Trump traps MAGA faithful in 'a farce' as GOP revolt heats up

U.S. President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio take part in a meeting with Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Micheal Martin at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 17, 2026. REUTERS/Evan Vucci

It’s long been a “stock social media joke” that MAGA stands for whatever President Donald Trump says it is. The Iran war has confirmed that's no joke, writes Greg Sargent in The New Republic.

“THEY ARE NOT MAGA, I AM,” Trump posted on Truth Social against his supporters who oppose the war in Iran. In Trump’s view, MAGA entails “not allowing Iran, a Sick, Demented, and Violent Terrorist Regime, to have a Nuclear Weapon.”

That’s problematic for a candidate who promised “no new wars,” Sargent notes. “Anyone who dissents from Trump’s war of choice ... faces potential excommunication from the MAGA movement.”

Such contempt for those who might have “legitimate worries about the Iran war is basically boundless,” Sargent writes.

The war over who is really MAGA extends to the media. On one side are Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson and Andrew Sullivan, who oppose the war as doing Israel’s bidding, Sargent writes. On the other side are Mark Levin of Fox News and Ben Shapiro.

“This conflict among influencers primarily involves MAGA voices turning against the America-Israel alliance. It seems less focused on the general suspicion of foreign entanglements — and anger at elites who brought us the Forever Wars in the Mideast — that supposedly drive MAGA,” Sargent writes.

The defining moment arrived when Joe Kent, the director of National Counterterrorism Center, resigned his post, stating, “I cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people.”

Sargent notes Kent has many problematic views, being anti-Israel among them, but “we can distinguish between the likes of Kent and Carlson and their followers. Clearly some segments of their audiences genuinely oppose wars of choice.”

Trump rejects their independence and erases any debate, Sargent writes. “In suggesting that critics of the war on Iran “ARE NOT MAGA,” Trump also declared that “MAGA is about stopping them cold” before they get a nuke to “blow up” the United States and “the world.”

In Trump’s formulation, Sargent concludes, “anyone who harbors doubts about the threat Iran posed is commanded to accept it as a settled question. Because Trump said so.”

That is uncomfortable even for members of the administration.

“Just look at the gyrations of JD Vance,” Sargent writes. Vance’s position now contradicts past misgivings on foreign entanglements: He says, “Now we have a president who knows how to accomplish America’s national security objectives” and won’t get sucked into “some long, drawn-out thing.’ ”

'Trumpworld’s redefinition of MAGA is a farce," Sargent concludes, adding, the ultimate issue is “the naked contempt (such a position) shows for the voters who are obviously expected to simply roll over and unthinkingly accept it."

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