President Trump once boasted he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose supporters. Now he faces a new twist: What if he bombed Tehran?
The message coming from some of the most prominent MAGA voices is clear. Representative Lauren Boebert, former Representative Matt Gaetz and the commentators Megyn Kelly and Tucker Carlson all have indicated that going to war with Iran was at odds with Trump’s “America first” platform.
The data, however, says something different. A recent CBS News poll found that 92% of MAGA Republicans expressed support for military action against Iran, compared with only 70% of non-MAGA Republicans.
This might come as a surprise, given that Trump returned to office pledging to avoid forever wars. But it tells me that America first means pretty much whatever he says it means — and that it might be time to ditch some of our common assumptions about Republicans.
We’ve come to think of non-MAGA Republicans as the (increasingly endangered) species of voters who may have pulled the lever for Trump, but still yearn for Reagan-style Republicanism based on the “three-legged stool” of cultural conservatism, free-market capitalism and hawkish national defense. We’ve come to think of MAGA Republicans as voters who prefer the president’s populist pitch and who bemoan endless wars.
Seen through the lens of the war with Iran, the throwback Republicans would presumably be the hawks calling for the destruction of the Iranian regime and its military capabilities, while MAGA Republicans would stand aghast. Certainly, quite a few prominent MAGA-aligned opinionators have adopted such a view.
Through the lens of the Iran conflict, one would expect throwback Republicans to be the hawks and MAGA voters to stand aghast. Yet, my polling shows MAGA believes Trump got it right. When separating respondents by whether they support Trump first or the party first, more than nine in 10 Trump-first Republicans support the Iran strikes. Only 9% of his most loyal backers say the war violates America-first policy.
There were signs of this even before the current war. Last year, in the middle of the 12-day war in which Israel and the United States struck targets in Iran, my polling showed that Trump-first Republicans were overwhelmingly in favour of joining Israel’s efforts to degrade, if not destroy, Iran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon. They were significantly more open to bombing Iran than party-first Republicans.
As recently as the start of the year, when voters were asked how they felt about a hypothetical strike on Iran, Trump-first Republicans were more supportive of such a move.
In January, nearly three-quarters of Trump-first Republicans agreed that the president was right to focus on international threats like Iran, while only 52% of party-first Republicans felt the same. One might surmise this is a "permission structure" — if Trump does it, it must be good. But MAGA support isn't limited to after-the-fact rationalisation.
Take the hypothetical of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. In a 2025 national defence survey by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, MAGA Republicans were the most supportive of various interventions. Nearly two-thirds supported committing US forces to Taiwan’s defence, compared with 49% of non-MAGA Republicans. MAGA respondents betray no hint of isolationism compared to their peers.
If you want to find those worried about overseas entanglements, look to the rest of the 2024 coalition. The Reagan Foundation survey found the group most opposed to committing forces to Taiwan was political independents. Trump’s non-Republican supporters — independents and Democrats — are the most averse to no-fly zones or economic sanctions, even more so than Kamala Harris’s voters.
Trump’s 2024 victory relied on a broad coalition, including those who simply hoped he would address the cost of living. While independents are open to strikes that prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, many do not feel the present conflict is justified. Furthermore, about half of Trump’s voters oppose using ground troops. This is worth watching as Marine expeditionary units move toward the Persian Gulf. We should not underestimate the political toxicity of sky-high gas prices or other disruptions caused by prolonged fighting.
For now, if the war is causing Trump a political problem, it is not because his MAGA base is deserting him. In the end, that base may be all he has left.
The New York Times