The White House was forced to fire back after a prominent conservative influencer and podcaster criticized President Donald Trump‘s various and rapidly-shifting reasons for attacking Iran in a massive and ongoing military exercise that the president and defense chief have called “war.”
Matt Walsh, who hosts his right-wing podcast on The Daily Wire and has four million followers on X, on Monday expressed his confusion with the administration’s talking points.
“So far we’ve heard that although we killed the whole Iranian regime, this was not a regime change war,” he began. “And although we obliterated their nuclear program, we had to do this because of their nuclear program. And although Iran was not planning any attacks on the US, they also might have been, depending on who you ask. And although we are not fighting this war to free the Iranian people, they are now free, or might be, depending on who seizes power, and we have no idea who that will be.”
“The messaging on this thing is,” he said, “to put it mildly, confused.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded to Walsh just hours later, saying that Trump on Saturday had “released a statement laying out clear objectives to the American people for Operation Epic Fury.”
According to Leavitt, they include destroying Iran’s missiles and Navy, ensuring Iran’s proxies cannot destabilize the region or the world, stopping them from making and using IEDs, guaranteeing Iran can never have a nuclear weapon, and preventing the Iranian regime from threatening America.
“Simply put,” she wrote, “the terrorist Iranian regime would not say yes to peace.”
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“For 47 years, the Iranian regime has actively and intentionally facilitated the killing of Americans while chanting ‘death to America’ and funding other bloodthirsty terrorists seeking to destroy the United States and all of Western Civilization. Prior American leaders were too weak and cowardly to do anything about it. Now, President Donald J. Trump is correcting decades of cowardice and holding those responsible for the deaths of Americans accountable.”
But Politico’s White House bureau chief Dasha Burns noted that Walsh “is among many right wing voices questioning the administration’s actions in Iran.”
“I have heard repeated warnings from Republican sources that the WH needs to do more to get MAGA on side,” she added.
Sean Davis, co-founder of the right-wing website The Federalist, reposted Walsh’s remarks and shared similar ones of his own.
“Is the goal to eliminate the Iranian regime or 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 or what?” Davis asked. “The lack of any coherent message seems to suggest the lack of any coherent objective.”
Former Trump ally and former U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who months ago broke with Trump, wrote: “And just like that we are no longer a nation divided by left and right, we are now a nation divided be those who want to fight wars for Israel and those who just want peace and to be able to afford their bills and health insurance.”
