Trump’s war in Iran fractures MAGA media

President Trump’s war in Iran has sparked a heated fight in conservative circles, pitting some of Trump’s most ardent supporters in the media against GOP lawmakers who are backing what critics argue is a conflict pushed by Israel but unpopular with the American people. 

Among the loudest opponents of the war in its early days have been Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, a pair of former Fox News hosts who left traditional media in recent years to build media companies of their own by catering to an audience of primarily Trump supporters.

Carlson, a frequent critic of Israel, reportedly personally lobbied Trump against attacking Iran, while Kelly has cast the president’s push for regime change there as a mistake he will come to regret. 

On her show Tuesday, Kelly aimed her ire over Iran at Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Fox News’s Sean Hannity, who are both close to Trump and loudly supportive of regime change in Iran. 

“I mean, Sean Hannity is Lindsey Graham by a different name. It’s amazing to me to watch them cheerlead this. I mean, we’ve got seven U.S. personnel dead. We’ve got a girls school — 175 young girls dead, in Iran, and there’s serious dispute — we’ll get into who’s behind that,” Kelly said. 

Trump has suggested Iran was responsible for the school bombing, despite mounting evidence that it was a U.S. missile attack. 

Graham has often stepped beyond the White House in his statements about the war, threatening foreign countries that remain on the sidelines of the war and warning “we’re going to blow the hell out of these people” in Iran during an appearance on Fox News this weekend. 

Kelly on Tuesday called Graham “a homicidal maniac.”

“It was obscene,” she added. “Who does he think he is? No one elected him as president.”

The criticism comes as Trump has suggested he’s looking to end the conflict, on Monday calling it an “excursion” that would end “very soon.” While he said the U.S. had largely destroyed Iran’s military and eliminated its leadership, he also said there was more to do. 

The president responded directly to earlier pushback from Kelly and Carlson, saying they are “not MAGA” and insisting their comments are not indicative of how his effort in Iran is landing with the American public.   

“She was critical of me for years, and I didn’t lose. I won all three times by a lot,” Trump said of Kelly during a recent interview last week, adding, “MAGA wants to see our country thrive and be safe,” and expressing confidence his supporters “love what I’m doing.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), one of Israel’s loudest defenders in Congress, separately attacked Carlson, a pundit he sparred with last summer during a wide-ranging interview focusing largely on tensions between the U.S. and Iran.

“There is a group of isolationist folks on the right. It is a small group, but they are loud and vocal. And Tucker Carlson has now all but declared war on President Trump’s foreign policy,” Cruz said on an episode of his “Verdict” podcast. “Tucker continues to go to new lows and new lows. The more Tucker Carlson attacks Donald Trump, the more fringe he gets.”

Other mainstream pundits and online influencers have also pushed back on the president’s efforts in the Middle East.

Popular podcaster Joe Rogan, who endorsed Trump before the 2024 election and has since criticized the president over a host of issues, pushed back on arguments coming from the likes of Graham and Cruz, calling them “insane.”

“I mean, this is why a lot of people feel betrayed, right? He ran on ‘no more wars, end these stupid, senseless wars,’ and then we have one that we can’t even really clearly define why we did it,” Rogan said this week. “It just doesn’t make any sense to me, unless we’re acting on someone else’s interests, like particularly Israel’s interests.”

Longtime conservative pundit Ann Coulter has also been critical of the war, saying the school bombing came during a war that “does not make one American safer,” questioning the Trump administration’s stated goals in Iran and pointing to low public support for the fight.  

Still, other major voices on the right have defended U.S. military operations in Iran.

The editorial board of Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal this week urged the president against stopping the campaign due to “short term economic discomfort” as oil prices skyrocket, while Fox News hosts like Hannity and Brian Kilmeade have pushed hard-line positions on the war. 

Kilmeade this week has echoed Trump’s calls that oil tankers transporting fuel to the West should “show some guts” and travel through the Strait of Hormuz, while urging the U.S. military to seize Iran’s Kharg Island, a crucial oil exporting hub. 

A Republican political operative warned that pushing back on Trump comes with risks for figures like Kelly and Carlson.

“Most MAGA supporters aren’t for a war in Iran, but they have grown up with Iran being a problem for America for decades. And this White House had to sacrifice selling the war in exchange for the element of surprise,” the operative told The Hill on Tuesday. 

“How these pundits react can be frustrating for Trump but also a great political antenna. He loves taking the fight back to people who say things about him in the media. Tucker has probably lost a lot of credibility in the White House, but I think Megyn Kelly will eventually find another issue to pair up with him on pretty clearly.”

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