AMERICAN PRESIDENTS often benefit politically when they lead the country into armed conflict. On the eve of the Gulf war in 1991 George H.W. Bush’s approval rating stood at 64%. Within days of launching Operation Desert Storm it surged to 82%. His son did even better: after declaring a “war on terror” and making the case for invading Afghanistan in 2001, George W. Bush’s approval rating leapt from 51% to 90%. It faded over the following year and a half, before jumping again to 75% at the start of the Iraq war.
Then there is Donald Trump, whose approval rating stands at 38%—a figure that almost perfectly mirrors public support for his attack on Iran. There has been no large rally-round-the-flag effect since the war began on February 28th. Mr Trump has fared better with Republicans, however: approval of the strikes among them has risen from 68% to 76%, according to a poll by YouGov. The divide within the party is striking. While just 64% of non-MAGA Republicans endorse the president’s war, the share rises to 85% among self-described MAGA Republicans (see chart).
That may seem odd. MAGA, after all, styles itself an isolationist movement, suspicious of foreign entanglements and military adventurism. Its slogan is “America First”. Over the past decade its adherents cheered Mr Trump as he called the Iraq war a “big, fat mistake”, promised to avoid “endless wars” in the Middle East and mocked his predecessors for “intervening in complex societies they did not even understand themselves”. A month before winning a second term in 2024 he made a simple promise: “You’re not going to have a war with me.” Yet now, having broken that promise, his base remains solidly with him. Why?
Part of the answer is that MAGA is less a movement defined by principles than one organised around Mr Trump himself—a man with remarkably flexible beliefs. The president put it best when asked how his supposedly non-interventionist base viewed his decision in January to remove Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro. “MAGA loves it,” Mr Trump said. “MAGA loves what I’m doing. MAGA loves everything I do. MAGA is me.” He repeated the point when asked whether his attack on Iran might split the movement. “They trust his instincts on the war completely,” says Colin Dueck, a former Republican foreign-policy adviser now at George Mason University.
But MAGA’s cult of personality explains only so much. The movement’s enthusiasm for the strikes on Iran also reflects the appeal of Mr Trump’s broader approach to military power. If ever there were a style of foreign policy suited to the America First crowd, this would be it.
Oh, what a show!
For starters, Mr Trump favours spectacular, almost cinematic displays of American force—especially those aimed at toppling or killing enemy leaders. Take the operation to remove Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, in which Delta Force commandos swooped into the country’s most fortified military base and seized him. “I watched it literally like I was watching a television show,” Mr Trump said afterwards, sounding more like a spectator than the commander-in-chief. “That was an amazing attack,” he crowed. If he was entertained, many of his supporters were, too. Before the raid just over half of MAGA Republicans backed removing Mr Maduro; a week later that had risen to 80%.
His rhetoric about Iran follows the same script. Last year’s bombing campaign was a “spectacular military success”, he said, with Iran’s nuclear facilities “completely and totally obliterated”. In the current war, Iran is “being beat to HELL”, and America’s armed forces are “knocking the crap” out of the country. The killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, on day one provided a suitably dramatic opening act.
A second element of Mr Trump’s approach is the way it embodies the America First credo. The president appears largely indifferent to international law or diplomatic norms, and his administration often treats such constraints with open contempt. “What you’re seeing right now is a military…that’s not fighting politically correct,” boasted Stephen Miller, a White House adviser, on Fox News. There are “no stupid rules of engagement”, says Pete Hegseth, the secretary of war.
Yet if Mr Trump’s wars follow few rules, one principle remains constant: America must benefit. He has long argued that America should profit from conflicts in the Middle East—complaining, for example, that America should have “taken the oil” in Iraq. After the raid in Venezuela he likewise suggested America would benefit from the country’s vast oil reserves. When it comes to Iran, another country with large oil reserves, he has been more careful, perhaps worried about spooking energy markets or drawing attention to the fact that oil prices have risen as a result of his war.
The final element of Mr Trump’s approach to war is brevity. In his second term alone America has launched air or naval strikes in at least seven countries—Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Syria, Somalia, Venezuela and Yemen. Yet these interventions have been designed to be swift and limited. Once punishment has been meted out, Mr Trump has shown little appetite for a prolonged or costly commitment.
To MAGA loyalists, the great failure of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq was not intervention itself but what followed: the deployment of hundreds of thousands of American troops in pursuit of democracy-building. Mr Trump has little interest in spreading American virtues abroad. “No nation-building quagmire, no democracy-building exercise,” says Mr Hegseth of the Iran war. America cares little who replaces the leaders it kills. Mr Trump will not insist they be decent or democratic—only compliant. In Venezuela he has preferred order over democracy, by replacing Mr Maduro with a powerful insider content to signal a willingness to do deals with the United States—for the moment, at least.
Blame Israel
Yet there is a vocal minority within the MAGA movement who are unhappy about all this. They denounce the Iran war as a betrayal of the president’s promise to end the forever wars and focus on problems at home. Tucker Carlson, a Trump loyalist and talk-show host, called the war “absolutely disgusting and evil”, predicting it would scramble the president’s movement in a “profound way”. Other criticisms are more restrained but raise doubts about the conflict’s scope and duration. “I’m not actually an isolationist. I’m just an America First conservative in the strictest sense of the term,” Matt Walsh, a conservative podcaster, posted on social media. “With this Iran thing, I don’t see how the math works in our favor.”
The most pointed criticism has centred on Israel’s influence over Mr Trump’s decision to go to war. Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, raised hackles when he told reporters that America acted after learning Israel planned to strike first—a move he said threatened to put American bases in the region in harm’s way. Mr Trump denied that sequence of events, boasting instead that he had forced Israel’s hand. (Mr Rubio then walked back his comments.) Either way, the episode has given ammunition to MAGA critics—especially those suspicious of Israel. “It’s hard to say this, but the United States didn’t make the decision here. Binyamin Netanyahu did,” Mr Carlson railed on his podcast. “No one should have to die for a foreign country,” said Megyn Kelly, a former Fox News host, on her own podcast. “I don’t think those service members died for the United States. I think they died for Iran or for Israel.”
The question is whether the broader MAGA base stays with the president if the Iran war turns into a slog. Unlike the raid in Venezuela, which lasted mere hours, Mr Trump says this war could last weeks, perhaps much longer. He has also called for the Islamic republic’s “unconditional surrender”—an ambitious war aim. The longer the fighting drags on, the greater the temptation to bring about such a victory by sending ground troops. Mr Trump has not ruled this out. Would that cross a MAGA red line? Are there any?
The other risk is a rapid collapse in Iran, plunging the country into civil war and sectarian bloodshed that could spill into neighbouring states, including American allies. That would expose the president to his base—and the country—as the thing he dreads most: appearing weak. Mr Trump has long excoriated Joe Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 as a humiliation for America, vowing he would never have done something so “embarrassing”. Yet a botched outcome in Iran could leave him facing the same charge.
For now, though, Mr Trump remains on firm ground with the MAGA movement. Almost nothing—from his handling of the Jeffrey Epstein affair to his foreign adventures—has dented his 90% approval rating among his base. The Iran war may yet prove the biggest test of their loyalty. “MAGA is Trump,” the president said after the first bombs were dropped. The longer the campaign drags on, the more he may discover whether that is really so.
