Trump’s Iran war tests MAGA movement’s ‘America First’ creed |
AFP — For a decade or more, “America First” has been a rallying cry against foreign wars. But as American bombs fall on Iran, many of US President Donald Trump’s supporters are embracing a muscular campaign abroad — and insisting it still fits the doctrine.
On the opening day of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in the Dallas suburbs, billed as the world’s largest conservative gathering, attendees framed the conflict not as a departure from Trump’s worldview, but as its natural extension.
“Americans have been getting killed by groups being funded by Iran for years, many years,” said Serena Devoogd, a 26-year-old conservative social media influencer from Oregon and an Army veteran.
“And so it was a long time coming — this was something that needed to get done,” she said.
Nevertheless, the latest US war in the Middle East, now approaching its fifth week, has exposed a fault line inside Trump’s coalition between long-standing hawks and a populist wing shaped by years of rhetoric against “forever wars.”
Polling shows approval of military action against Iran is slipping nationwide into negative territory.
The war has also drawn particularly searing rebukes from prominent voices in Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, such as former Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly. Some Republican lawmakers have voiced notes of dissent as well.
But ordinary self-identified MAGA voters see things differently, backing the war by wide margins — 92 percent and 81% in recent CBS and Politico polling.
‘He knows what he’s doing’
On the........