Trump promised the MAGA base no new wars. Then he went to war with Iran - NPR

Trump promised the MAGA base no new wars. Then he went to war with Iran

SCOTT DETROW, HOST:

I'm Scott Detrow, and this is TRUMP'S TERMS from NPR.

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DETROW: Every episode, we bring you one story from NPR's coverage of the Trump administration, with a focus on actions and policies that take the presidency into uncharted territory. Here's the latest from NPR.

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A MARTÍNEZ, BYLINE: I'm A Martínez.

LEILA FADEL, BYLINE: And I'm Leila Fadel. When President Trump ordered attacks on Iran over the weekend, it marked a major reversal of President Trump's own campaign promises of no new wars and a focus on domestic policies.

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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We had no wars. They said, he will start a war. I'm not going to start a war. I'm going to stop wars.

FADEL: His America First position of no foreign intervention goes back more than a decade. Years before he was a presidential candidate, Trump promoted deal-making over military action. And in a 2011 social media video, he had this to say about President Obama.

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TRUMP: Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He's weak and he's ineffective.

MARTÍNEZ: Staying out of what Trump called stupid wars became a major 2016 campaign theme at rallies such as this one in North Carolina.

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TRUMP: We will stop racing to topple foreign - and you understand this - foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn't be involved with.

MARTÍNEZ: That was long before the Trump administration removed Venezuela's president from office. Back in 2020, Trump told White House reporters that avoiding war was still a cornerstone of his agenda.

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TRUMP: We've spent $8 trillion in the Middle East, and we're not fixing our roads in this country? How stupid. How stupid is it? And we're not fixing our highways, our tunnels, our bridges, our hospitals, even.

FADEL: And on the campaign trail in 2024, Trump continued to boast about not intervening abroad in his first term. Yet since becoming president, he's ordered repeated military actions in Venezuela, Yemen, Nigeria, Syria, Somalia and now Iran. And President Trump is preparing Americans for a long fight.

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TRUMP: We projected four to five weeks, but we have capability to go far longer than that. We'll do it.

MARTÍNEZ: NPR's Stephen Fowler has been reporting on the reaction within the Republican Party to the U.S. and Israeli war against Iran. Stephen, so what have you been hearing?

STEPHEN FOWLER, BYLINE: This war is highlighting some familiar fault lines with the Make America Great Again - MAGA - base. There are those who say the military action is not in the spirit of Trump's, quote, "America First policy agenda." There are those who will support pretty much everything the president does, and those who don't really know what the message is supposed to be.

MARTÍNEZ: All right. So let's start with the critics, Stephen, because those are typically the juicier things. So what have they been saying?

FOWLER: The general gist is there's a sizable bloc of people on the right who say military action in Iran, or anywhere else for that matter, isn't America First in the sense that there are plenty of things to look at, fix, address, focus on domestically, and also that there's a concern the administration doesn't have a plan for what comes next, and this will end up being another lengthy involvement for U.S. troops. I saw a lot of prominent figures online share their thoughts, like one from conservative commentator Matt Walsh that said the administration's justification was, quote, "to put it mildly, confused."

MARTÍNEZ: Confused. What's confusing about this?

FOWLER: Walsh noted that depending on the messenger, this was not a regime change war, or was it? It was about nuclear weapons, or not, and that Iran was going to attack the U.S. first, or they weren't. And then Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this to reporters Monday night.

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MARCO RUBIO: We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces. And we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.

FOWLER: And for a growing chunk of conservatives, that was further proof that their distrust of America's economic and military relationship with Israel is justified. These folks feel that Israel's interests are put equal to or above America's. That's embodied by voices like Tucker Carlson, who spoke on his podcast Monday before Rubio's comments.

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TUCKER CARLSON: This happened because Israel wanted it to happen. This is Israel's war. This is not the United States' war. This war is not being waged on behalf of American national security objectives to make the United States safer or richer.

MARTÍNEZ: All right. So that's a lot to encounter to the Trump administration. What have they been saying in response?

FOWLER: Walsh's viral X post earned a lengthy response from Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary. She pointed to a video statement Trump posted Saturday announcing the military action, and she also said that Trump is, quote, "correcting decades of cowardice" from American leadership when it comes to dealing with Iran.

MARTÍNEZ: Now, you've talked before about the split among MAGA voters to this. President campaigned on the idea of no new wars. It seems like a new war right now, and it seems like it's something some members of Trump's coalition do not like. So what does this mean, Stephen, for the stability of the GOP?

FOWLER: Well, there is still considerable latitude that Republican voters give to Trump and also Republican members of Congress that America First is what he says it is, even if it's not always conservative or conflicts with things that he said before. Here's one example. The House Republican Foreign Affairs Committee X account congratulated Trump for, quote, "ending the forever war that Iran has waged against America for the last 47 years."

Still, that disconnect keeps growing. Last year, you saw it when the U.S. bombed Iranian nuclear sites. Beyond that, though, there's the flip-flopping on releasing the Epstein files, H-1B visas, tariffs, immigration enforcement, affordability - you name it. Trump won't be on the ballot in November. He won't be the party's standard-bearer nominee in the 2028 presidential election. So we're seeing what could be a pivotal crack that someone within the Republican Party will have to reckon with in the near future.

MARTÍNEZ: That's NPR's Stephen Fowler. Stephen, thanks.

FOWLER: Thank you.

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DETROW: Before we wrap up, a reminder - you can find more coverage of the Trump administration on the NPR Politics Podcast, where you can hear NPR's political reporters break down the day's biggest political news, with new episodes every weekday afternoon. And thanks, as always, to our NPR+ supporters, who hear every episode of the show without sponsor messages. You can learn more at plus.npr.org.

I'm Scott Detrow. Thanks for listening to TRUMP'S TERMS from NPR.

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