump through numerous political scandals and likely won’t turn against him now (and wouldn’t have if he instead had made a deal, not a war, with Iran). But MAGA-identified voters constitute around only 15 percent of the electorate, so Trump didn’t win the White House on the strength of their support alone. Rather, he also won over traditional Republicans and independents.
The former group is much less supportive of the Iran war than they initially had been of George W. Bush’s military adventures, while the latter group is broadly opposed. Even in the polls that Leavitt shared, a meager 24 to 32 percent of independents said they supported Iran strikes. And according to a soon-to-be-published survey by the Quincy Institute, around a quarter of Trump’s 2024 voters oppose the decision to go to war with Iran.
You don’t need a PhD in political science to know those are bad numbers in our two-party system. And wars tend to get less popular over time.
The next Republican nominee will face significant headwinds if the Iran war turns into a quagmire
“It just seems so insane based on what he ran on,” said Joe Rogan on a podcast episode that aired last week. “This is why a lot of people feel betrayed, right? He ran on ‘no more wars’, ‘end these stupid senseless wars’, and then we have one that we can’t even really clearly define why we did it.”
A dip in enthusiasm from traditional Republicans and a substantial loss of support from independents would mean lights out for the GOP in this year’s midterms and in 2028.
The next Republican nominee will face significant headwinds if the Iran war turns into a quagmire, as it seems likely to do. Certainly, he will have difficulty convincing voters that opposition to stupid wars is a credible plank of the modern GOP platform. If the war continues for a long while, then the Democrats can recapture the antiwar energy that helped propel Barack Obama to victory in 2008.
Second-order effects of the war won’t help matters either. Inflation — or, more precisely, high prices — was perhaps the main issue that motivated the American people to return Trump to the White House. But Iran’s closing of the Strait of Hormuz, through which flows a fifth of the world’s traded oil, has already sent energy prices soaring and threatens to kick off a global recession. Working-class voters will be most affected, and they’ll blame Trump and punish his party at the polls.
The Trump administration hurtles toward a political crisis.
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