Protesters stand on an image depicting President Donald Trump during a gathering in front of the U.S. embassy in Ankara, Turkey on March 1, 2026. (Photo by Adem Altan / AFP via Getty Images)
DESPITE HIS PRESIDENTIAL campaign promises to put America first, Donald Trump didn’t seem to upset his media allies too much when he bombed Iran last June, or when he sent Delta Force to abduct Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January.
But those engagements were limited, free of American fatalities, and didn’t appear to produce much in the way of immediate consequences for Trump or the country. Even white nationalist Nick Fuentes became an old-school Monroe Doctrine imperialist.
Trump’s latest attacks on Iran this weekend, however, have given rise to a much more negative reaction in right-wing media.
After a quick flurry of support for the initial strikes (with even some self-professed America-firsters reversing themselves and supporting the attacks), the mood became much more dour.
Megyn Kelly, on her Monday show, said she had “serious doubts” about what the White House was doing in Iran. Appearing on Kelly’s show, former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene suggested Trump has gone insane—adding that Trump’s oft-repeated statement about not knowing if he’ll get into heaven raises questions about his state of mind and competency.
“We need to have a serious conversation about what the fuck is happening to this country, and who in the hell are these decisions being made for, and who is making these decisions,” Greene said.
Recent White House visitor Tucker Carlson, arguably the most outspoken war opponent still in Trump circles, announced on his show Monday that Trump had been duped into the war by Israel.
“This happened because Israel wanted it to happen,” Carlson said in a video Monday slamming the attacks. “This is Israel’s war.”
Curiously, Carlson barely mentioned Trump by name in his video, perhaps hoping to preserve his relationship with the administration. After Trump alluded to reported Iranian attempts to kill him, Carlson wondered whether Israel had faked that intelligence to draw Trump into an attack.
“Maybe it doesn’t show that, because this country has certainly been manipulated a lot by Israeli intelligence—and other foreign countries’ intelligence, but certainly by Israeli intelligence,” Carlson said.
Carlson wasn’t alone on the right in speculating about—or outright leveling accusations about—whether Trump went to war for Israel. And amid the recriminations, Secretary of State Marco Rubio decided to confirm exactly that, saying on Monday afternoon that the United States attacked because an impending Israeli strike on Iran would have precipitated Iranian attacks on American bases. This was met with groans by right-wing pundits.
“So we are at war for Israel,” wrote the Hodge Twins, a pair of twin brothers who are popular MAGA influencers. “Thanks for confirming.”
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FOR SOME RIGHT-WING CRITICS of the operation in Iran, such as Carlson, their skepticism is in keeping with longstanding opposition to military adventurism abroad. But it also could have been informed by news events. By Sunday, it had become clear that the administration was expecting the Iran bombing to continue for weeks, and that at least three U.S. service members had already died (today, that count rose to six). After a New York Times poll found just 21 percent of Americans supported the attack, Steve Bannon declared the results “brutal.”
That left even reliable Trump boosters to try and find innovative ways to continue to support the president while signaling concerns about his Iran policy. The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles limply declared that Trump would be like George W. Bush, but somehow better.
“Initially it was, ‘Bush had the wrong idea,’” Knowles said on his show. “Now the argument would be, ‘Well, Bush might have had the right idea, but he did it poorly.’”
This idea that the Trump administration, not generally known for its competence, will succeed in a domain where past American administrations have failed has caught on. Pundit Will Chamberlain said conservatives worried about a forever war in Iran should just realize Trump won’t fall into that trap, somehow:
At this point, the best-case scenario for Trump is that his supporters aren’t really concerned about Iran and want Trump to go back to focusing on economic issues. Breitbart’s Matt Boyle, perhaps the most diehard Trump sycophant in the entirety of MAGA media, posted on X that callers to his radio show didn’t care about Iran. Boyle even noted that he was trying really hard to highlight the Iranian strikes for his audience. And yet, nothing.
“Just no energy on the Iran issue at all,” Boyle wrote.
That’s not to say the war doesn’t have its backers. Conservative pundits who have closely aligned themselves with American support for Israel, like Laura Loomer and Fox News host Mark Levin, have been supportive.
But other Trump allies find their energy for the war already starting to flag. One challenge is that the administration isn’t giving them much to work with.
Boosters of the 2003 Iraq invasion had months of talking points to draw on. By comparison, this administration hasn’t explained—at least coherently—exactly why the war is necessary or what its goals are. Charlie Kirk lieutenant Andrew Kolvet, for example, said he had heard Iran was working on dirty bombs—but, he wondered, why hadn’t the Trump administration bothered to say that?
Federalist cofounder Sean Davis, typically a doctrinaire Trump supporter, similarly griped on X that the White House hadn’t done anything to explain the war.
“The lack of any coherent message seems to suggest the lack of any coherent objective,” Davis wrote.
Daily Wire host Matt Walsh has been one of the right’s most outspoken critics of the war, saying Trump’s allies who are still backing the attacks are blindly placing their faith in the man.
“They [the administration] could have reasons for doing what they’re doing that I don’t know about or understand. But that is also the exact argument we heard during COVID,” Walsh wrote on X, putting it in terms that must sting for the Trump team.
In perhaps the most alarming sign of all for the Pentagon and White House, the war’s biggest fan is none other than Pizzagate promoter Mike Cernovich. With even podcast host Benny Johnson waffling on the war, Cernovich appeared on Johnson’s show Monday to cheer him up. And he had good news: The United States can avoid blowback for its military adventures, Cernovich said, because its weapons are so good they’re essentially “alien technology.”
“We have tech, people call it the alien technology,” Cernovich, an enthusiast of the hallucinogenic drug ayahuasca, said. “We have alien technology, and we could pull things off that we couldn’t pull off twenty years ago.”
There you have it—once you know the aliens are on Trump’s side, it all makes sense.
Although even Cernovich’s spirits apparently sank after Rubio’s Monday remarks saying the United States went to war because of Israel. Cernovich gave just a one-word reply:
