There’s something revealing in the sound of sabres being rattled over Tehran. As Donald Trump demands “unconditional surrender” from Iran’s theocrats and hints at support for Israel’s bombing campaign. The MAGA movement, once the vanguard of nationalist restraint, is at war with itself. What we’re seeing isn’t just a disagreement over foreign policy. It’s the crack-up of a project that never quite knew what it was.
Trump’s 2016 promise was plain: no more forever wars. MAGA’s message, stripped of bombast, was about disengagement. Bring the troops home. Fix America first. But now, with Netanyahu escalating strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites and the White House reportedly preparing to join in, the contradictions are coming into focus. You can’t be both an isolationist and an empire. You can’t chant “America First” while flying sorties for someone else’s war.
Bannon’s Double Bind
Steve Bannon knows this. He’s warned that another war in the Middle East would “blow up the coalition” that put Trump back in power. On War Room, he says war with Iran would derail the “deportation of the illegal alien invaders”—language as ugly as it is revealing. For Bannon, intervention isn’t immoral. It’s just a strategic mistake. War is a distraction from the domestic purge he wants to see.
But Bannon, never one to break from the patriarch, has also made clear: if Trump pulls the trigger, the movement will follow. “If the president makes that case to the American people… the MAGA movement will support President Trump.” That’s not a reversal. It’s an admission. Principles are conditional. The real loyalty is to the man.
Who’s the Real Enemy?
Tucker Carlson, less conflicted, has gone further. “You’re not going to convince me that the Iranian people are my enemy,” he told Bannon. “It’s Orwell, man.” Carlson, a master of nativist contradiction, has nonetheless stuck to a consistent line on foreign wars: don’t start them. His audience didn’t sign up for another Iraq.
They’re not alone. Charlie Kirk wrote on X: “No issue currently divides the right as much as foreign policy. Trump voters, especially young people, supported President Trump because he was the first president in my lifetime to not start a new war.” For once, he’s right.
Hawks at the Gate
Not everyone in Trump’s orbit is squeamish. Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton are cheerleading from the Senate floor. Mitch McConnell has dismissed the anti-war wing as “isolationist”, scoffing that it’s been “a bad week for isolationists.” This is the Republican Party reasserting itself—the party of shock and awe, of regime change, of moral clarity delivered by cruise missile.
Trump, true to form, is trying to straddle the divide. One moment he’s threatening Iran with total surrender, the next he’s talking about cutting a deal. The truth is he no longer speaks with conviction. He’s reading from two scripts at once—one for the Bannonite faithful, the other for the Pentagon’s war room.
Iran: The Fault Line
Iran has become the line in the sand. As one former Pentagon official put it, “Iran is the defining issue on the political right right now. It’s not trade. It’s not spending. It’s not even the culture war stuff. It is foreign policy, and specifically Iran.” Because the Iran question exposes the core contradiction: are you building a wall, or are you projecting power?
The Trumpist movement has tried to be both fortress and empire. It wants the glamour of global dominance without the cost. It wants to sneer at liberal interventionism while cheering on nationalist bombardment. Iran makes that impossible. You can’t play peacemaker and warlord at the same time.
Even Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, is reportedly wary. His campaign rhetoric leaned heavily on restraint. Another war could tear apart the thin populist consensus holding the coalition together. Not because the movement has found a conscience, but because its priorities. That of deportation, protectionism, domestic scapegoating. Can’t coexist with another costly foreign entanglement.
Cracks in the Foundation
What’s unfolding isn’t a debate. It’s a reckoning. MAGA can’t be Ron Paul and Dick Cheney. The America Firsters want walls, tariffs, and a retreat from empire. The hawks want airstrikes and hegemony. Trump wants both, and he may get neither.
The base is confused. The message is muddy. And if the bombs start falling, the movement could fracture. Not all at once. Not dramatically. But enough to puncture the illusion of coherence that has held it together since 2016.
You can’t bomb your way to peace and still claim to oppose endless war. You can’t preach non-intervention while marching in step with Netanyahu’s jets. And you can’t build a movement on the promise of America First if you’re always looking for your next enemy abroad
