Prominent conservatives and MAGA influencers normally allied with President Donald Trump are publicly questioning his war on Iran, prompting aggressive pushback from the president and his administration. Right-wing luminaries including Tucker Carlson, Matt Walsh, Megyn Kelly and former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene have criticised the war or noted the president’s shifting justifications. Elected Republicans have taken notice. “The president did a masterful job of creating an eclectic coalition, but I can see where this is a wedge for some of them,” Republican Senator Thom Tillis told HuffPost.The Iran war is an obvious betrayal of Trump’s campaign pledge for “no new wars.” Carlson called the war “absolutely disgusting and evil” and said Trump could lose support from his most loyal voters. Sean Davis, CEO of the Trump-friendly news website The Federalist, said it wasn’t clear if the goal was to “free the Iranian people or degrade their nuclear capability or degrade the conventional weapons capability or eliminate their regional hegemony or to cut off their oil supply to China or to help Israel.”“The lack of any coherent message seems to suggest the lack of any coherent objective,” Davis said on X.Podcaster Matt Walsh also noted some contradictions in the administration’s messaging.“So far we’ve heard that although we killed the whole Iranian regime, this was not a regime change war. And although we obliterated their nuclear programme, we had to do this because of their nuclear program,” Walsh wrote. “And although Iran was not planning any attacks on the US, they also might have been, depending on who you ask.”Some Republican lawmakers acknowledged these criticisms are reasonable, even if they ultimately disagree.“They don’t want another Iraq. Nor do I. I don’t think that’s where we’re headed,” Republican Senator John Kennedy told HuffPost. “But I see their point of view, and it’s a valid point of view. But I just don’t believe this is a repeat of the mistakes, if any, that we made in Iraq.”Asked by HuffPost if Trump had adequately explained the reasons for the war, Republican Senator Roger Wicker, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, went silent. Most Republicans, however, didn’t hesitate to recite some of the justifications the White House has offered for the new war in the Middle East. “It’s been explained for 47 years, hasn’t it? No regime has killed more Americans than the regime that we’ve now wiped out,” Senator Bernie Moreno told HuffPost. “The predicate for action has been pretty clear: They can’t have a nuclear weapon.”Even before the war, the MAGA coalition had splintered somewhat, most notably with Greene’s resignation from Congress after Trump turned against her for supporting the release of the Epstein files. The early reviews of the Iran war suggest an even more dramatic break is possible. The White House has responded somewhat aggressively to its MAGA war sceptics. Asked about Clarkson and Kelly in particular, Trump said the pair don’t define the Make America Great Again movement. “I think that MAGA is Trump,” the president told independent journalist Rachel Bade. In response to Walsh’s criticisms on X,White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded that the goal was to end the nuclear programme and generally destroy the Iranian regime’s military capabilities.“Their brutal attacks and threats will finally end under President Trump,” Leavitt said in her own post. “America will win – the terrorists will be defeated.”Walsh was not swayed, calling it “gaslighting” to argue, as Leavitt and other pro-war conservatives have done, that Iran has been “waging war” on the US for 47 years. “You and I both know that almost every conservative influencer in the business was opposed to war with Iran until just now,” Walsh said. A handful of Republicans in Congress, meanwhile, are also sceptical of the war.Senator Rand Paul labelled it “yet another preemptive war” in the Middle East, and Representative Thomas Massie indicated he’d vote for a War Powers resolution to stop the conflict.More surprisingly, Representative Warren Davidson, who is less prone to bucking the party than Massie or Paul, suggested President Trump had wrongly dragged the US into war without congressional authorisation.“Congress declares war. America is at war. Congress did not declare war,” Davidson wrote. He did not signal that he would vote for a resolution ending the war. HuffPost UK – Athena2 – All Entries (Public) Read More