Trump promised not to go to war. His most ardent supporters want him to keep his word
"This war isn't about Iran's nuclear weapons for Israel, it is about one thing: regime change. Hear me now: this is not going to stop at some bombing campaigns around Iran's nuclear programme. That's just the appetiser, not the entree... Does America really want to be Israel's dance partner to this siren song?"
If those words sound like they came from a progressive, Bernie Sanders-aligned, anti-imperial voice, they did not.
Those are the words of former congressman, Matt Gaetz, one of the most loyal supporters of US President Donald Trump and his Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, since its inception.
Gaetz - since resigning from the House of Representatives after a slew of ethics violations - now has his own show on the far-right TV channel One America Network.
"When you call someone a modern-day Hitler, it is a permission structure to kill them," Gaetz went on to say after playing a clip of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu telling ABC News that Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is a "modern-day Hitler".
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Gaetz then went on to interview his former colleague, Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, another vocal and often controversial "America Firster".
"Matt, I see it just as you do, and you laid that out so well," she said.
"We've watched for decades propaganda news. I'll call out Fox News and The New York Post. They're known to be the neo-con[servative] network news... the American people have been brainwashed into believing that America has to engage in these foreign wars in order for us to survive. And it's absolutely not true."
Greene has been urging the Trump administration to stay out of Israel's attacks on Iran since they began last Friday.
On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump told senior aides he had approved plans to attack Iran but had not yet given the final order to carry them out.
A new paradigm?
The questions and posture that challenge the American establishment's penchant for war have not, in recent memory, been as organised, as targeted, or as influential as the voices of MAGA's most well-known cast of characters.
Take Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News pundit, who appeared on Steve Bannon's War Room show on YouTube earlier this week. Bannon himself is a former White House strategist from Trump's first term in office, and remains one of the most influential people in the MAGA circuit.
"I grew up in a world that espoused violence. That's what the US government does," Carlson told Bannon.
"If you think - and I said this to an Israeli official - if you think I'm anti-Israel, man, you have lost the plot," he said of the anti-war stance he's adopted.
"Let's have a rational conversation about what our aims are here. And maybe you can convince me that we need to support a regime change war in Iran. Tell me how that plays out in a country of 90 million people. Have you thought it through? Do you even care? And the answer is no," Carlson said.
"You may have a plan for regime change, it's fine, but you got to bring the American people on," Bannon agreed.
As of Wednesday, that clip had some 7,000 views.
Carlson then interviewed Bannon on his show on YouTube, and the one-hour and 18-minute conversation generated one million views in less than 24 hours.
Bannon outlined the three pillars on which he says Trump was elected: "Stop the forever wars, seal the border and deport the illegal aliens - the illegal invaders - and redo the commercial relationships in the world around trade deals."
Reneging on one of them would potentially undo the others, Bannon said, with a stark warning.
"I'm a big supporter of Israel, yes. And I'm telling people, hey, if we get sucked into this war - which inexorably looks like it's going to happen on the combat side - it's... going to thwart what we're doing with the most important thing, which is the deportation of the illegal alien invaders that are here. If we don't do that, we don't have a country," he said of Trump's plan to deport at least one million undocumented immigrants every year, as well as foreigners who may have civil or criminal violations.
Bannon also cautioned that joining and expanding the war on Iran could mean "the end of Israel, because of the way these decisions have been made".
Carlson, expressing remorse for supporting the invasion of Iraq in 2003, said optics and public opinion should be critical to guiding the White House's decisions.
"[Abraham] Lincoln told us, what you need is popular opinion to have your back. And we don't do enough about educating the American people on what reality is," he said.
Much like the allegation that Iraq had a weapon of mass destruction, Bannon said Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who was handpicked by Trump, confirmed to lawmakers in a public hearing in March that Iran was not assessed to be close to building a nuclear bomb.
"They don't have a programme. They haven't had a programme," Bannon emphasised.
Trump takes on his base
In a new interview with Texas senator and long-time war hawk Ted Cruz, posted on Wednesday on YouTube, Carlson repeatedly challenged him on Iran's population, its makeup, and precisely how the Bible says that Christians must support Israel (which Cruz cites as his reasoning).
"I was taught from the Bible, those who bless Israel will be blessed, and those who curse Israel will be cursed. And from my perspective, I want to be on the blessing side of things," Cruz, a Republican who did not support Trump until he became president in 2017, told Carlson on his show.
Carlson asked him where in the Bible it said that, and Cruz said he doesn't remember.
"You don't have context for it. You don't know where in the Bible it is, but that's like your theology? I'm confused. What does that even mean... We are commanded, as Christians, to support the government of Israel?"
"We are commanded to support Israel," Cruz responded, as the two continuously cut each other off. "God is talking about the nation of Israel."
"Is that the current borders, the current leadership?" Carlson asked.
"Yes, nations exist, and he's discussing a nation," Cruz said.
The Iran hawks in Congress, all of whom are also staunch supporters of Israel, have been lobbying the White House to join Israel's war.
Many of them take cues from pro-Israel lobbying groups, which have also dispatched members of proxy think tanks like the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies to go on channels like Fox News and advocate for full US military engagement.
As the debate rages, Trump himself was on the defensive in an interview with The Atlantic.
"For those people who say they want peace - you can't have peace if Iran has a nuclear weapon. So for all of those wonderful people who don't want to do anything about Iran having a nuclear weapon - that's not peace," he said.
"Iran cannot have a nuclear bomb, very simple. Regardless - Israel or not Israel - Iran cannot have a nuclear bomb," he added.
On Monday, he took aim directly at Carlson.
“I don’t know what Tucker Carlson is saying. Let him go get a television network and say it so that people listen,” Trump told reporters, implying that Carlson no longer had the viewership and reach he had as a mainstream media broadcaster.
And as of Sunday, the US was not yet operationally engaged in the war, Trump told ABC News.
"We're not involved in it. It's possible we could get involved. But we are not at this moment involved," the president said.
But that's not what Cruz appeared to let slip in his discussion with Carlson. Iran is "trying to murder Donald Trump," Cruz said. "We're carrying out military strikes today."
"You said Israel was?" Carlson asked.
"I've said we - Israel is leading them, but we're supporting them," Cruz responded.
"Well this is you breaking news here," Carlson responded, alluding to a White House spokesperson who denied US operational involvement in a post on X.
"We're not bombing them, Israel's bombing them," Cruz said.
"You just said we were."
"We are supporting Israel," Cruz said.
The US president has been cryptic in his messaging on what course of action he will take next in Iran, giving mixed signals regarding being open to talks but saying it's too late to talk and then also saying that the US may strike, but they may not.
Trump's MAGA base, however, has not yet given up in trying to dissuade the American president from what they think will become another costly entanglement in the Middle East - and a potential fracture in the Republican Party's voter base.
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