Bulwark Takes - Iran War Causes Huge MAGA vs. MAGA Fight | MAGA Mondays

Episode Date: March 9, 2026

Will Sommer and Sam Stein went live to cover the intra-MAGA fights sparked by the war in Iran. They're also discussing Tucker Carlson's claim that Trump was being fed bad poll data on the war, Rep. Dan Crenshaw getting heckled, and more.

All right, everybody. It's me, Sam Stein, joined by Will Summer for your weekly installment of Maga Mondays. Before we get into what would happen over the weekend on the Internet, because this is the show where we talk about what happened over the weekend on the Internet. I need to address something also on the Internet. This thing, this picture right over there, this has become an object of some fascination in certain parts of the Reddit community. I think it's because Will was sitting in this exact place during a video last week. and people were wondering why this cartoon drawing of me was in Will's shot. He just used my office.

There's nothing more to it. I don't know why I even hang that thing up there other than I like to look at myself in the morning. I put a little candle, a little shrine to myself. But I just want to dispel some of the weird conspiracies that I was privy to online. Nothing really big about this. Will was just using my office. I don't know, well, do you want to address some of these rumors? Look, it's just the office shrine to Sam.

It's nothing weird. You don't need to read too much into it. You know, Sam makes us all, you know, hang. I obviously, I have one in my own home, but it's emotional. It is true. It's true. I was, Andrew Eger and I were talking about this morning, and he said, you know, do you just go in there and, like, the first thing you do in your office is you look at yourself on the wall?

And I thought to myself, you were in another kind of right. Maybe I should take that done. It's a little bit weird to have a picture of yourself up like that. So I'm going to find some better artwork, even though I really like that one. was done by our colleague, Hannah. So maybe I'll keep that about it. All right, well, let's talk real stuff. And to the folks who can hear the trucks outside,

this is also a new office, and we happen to be right behind a UPS loading dock, so that happens. Will, I was away this weekend. I haven't really followed as close as I usually do. Obviously, the big story is what's going on in the Middle East. Oil skyrocketing, the market's tumbling, Trump seemingly grasping for, you know, rationales for this.

The hospital, the bombings, sorry, the hospital, the girl's school, which has really bothered me on an emotional level, him sort of dismissing the idea that it was the United States, even though there's multiple studies suggesting it. All this stuff is kind of bubbling up and it feels very chaotic. And last time you and I talked, which was last Monday, MAGA was sort of like real luminaries were upset about this and they were they were very critical of Trump in ways I hadn't seen before even if most of MAGA seemed to be supportive of the war. What is your read currently about where things stand with the movement? You know, I think for a lot of right-wing media personalities,

I think the war is still pretty unpopular. I think, as you said, I mean, there are polls saying that, you know, majority of Trump voters are still with him on this. But, you know, even losing 15% in, I mean, that poll was taken, I think, within the first like four days of the war. I mean, that's not a great sign. I mean, that's the president. party. That's not a national poll of everyone. And so I think that's an issue. I think also this war, it's kind of like the initial outrage over it from people on the right who are going to be mad about it to settle down. But there's kind of just like this sense of like bad feeling. I feel like it's really highlighting a lot of the discontent that already existed over issues like Israel or anti-Semitism

in the Republican Party. And now it's kind of like the gloves are off. People are really like tearing into each other. Yeah, I was thinking about the 14%. So like, you know, you could point to a it's like, oh, well, self-identified, you know, MAGA supporters, 86% support what's happening in Iran. And I'm with you. It's like, well, if you lose 14% of that, you know, that, that's bad. Now, I will say this. I went and looked at the polling around the Afghanistan withdrawal during the first year of the Biden administration to just get a sense of how Democrats felt about that. Because my theory of the case was that they would be, there would be similar numbers to what's

happening now. There were more Democrats, self-identified Democrats, upset with how Biden was handling the Afghanistan withdrawal than there are self-identified Republicans who are upset with what's going on in Iran. That being said, this was not just Republicans. It was specific to MAGA. I could not think of another issue where self-identified MAGA voters were upset with the president, at least 14% of them were upset. It's usually like 5%. I mean, it's got to be Jeffrey Epstein. Yeah, but even that. Do you think it was that bad? I can't remember now. I think it probably was that bad.

Yeah, I mean, it's hard to know. I can't call them mind a poll immediately back from July. But I do think that that was like, I mean, that's kind of like the last time we had one of these big kind of like crisis moments within MAGA. But they got over it. Yeah, I think that's right. And, you know, but I think it's interesting here that this sort of like this erosion of Republican support, I think points to a larger thing that the administration is really. not really cared to explain to any Americans what's going on here. And it's sort of been like, yeah, we're going to war.

I mean, people have talked about this a lot. But, I mean, we know the run-up to the Iraq war. I mean, there was like a year of just, like, making the case, even if it was a fraudulent one. Whereas this one, now we're looking at, I mean, they're just like, yeah, well, we're doing it. And who knows how long it's going to go for? And, you know, there it is. You know, I'm going to make you put your old media reporter hat on for this one. But, like, what do you make of Trump calling reporters, mostly mainstream reporters?

for like seven to eight minutes at a time and just like plucking them off what do you think's going on there you know here here's what's interesting you can say it's mostly mainstream reporters it's actually like a bunch of random outlets too who like really like um the washington reporter which is like a oh he did conservative blog he called them a bunch and i mean there's a couple other examples i can't think of them immediately where i was like what am i reading this right this person just got off the phone with trump like you know it's not like maggie haberman i mean it's like really like someone that i would consider like a C-list conservative media outlet. And I think that points to the fact that I think there's just like a lot of effort, you know, from this administration to message. And particularly in the first couple days of the war, there were all these calls where he was just like, hey, it's going great. Bye. You know, I mean, they were saying exclusive. Trump says the war is good. Right. It is, it also raises some serious questions about how he's allocating his time, right? Like he's spending a lot of time on the phone and messaging. And then every now and then you'll see like a truth that comes up about how great the white house ballroom construction is going.

And then he was like videotaped golfing yesterday. And, you know, he bleats about like the Save America Act and all this stuff. Like I don't I don't get the sense that he's like pouring over battle plans and like working the phones with Middle East diplomats and things like that. He seems to try to be massaging the messaging around the war. Yeah, I don't think he's hunched over in the situation room a lot. I mean, I think this is, you know, there's clearly this, there's other things going on with Trump. And I mean, this is just this weird thing where, you know, we can look at these, this disconnect between, we can look at like the huge oil explosions in Tehran. And yet here in the U.S., I think there's this sense of, you know, yeah, that's like one thing we have going on. And especially, you know, if we look at the potential for oil to spike or other economic issues, I think it's an issue the administration is sort of going to have to face reality on relatively. soon. Now, I just, because it's also on my wall, we've been talking about my wall a lot. I want to see if I can get the image of back there. Do you see that George W. Bush? I do. I do. I remember what that's from? No, I don't. Now watch that drive. You don't remember that famous George W. Bush

moment? Because did he say it was like during the war and he got a question and he said, yo, check this out? Yeah, he was on the course. He was talking about how bad Saddam was. I wish we had the clip to play. Maybe we can get that clip up very, very rapidly. But he was on the course. He was just got his driver out. He was taking some questions. And then he's just like, fuck it. I got to hit this golf ball. So he said, now watching this drive.

Trump didn't do that yesterday. He was videotaped golfing. I don't think it was Mar-a-Lago. I think it was another club. Speaking of people who he's talking to and spending his time on the phone with or at least in person, Tucker Crosson. So Tucker, let's play the Tucker video because Tucker is like not done trying to persuade Trump to get the hell out of this war.

Here is Tucker talking about, I think we touched on this yesterday too, but talking about a poll that Trump apparently saw, and this combines two things we just talked about, where apparently Trump is being shown a poll that says 90% of people support the war. Let's play it. Also, someone who knows him, I'm just, I said, I'm just going to fly out anyway and tell him this because I think it's so important. And the person says, don't bother because he's being shown polling that this war is like a 90-10 win. for him. And I said, I don't know where that polling is coming from. It's like, you know, I guess you could make any kind of poll. And it's, he's watching Fox News, which is telling him the same thing. And he's getting fake polling. I guess they're only polling Sean Hannity's viewers or something. And so I'm not sure that there's a sense as if this was yesterday, because I was getting so agitated and worried. I don't think that there's a sense that this is unpopular.

Great. I mean, is, so what do you make of that? First, of all, the polling thing is, I don't, I haven't seen polling like that. He must be getting a poll that shows a 90% of MAGIS supporters like it. Because there's no, there's no poll that exists that shows this war as a 90-10 issue. It shows the war as a 40-60 issue at best. But what do you make of Tucker still trying to work it here? Because he obviously lost the first round, but he's not given up. Yeah, this is interesting. I mean, I think this is the first time he's sort of openly said, you know, these trips to the White House I was taking. I was trying to avert the Iran war. I'm sure it was not, you know, I'm sure he couched it in nicer language when he was in the

White House. But yeah, I mean, it's interesting this idea that, you know, Trump has been, you know, I would certainly believe that, you know, he is seeing these polls that perhaps, as you said, he's being shown that, well, 85% of MAGA people support it. And so, you know, maybe that's getting in his head in terms of, because I think Trump is, is a guy who's very sensitive to the sense of like, oh, I'm in a quagmire, whether it's tariffs or something, like, I need to taco out of it. And the fact that he hasn't done that so far, you know, it's not even clear if he has that option at this point. But I think it does suggest that he has some kind of like poor sense of how this is being received. Yeah, what would a taco out of it even look like at this?

I mean, he did try to declare victory, right? Like, there was a bleed over the weekend where he was like Iran basically surrendered. They lost the first war in a thousand years. And yet, obviously, that didn't, they didn't surrender. So what would a taco even look like at this point? yeah, we're going to choose their new leaders. Then they did not do that. They chose their own leader.

They chose the idol's son. Yeah. So so much for that. I mean, it is, I mean, it's crazy. I mean, I just feel like there's this sense of like we're getting the classic like Trump's spin that Trump's trying to throw things out. But, you know, as we're going to talk about, I mean, this, I think a lot of these right-wing media pundits and talking heads, they're not fooled.

They know that this is a sinking ship in terms of the popularity of this war. And I think they're trying to. I think so. I mean, I think people are kind of trying to triangulate, right? Even Tucker, I think we have this tweet from him. He's not saying, like, I denounce the, you know, Trump's out of control. I mean, here you go. He goes, pray that the spell breaks and the world is saved.

I mean, I think there's an implication. Who is the, what is the spell? What is the spell? I think the wizard is Benjamin Netanyahu here. I mean, you know, he's talked before about, you know, this is Israel's war or whatever. And so, but even here, he's kind of like, oh, it's not Trump's fault. You know, who's to say what's going on? Okay.

Back to the Civil War component of it in Max. Because while Tucker is doing this, like, and you talked about it in your newsletter last week, but there's people who are just like, Tucker, right? I mean, they're just like, get this guy out of the party. And they view him as just channeling a threat of anti-Semitism that they can't counten. So let's play, let's put up the Mark Levine treat, the great Mark Levine. So what's the background here? I'm not going to read this whole fucking thing because it's too long. But what is the background here?

Sure. So basically here we see Mark Levin is eating, or excuse me, Mark Levin is issuing a message. I was saying issuing and eating and meeting. So the Republicans are getting together in Florida and he's the House GOP. And he's saying, you know, you have to kick Tucker and Candace out or we're going to lose the midterms. Now, I think losing the midterms may, I think there are larger issues at play for them. But basically he's like, they got to go. You know, this is almost like an ultimatum. And I think what's going on here is we're seeing that, obviously, particularly since the death of Charlie Kirk, the murder, you know, there's this, you know, rising discussion about anti-Semitism in the party,

figures like Candace Owens, you know, figures like Nick Fuentes, obviously, have kind of risen to prominence. Even Tucker was saying last week, you know, well, the Habaab Jewish organization, you know, helped inspire this war and all this stuff. And so now I think Mark Levin is, you know, pushing back. He's obviously very pro-war with Iran. But I guess, like, overall the message here is that, we're seeing these tensions that we're already building over the past six months or so,

five months, really sort of, they're kind of like playing for keeps. They're like, I have to take out my rivals now. Yeah, no, it's definitely opportunism, right? Like, oh, if we lose the midterms, it's definitely Tucker's fault. I did notice there was a funny moment where Fuentes, because Fuentes has been going off against the were on his show for a while now. And there was some, I forget who the Democrat was. He's like, I'm all for, you know, welcoming in people outside the tent.

He's like, there's no tent big enough for this motherfucker. Not going to let Nick Fuentes into this one. Back to the House. Because the House, sorry, the midterms, the House increasingly feels like it's going to fall from the grip of the Republican Party. You had Dan Crenshaw lose a primary bid. Now, this was not over Iran necessarily, though. People are saying they're, you know,

I don't really follow the logic about how the Iran war hurt Dan Crenshaw more than, say, the redistricting, which made his district different. But maybe you can unpack it. But let's play the video of him being confronted. Can I just set this up here for who this character is? Sure. So Dan Crenshaw, obviously, we all know Dan Crenshaw. A lot of people on the far right don't like him.

They think he's a simp. He's a he's a wimp, whatever. What's the difference between a simp and a wimp? Well, a simp, you know, would be kind of like someone who's like sucking up to someone, particularly a woman, but in this case, maybe to the global war machine. Okay. And so in this case, we have Alex Stein, who is sort of a right-related. Not related.

Not related. Thank goodness. He's kind of like a right-wing prankster. I think he's in Dallas, so they're both Texas guys. And his kind of like, his deal is kind of like he does confrontations. He's kind of a loomer-esque figure. And so basically, just briefly, that he was supposed to have a debate with Crenshaw. And then Crenshaw with the Daily Wire.

And then according to Stein, and he posted text messages to this effect, Crenshaw said, I'm not doing it with Alex Stein, which probably makes sense. Wait, so just why I'm saying this, Crenshaw was supposed to debate Alex Stein at a daily wire event. And Crenshaw said, no, I'm canceling that. Yeah, he basically said, you know, I'm not going to do it with Alex Stein. You can get someone else, which it's probably not that bad of an idea because this guy is like a real. He calls himself the pimp on a blimp. And so, you know, this is maybe if you're a member of Congress, you know, maybe we are related.

Let's play the video. Dan, I bet you didn't see that loss coming, Dan. Dan, did you see that loss coming? Crinshaw, you took the L. Hey, Crinshaw, you took the L. Did you see that coming? I know you only got one eye, Cyclops. You lost.

Did you do a good job? Oh, he's not a good guy. Hey, Dan, Dan, great job on your election, brother. You're a loser. You're a loser. You're a loser. Great job, dude. Yeah, I think we could stop there.

Not a good look for Alex. Wait, what's that? I said, not a good look for the Steins. Jeez. You know, but that's kind of how, yes, he's, you know, you got to raise the bar for Stein behavior. I don't want you confronting anyone at that point. Yeah, geez. Oh, okay.

So this is kind of in the lower tiers of the right wing influencers. You know, Alex Stein is much more of a, in the kind of the Alex Jones, anti-war mold. And you can see, you know, the tensions are hot. Well, can you explain why they think the Iran war contributed to Crenshaw's loss? I could not follow that. You know, I haven't seen a great argument about that myself. I mean, I think that's kind of like these anti-war. It's out there, though.

I've seen it. I've seen it. I've seen it for sure. You know, I don't know a ton about the redistricting there, but I do know that, like, it's just a reality. Like, a lot of Trump supporters don't like Dan Crenshaw. And this can be kind of a weird thing to keep up with because I think people think, like, the last time Dan Crenshaw was, like, really in the news in a general way was like when Pete David mentioned his eye patch and all this stuff

and then people are like, oh, this is like a MAGA guy. But in fact, Crenshaw has been a bit more in the McCain's, you know, every so often critical of the administration. Very mildly, very mildly. Selectively. This is made up to Trump. He did suck up to Trump on multiple occasions.

I know Tim Miller has a little bit of a beef with Dan. So no tears were shed, I suppose. A couple of the topics I want to get to. I suppose this gets back to. to the folks like Alex Steinal. I don't think he participated in this. But, you know, young Republican operatives continue to do really bad things. And they get caught, particularly texting each other.

It seems to be a thing. Now, I know you talked about this on Friday. But can you recap what the F is going on with the Republican Party in Florida and the young, I guess it was the young Republicans in Florida? Yeah, just briefly. And then we can kind of get into what happened over the weekend with this. So there were a bunch of young. Republican GOP operatives, the head of a Turning Point USA chapter at Florida International

University, the Secretary of the Miami GOP Party, kind of these other, you know, sort of would-be, you know, future Republican leaders. And they had this insanely racist group chat called gooning in Agartha. And they said, I mean, truly, like, by the standards of like, you know, past- Do you want to explain gooning again? Very briefly. Gooning is a sort of hypnotic masturbation. And Agartha is sort of a sort of Nazi heaven, essentially.

And so, you know, these guys were, I mean, the stuff that was going on here is, like, of all, like, the racist Republican group child, I know you like that one. Over the past year, I think this is, like, truly the most shocking. I mean, you know, it's, these people were not like Senate. I mean, it's so racist. I mean, you know, like, is beyond racist? But why? Is it more shocking than New York Republican one? That was pretty racist.

Oh, that was bad too. And, like, people were saying, oh, you know, Hitler or whatever. This one, I mean, was, there's one guy in particular who was just, like, specifically saying, like, talks about act of violence towards black people, like, very, like, you know, it was crazy. And now, Florida Republicans who are, who were not in the chat, are saying, oh, no. And they're condemning it. So, yeah, we have Rick Scott, distinguished senator from Florida saying, this is disgusting. It cannot be tolerated. I'm glad that the Republican Party of Florida is launching an investment.

investigation and expect anyone who engaged in this horrible behavior to be held accountable, racist and anti-Semites are not welcome in the Republican Party. I'm not totally sure if that's true, Rick. Are there any other diminutations? Yeah, I was like, what are we talking about? Yeah, so the Florida Republican Party, as Rick Scott mentioned there, is looking into it. I think this turning point USA, the Florida International University, is looking into it. I mean, there's potentially a criminal investigation just because of like how threatening some of these messages were towards black people. But it's, you know, I, I guess the larger picture is, you know, we talk about how this kind of like young GOP operative class, how many of them are kind of gropefied

and into this racist stuff. And I think these, these text messages can, can illuminate that. Well, it's like, so here, I mean, there's just like a rich irony here, right? Like, so here you have a young group of Florida Republicans sending each other horrific, nasty, anti-Semitic, racist text, laughing it up. It gets surfaced. And then the old guard, Rick Scott's like, oh, this is abhorrent, unacceptable. We can't have people, you know, believing these things in the Republican Party. We shouldn't be, you know, accepting this type of language.

Literally over the weekend, another Florida Republican luminary, our Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, is photographed with Enrique Tario. I mean, again, the proud boys leader himself. Proud boy's leader. So like, fourth degree proud boy did the cereals, you know, all the stuff. Why don't you give people the background on Rieke? Keep the picture up, but tell people what Enrique did. So Enrique Tario.

And how bad a person he is. Is the guy who took over the proud boys after Gavin McGuinness. I mean, he was involved in the planning of sort of the proud boys actions at January 6th, which I think were really crucial in terms of kind of like lighting the spark that kind of like started the mob going. You know, he is a very bad guy. You know, I mean, he tore down the Black Lives Matter flag at a church. He's, I think, still facing legal stuff over that. I mean, this guy is essentially, I think, about as close as we get to sort of an American fascist and waiting. I mean, this is a guy who very much is sort of like leading the Trump brown shirts. All right. So let's say you're a young

Florida Republican operative trying to make it up the ranks. It seems like a little bit of cross-current messaging here. On the one hand, you have Rick Scott saying these texts are abhorrent. And the other hand, you have Marco Rubia, pictured with Enrique Atario. Again, not the same exact thing. But the message is being sent is that they are, in fact, comfortable with these types of people. They're just saying when they get a little bit of unwelcome media coverage, that they have to sort of slap you on the wrist. I thought that was an interesting duality from the weekend. The last thing I want to talk about, and then I'm going to let you talk about whatever you want to talk about. I don't really know if we have any more topics. But the Trump

brothers, I don't know if you saw this, because this didn't happen over the weekend. This broke this morning. The Trump brothers are getting into the drone business. So apparently they are investing in this power us is a new drone company. You see the Wall Street Journal piece. It's a drone company Vine and Meet Pentagon Demand and Phil a hole left by the administration's ban on Chinese drones. I am not surprised that they're doing this.

And I will not be surprised when they get a very lucrative Pentagon contract. for many, many hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars to do drones. This is, you know, this is the world we live in where family businesses, government business, and so on and so forth. Eric Trump doesn't even sort of deny. He just makes fun on the paper for not making money. Well, you know, one thing I would note here, Sam, is that the Trump brothers have a lot of experience in sort of military drone technology. And you can tell this because the company they're using that they're sort of merging this drone company with is a golf course company. that's kind of no i didn't see that taking yeah that's in the article that's that's sort of the the

vehicle for taking over this drone company so you know i mean clearly there isn't some influence trading thing i mean this is just a natural fit for them i mean what do you put the overrun on them winning a very lucrative contract well i mean huge i mean if does pete hexsuff want to keep his job i mean i would say like you know they will uh i mean it's crazy i feel like this one is you know it's good to bring these things up and it's good to stay alive to these. I mean, I feel like my first reaction was just like, oh, yeah, you know, kind of put it on the pile of all these other things they're doing, you know, and, you know, is that not bother people in Maguworld that there's just obviously complete grifters, or in this case, just family business and

that they're just enriching themselves? Doesn't that bother them to a certain level or no? You know, I think on, I think they sort of see it as, you know, the ends justify the means here. You know, if they think Trump is doing other things they want, they're happy to look. the other way. On the other hand, you know, I do think back to the famous Mike Cernovich remark a few months back where he was visiting D.C. and said, you know, everyone here is acting like Democrats will never take power again and that there's will never be corruption prosecutions. And it's just a very weird situation. So I didn't, didn't he say like the grid like the grifting is just like all anyone's talking about? It's just like, yeah. It's just like, how can you,

how can you cash out during this administration? You raised Pete Heggseth. his his his his kind of like showy bullshit pressers the braggadocious you know we're gonna you know be more aggressive than there and the weird rhyming that he had i mean he gets spoofed on saturned live but do people in in the like magosphere find it refreshing or are they kind of tiring of that well you know i think it depends which faction we're talking about i mean i think if we're talking about kind of the classic fox news people who obviously he's a fox news host you know i think they you know they like the war you know they like the war and stuff they're in for it. I mean, I think these kind of the right wing media cognizanti, maybe the kind of further right people, I think they look at him, I think as many people on the left see him as kind of this like boozy blowhard type. Okay.

I'm going to end it there. We did locate the George W. Bush clip. We're going to go out on that clip. So we'll play it and the feed will end. But Will, I appreciate your help and getting me up to speed. It's weird watching all

this happened with like a serious war in the backdrop. And so while we're kind of chuckling at some of this stuff, just want people to know. We take it very seriously. I do think it's important, honestly, in an earnest way. The 15% or so of MAGA that don't like this war, that matters. I actually do think that matters materially. And I think it could end up getting higher, depending on how the war goes, depending on what happens with oil prices, things like that. But when you see people like Marjorie Taylor Green and Megan Kelly rail against this war. I do think that they have some influence.

And I, you know, I don't think, I haven't really seen the podcast, bro, way in too much. Have you? No, I haven't. Okay. So that'll be my next one to watch. It's like, where do the Rogans come down on this?

Tim Dillon, I think we know where he's down on this. But like, where does that crowd end up here? Theo Vaugh. Yeah, Theo Vaugh. I guess there's five of them that you have to watch. But I think Trump's, you know, I think Trump knows this. I think he's, I think he's aware, and that's why he's making all these calls. I didn't realize he was calling that many people, but I do think he is aware of this.

Any final thoughts before we set this out with George W.? No, you know, I think there's a, you know, it's a time of high feud, and, you know, there's a lot of division right now because of the war. And I think we'll have to, everyone's looking to see if Trump can wrap it up. All right, man. Well, you heard the man. He's got the best insight. Subscribe to his newsletter, false flag.

Subscribe to our bulwark feed where you can get great conversations like this. Honestly, it's the best subscription in the news business if I do say so. On that note, thank you for turning into Mago Mondays. We're going to leave you with George W. Bush telling reporters to watch his drive. Take care, guys. You must stop the terror. I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you.

Now watch this drive. Alright, you need another.