“The MAGA Movement Is Surely Dead”
Mapping How MAGA Media Divides on the Iran War
Since the assassination of Charlie Kirk, right-wing media influencers have been jockeying for political power and wrestling to define Kirk’s legacy. This fight has only grown as MAGA media is increasingly divided by the war in Iran.
So, would Charlie Kirk have supported the war with Iran?
Leading up to the 12-Day War in June 2025, Kirk criticized those within his party pushing for a regime change war in Iran, saying, “that’s pathologically insane. I’m sorry, it is…Yeah, the Ayatollah is awful, but maybe he’s one of the few guys that can keep that country together and not have a 90-million-person civil war.”
When the United States went to war with Iran in late February 2026, Kirk’s comments resurfaced and were used by those opposed to U.S. interventionism to argue that Charlie Kirk would not have supported this war. In response, Turning Point USA spokesperson Andrew Kolvet attempted to clarify what he believes Charlie Kirk’s position on the war would have been if he were still alive, stating:
“Charlie was, by instinct and by default, against regime change wars…But Charlie was also a realist. I remember on multiple occasions he told me something along the lines of ‘Listen, the world is a very dark place without American military leadership.’ Didn’t mean he was in favor of foreign adventurism or regime change wars, because he wasn’t. But he was also a realist and President Trump had earned his respect. President Trump had earned a big, long leash — not an unlimited one, but a very long one — to make tough decisions…I am not saying that I think this war has been properly sold to the American public, I don’t think it has been. But if there was additional information that we are not privy to that would have in their minds necessitated an urgent, aggressive attack…then President Trump would act and we always knew that would be the case.”
But not everyone agrees with Kolvet’s assessment of Kirk’s legacy. MAGA media has splintered into multiple feuding factions with conflicting views on the war in Iran. There are at least five main groups, which we’re referring to here as:
Regime Change Hawks: those who support the war.
MAGA Allies: those expressing skepticism about the war, but not willing to oppose it or the administration outright.
The America First Faction: those who claim this war “is not America First.”
“The Bros”: podcaster-comedian types who feel betrayed by Trump given his campaign promise of “no new wars.”
Fringe Figures: those who peddle conspiracy theories about Zionism, Armageddon and an Epstein blackmail operation, and use these theories as their basis to criticize the war.
THE REGIME CHANGE HAWKS
Unsurprisingly, old-school foreign policy hawks have been cheering on the war, including those in the Murdoch media-verse. The Wall Street Journal and New York Post editorial boards both expressed support for the war, as have pundits on Fox News. Mark Levin, for one, argued that U.S. military intervention was necessary because the U.S. was in imminent danger as, he claimed, “[Iran’s] nuclear ICBMs,” that is intercontinental ballistic missiles, “aren’t aimed for Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. They’re aimed for New York and Los Angeles and Chicago and everywhere in between and around the United States of America.”
Beyond the confines of Murdoch-owned news outlets, perhaps the media’s biggest cheerleader for this war is Ben Shapiro. As he said last week, “I’m extremely pro what he’s doing. What Trump is doing is the bravest foreign policy decision of my lifetime.”
Shapiro has also gone out of his way to defend the administration against criticism over the war. He dismissed concerns that the U.S. targeted the Iranian girls’ school where a Tomahawk missile strike killed at least 175 people, mostly children, rhetorically asking, “Do you really believe that the Trump administration knew there were girls at a school and they decided to hit it with a Tomahawk? Do you really believe that? If you do, you hate not only Trump but America, truly. Because that is a scurrilous lie.”
He also derided those complaining that this will be yet another forever war as “legitimately insane,” noting that he’s “got cottage cheese in [his] fridge that is older than this war.”
Steven Crowder, another online political commentator, has similarly defended the administration and hit back at the war’s critics, saying that “anyone who voted for Donald Trump and believes that they are being betrayed if he bombs Iran or if he takes military action was an uninformed voter.” Laura Loomer likewise expressed support for the war, even promoting hats reading “Make Iran Persian Again.”
MAGA ALLIES
Many MAGA loyalists are deeply skeptical of this war, even if they still support the administration. Usually a loyal cheerleader for the president and his policies, conservative YouTuber Benny Johnson called out Trump for backtracking on his campaign promises: “Trump said no new wars, no forever wars, and that this was going to be a domestic policy season…That’s what I was promised. And it sure as hell doesn’t seem like that’s what’s going on here…I hate it.”
However, Johnson added that he maintains hope that this could be like the 12-Day War and the military campaign Trump launched in Venezuela to depose Nicolás Maduro, which “seemingly worked out just fine.”
Social media personality Mike Cernovich, who continues to support the administration, likewise expressed reservations about the war and its political consequences: “I don’t believe that the Trump administration has given an explanation. I don’t think this is a popular measure. I don’t think this is what people want.”
Michael Knowles is certainly more skeptical of the war than Ben Shapiro, his colleague at The Daily Wire. Knowles stated that “If I had been on the [National Security Council], I would have made all the arguments I could have against the Iran strike.” He also cautioned that “President Trump has put himself in a very similar position to George Bush in Iraq. It was the same justification for going to war.” Nevertheless, he remains loyal to the administration, clarifying, “I support the president with some reservation on Iran, but I support the strategy.”
Likewise, Tim Pool expressed mixed feelings about the war, noting the U.S. does “not [have] a good track record on regime change.” However, Pool has not lost faith in Trump or totally disavowed the war. To the contrary, Pool said he “loved the masculinity of Trump’s response to look [Khomeini] in the eye and being like ‘I’m going to kill you,’ and then he did.”
Steve Bannon, meanwhile, said he is “not a wildly enthusiastic supporter of this war,” and noted that it could be hard to gain Americans’ support for it because a war with Iran “was not pitched in the 2024 campaign. It just wasn’t.” While he remains loyal to Trump, Bannon’s position on the war is almost nihilistic: “If it’s a chaotic mess, I just don’t care. I don’t care about Iran, I don’t care about the Persians, I just don’t. We got enough problems here.”
THE AMERICA FIRST FACTION
Conversely, Nick Fuentes, a de facto leader of the America First ideological movement which holds anti-interventionism as a core principle, concluded that “Trump utterly betrayed MAGA” by starting a war with Iran. Fuentes warned, “We are in a state of distress. This is not a republic anymore. That’s over, and the MAGA movement is surely dead.” He labeled the administration as “wicked. It’s evil. It’s doing evil things. It’s covering up the Epstein files. It’s prosecuting a war in Iran. It’s lying to us about the war. It sold it under false pretenses. There’s all kinds of embezzlement and corruption.”
Fuentes, however, is not surprised that Trump led the country to war with Iran. Having not voted for Donald Trump in 2024 — fearing that the MAGA movement had been hijacked by lobbyists, consultants, donors and “the neocons” — Fuentes boasted, “Don’t kid yourself when you say ‘Trump failed us, MAGA died.’ MAGA didn’t die. This is what it always was.”
Other America First advocates — including allies of the administration who campaigned for Trump — have also expressed their opposition to the war, noting it flies in the face of Trump’s campaign promise that “I’m not going to start a war, I’m going to stop wars.”
Tucker Carlson has taken a leading role in the conservative charge against the war. In the past year, he has used his platform to rail against U.S. military intervention in Iran. In June, Carlson hosted Sen. Ted Cruz for a contentious interview about regime change in Iran. In a widely shared exchange, Carlson scolded Cruz for not being able to recite how many people live in Iran — “You don’t know the population of the country you seek to topple?”
Carlson revealed that his lobbying against war with Iran even brought him to the White House three times in recent months, “to try to convince Trump not to do this.” His efforts, however, proved unsuccessful, because, according to Carlson:
“[Trump] is being shown polling that this war is like a 90-10 win for him…I don’t know where that poll is coming from. I guess you can make any kind of poll. He’s watching Fox News, which is telling him the same thing, and he’s getting fake polling — I guess they’re only polling Sean Hannity’s viewers or something.”
Passionately opposed to the Iran war, Carlson seized on Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s comments suggesting that the U.S. couldn’t stop Israel from attacking Iran, and therefore had to strike Iran, too. Carlson concluded the war “was not America First. This was at least America second.” He added, “This is Israel’s war. This is not the United States' war. This is not being waged on behalf of American national security objectives…No, this war is waged purely because Israel wanted it to be waged.”
And it’s not just Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson — many of Trump’s once stalwart supporters in the America First movement are also unhappy, including former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is “irate” about Trump’s decision to take the country to war. In an appearance on “The Megyn Kelly Show,” Greene said, “I am furious about this. We are nearly $40 trillion in debt. How much is this war going to cost us? We have seen enough of our American troops dead and murdered for foreign countries, and now we’ve had four dead and murdered…for Israel and for the Iranian people, not for the American people.” She went on:
“What is happening to the man that I supported?…The man that said no more foreign wars, no more regime change, promised it on the campaign. JD Vance promised it. Tulsi Gabbard promised it. All of them promised it. And we’re a year in, a year in, and we’re in another fucking war…We need to have a serious conversation about what the fuck is happening to this country…Who in the hell are these decisions being made for and who is making these decisions?”
Megyn Kelly expressed similar frustration with the war and the appearance that Israel forced the U.S. into it. Just days before fighting broke out, Kelly told Tucker Carlson, “We’ve done enough for Israel. We’re allies with Israel, we’ve done a lot for Israel. I am firmly in the camp that we don’t need to do this.” She later added that this “is an isolationist or non-interventionist’s worst nightmare. It is exactly the opposite of what President Trump ran on, exactly the opposite.”
Saagar Enjeti, co-host of the show “Breaking Points,” similarly denounced the war, telling The Bulwark’s Tim Miller that it is a “strategic catastrophe…We’ve basically given up our sovereign ability to act to save Israel.” He further revealed on “The Megyn Kelly Show” that “the vice president and a significant part of the higher echelon of the national security establishment…lied to [his] face…They said that war with Iran is not in our interest.” He called the administration’s reversal on this “the greatest professional disappointment of [his] life.”
“THE BROS”
Also feeling lied to are Joe Rogan and the other comedy podcast “bros” who oppose the war. These podcasts are not explicitly political or ideological, but they lined up behind Trump in large part due to his promise to avoid foreign entanglements. Now, Rogan has called the war “terrifying” and “the exact opposite of what we were told leading into this administration, that it’s gonna be America First and no more unnecessary wars.” This broken campaign promise, Rogan claimed, “is why a lot of people feel betrayed” by Trump.
Libertarian podcaster Dave Smith also denounced the war and noted, “the justification for this war is totally incoherent.” In addition to rebuking Trump, he took aim at JD Vance, saying, “You fucking liar. You’re just an unbelievable liar…You’re lying us into a war against a country of 92 million people.”
Like Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson, Smith faulted Israel for provoking U.S. involvement in the war. He remarked, “This was the Israelis’ plan and they’re just much smarter than Donald Trump and so they were able to con him into this.”
In a similar vein, comedian Theo Von claimed the war was caused by Trump being “beholden” to the Israeli government. He elaborated, “I don’t understand how our relationship with [Israel] is helping America.”
Comic Tim Dillon also responded with outrage, speculating that this war was initiated to distract from Trump’s domestic issues. He said, “I believe they want World War III. I think the Epstein documents, it started to expose things that could not see the light of day. I think this economy is in much deeper trouble than people think. And I think that this is the plan. The plan is we need some kind of prolonged conflict.”
Dillon continued to criticize Trump, saying, “this guy is basically letting Jared Kushner and Bibi Netanyahu just carve up the Middle East, do whatever the hell they want.” He also attacked Pete Hegseth for his defense of the war, saying Hegseth is “a truly contemptible figure who should resign, war criminal Pete Hegseth.”
THE FRINGE
Those further out on the fringes of the alternative media ecosystem have offered a range of conspiracy theories to explain the war and why it is bad. Candace Owens, with her deeply held opposition to Israel, is passionately opposed to the war. She remarked, “Make no mistake, Trump will, if they tell him to, at the behest of Bibi or Miriam Adelson, send your sons and daughters to die for Israel. Israel expects that. They look at the goyim and they say, ‘That’s ours. Those are our cattle.’” Owens said that “no American son or daughter should die for Israel,” and encouraged non-Jews to leave the U.S. military, telling them, “Goyim, stand down. Go home. Find legal means to exit the military.”
Owens, who has turned on the administration in recent months following the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the administration’s mishandling of the Epstein files, skewered Trump for the war, saying, “Trump allowing this to happen, allowing this to go forward, it makes him a traitor and it also makes him a coward.” She added, “His legacy is going to be a person who could not stand up to Bibi Netanyahu, a person who just loves money and loves the idea of his name on anything.”
Furthermore, Owens asked her audience, “Which guaranteed constitutional right [do] you believe that Trump would not violate for Israel? Can you name one? Because I feel like right now we are all being forced into the servitude of a foreign nation.” She even alleged that Charlie Kirk’s assassination was engineered to pave the way for this war with Iran: “Charlie Kirk was the first casualty of the war in Iran. I’m certain of that and it’s deeper than that. I am now of the opinion that he was likely sacrificed.”
Controversial streamer Nicolas Kenn De Balinthazy, better known as Sneako, is also fiercely opposed to the war. He speculated that “Trump is probably doing this because he’s in the Epstein files and he doesn’t wanna get blackmailed.” He continued, “He’s 80 years old and he’s more afraid of the blackmail coming out. He would rather bring us into another war in the Middle East…because he does not want his reputation to be tarnished by the blackmail footage being released from Epstein’s island.”
Alex Jones, meanwhile, blamed Trump’s decision to go to war on a lack of independent judgment by the president. Jones argued that Sen. Lindsey Graham, JD Vance and Marco Rubio, as well as foreign countries including Israel and Saudi Arabia, pushed Trump to launch the attacks on Iran. He concluded, “Trump has walked us directly into a trap.”
British actor-turned-podcaster Russell Brand noted that “this is not, I don’t think, the Trump that you lot all voted for…What happened to America First non-interventionism?” Brand went further, catastrophizing about the ramifications of the war. “Armageddon, here it comes,” he said, noting, “We must regard any regional war in the Middle East as potentially apocalyptic.”
He told his audience, “What’s perhaps more alarming than the centralized propaganda is that members of the Trump Cabinet appear to be buying nuclear bunkers.” Fearing the end times, Brand offered some advice to his supporters — “I’d start looking at properties in New Zealand, [nuclear] bunkers in New Zealand.”
THE FRACTURES RUN DEEP
As Tucker Carlson noted, the online right might be “permanently fractured” by this war with Iran. Indeed, what’s striking isn’t just the disagreements themselves but the nature of the disagreements. These aren’t debates or objections about troop levels or strategy, but fundamental divisions about:
Who controls U.S. foreign policy? Trump? Bibi Netanyahu? The Israel lobby? The neocons? Isolationists? An Epstein-connected blackmail network?
What is the war actually about? Protecting the U.S.? Freeing Iran through regime change? Dismantling Iran’s nuclear threat? Advancing Israel’s interests?
Did Trump betray Americans who voted for him? Is this war consistent with Trump’s commitment to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon? Is Trump turning his back on his pledge to put America first?
These questions remain disputed, and the divisions among the different factions aren’t going away.
And it’s not just factions of talking heads and media personalities that are divided on Trump’s war in Iran. According to a CNN poll, 59 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s decision to carry out military action against Iran. While support for the war is higher among self-identified Republicans, still roughly one in four opposes the war. Without the strong backing of allies in the media, this administration may struggle to turn around public sentiment about the war.