Trump’s war releases divisions that could tear his MAGA world apart

April 12, 2026 — 1:30pm

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Donald Trump’s astonishing social media post last Tuesday threatening “a whole civilisation will die tonight” attracted appropriately furious reactions around the world. To threaten the extinguishment of an entire people (Iran has a population of 93 million) is to threaten genocide on a scale without parallel in human history. The excuse offered by Trump’s apologists – that it was a negotiating tactic, and therefore not to be taken seriously – misses the point. It would only have been made with the intention that it would be taken seriously, which means that Trump wanted it to be known that this was an act he was prepared to commit.

Some of the strongest reactions came from Republicans. Peggy Noonan – who, as Ronald Reagan’s speechwriter, penned some of the most iconic language of that great passage of American history that ended the Cold War – excoriated Trump in an opinion article in The Wall Street Journal on Thursday.

But Noonan speaks with the voice of the Republican Party establishment, which was almost entirely displaced by the MAGA movement. These people have always loathed Trump. More significant than denunciation by old-school Republicans is the fracturing in the MAGA base. There was already a growing number of disillusioned former acolytes, such as the once uber-Trumper Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. The war has both intensified existing anti-Trump attitudes among many of his former spear-carriers, while........

© The Sydney Morning Herald