The Daily - The Republican Identity Crisis Over the Iran War

Episode Date: March 23, 2026

The war in Iran has created strong divisions among President Trump’s supporters. An anti-interventionist wing of the Republican coalition and some senior administration officials partial to Mr. Trump’s criticism of long overseas conflicts have quickly become uneasy about the war, which has shown no immediate signs of ending. Robert Draper, a domestic politics journalist for The New York Times based in Washington, discusses Mr. Trump’s justification for the war and whether he is explicitly violating a pact he made with his base not to start another. Guest: Robert Draper is a journalist based in Washington, D.C., who writes about domestic politics for The New York Times. Background reading: Joe Kent, a top U.S. counterterrorism official, resigns over the Iran war. High gas prices, driven up by the war, loom over the midterms. Photo: Eric Lee for The New York Times For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.  Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

From the New York Times, I'm Natalie Kittrowaf. This is the Daily. From the moment President Trump barreled into American politics, one of his central messages that resonated most with voters was his promise to keep the country out of endless wars. But now, as the war in Iran enters its fourth week, leading figures on the right are questioning whether Trump may have gotten the U.S.

into exactly the sort of complex and costly conflict he railed against for so long. Today, we talked to my colleague Robert Draper about Trump's political evolution on the question of war and the identity crisis it's caused for the Republican Party. It's Monday, March 23rd. Okay, Robert, you cover the right, and you functioned for us here at the Daily as our guide, really, to all the complexities of Trump and his party. And right now seems to be a moment of reckoning within that exact group over the war in Iran, specifically the justification for it and whether Trump is explicitly violating a pact that he made with his base of not starting another war. So what is the level of tension that you're seeing right now inside the MAGA movement?

It's really a mess. You have people who are still steadfast in their support for what the administration is doing. There are an awful lot of people, however, and I'm talking not only about the right-wing influencer ecosystem, but also all the way down to voters who are saying, is this what we voted for? We thought no wars. We thought America first. What are we doing over there? What's this about $200 billion that Trump now wants from Congress to appropriate? where was $200 billion when I wanted to buy a home, it has really, really become a problematic matter for the Trump administration.

What you're describing sounds like real anger, right? Yes, anger and disbelief, an inability to square what is happening in Iran with what Trump said on the campaign trail and what Americans face as domestic challenges. Okay, let's talk about that. Let's go there. What's the origin of that discussion? connect, that disbelief. So we should go back to what I believe was the fourth Republican presidential primary debate in November of 2015. Look at Iraq. Look at the mess we have after spending $2 trillion, thousands of lives, wounded warriors all over the place who I love.

Okay, all over. We have nothing. And there on that stage, Trump explicitly said that the Iraq war was no one's idea of a success, but instead was a tragic waste of American blood and treasure. And we have to get smart. We can't continue to be the policemen of the world. We owe $19 trillion. We have a country that's going to hell. And differentiated himself from other candidates who had basically repeated Republican orthodoxy about the Iraq war.

Donald, Donald is wrong on this. He is absolutely wrong on this. We're not going to be the world's policeman, but we sure as heck better be the world's leader. Can you just talk for a moment, Robert, about how remarkable it was to hear Trump say this? I mean, this was a break from the orthodoxy of the Republican Party for decades, right? Yes. It was understood that thou shalt not speak ill of a Republican president, George W. Bush. And so for an office seeker, a Republican office seeker, to stand up and say that this war was just an unambiguous screw up. and you're never going to see me do this kind of thing was really singular. Right.

And I think memorable to voters throughout the campaign. Yeah, that was something Democrats were, of course, willing to say at that point, but not Republicans. No, that's right. So for Trump to do that, really, I think, you know, opened Republican voters up to the notion that, you know, we don't have to embrace a militaristic viewpoint the way hawks on our side of the aisle are constantly urging us to, particularly when we're, We have seen what it's done to a whole generation of Americans. Yeah, exactly. It was kind of the first and biggest example of Trump saying the thing that everyone thought but was too afraid to say. And it really obviously tapped into something.

Yeah. I mean, it tapped into the notion that America's leaders were not to be trusted. And he was drawing a clear distinction between what he was saying about our troops and what he was saying. about our leadership. He was saying, I love the troops. Mm-hmm. It's terrible what's happened to veterans. They've been so mistreated,

and they've been mistreated by these really, really stupid leaders who, you know, can barely organize a one-car funeral, much less prosecute a war overseas. And when you look at the centrality of that message, both its resonance and how much he referred to it in that 2016 campaign, I think it seems, to a lot of people that this was the foundational principle of America first. Along with tariffs and immigration, this non-interventionism was core to what Trump stood for,

to what he was going to do. That's right, because it seemed like a very literal interpretation of America first, which is we look inward. We take care of people at home. And in the meantime, consider the outside world only when it suits us. But unless and until that happens, we take care of our folks at home. And we should point out, as you've said, Trump has been very consistent with this messaging throughout his political career. It wasn't just in his first campaign, right?

I mean, this was something he said in 2024. He was not going to start any wars. He was going to stop them. Yes. I mean, he realized, Natalie, that this was a winning message, that people really responded to it. We're tired of fighting. I'm the only president in the last 84 years. that didn't start a war.

Remember crooked Hillary? And so he realized as well that he could target his political opponent as the person who will prosecute endless wars. He said that about Hillary Clinton. He later said it about Kamala Harris. He said that she would get us into a war with Iran. She would get us into a World War III

guaranteed because she is too grossly incompetent to do the job. And Trump, by the end of the 2024, was saying, I'm the peace president. I said, no, no, no. my rhetoric is going to keep us out of wars. There will be no endless wars under my administration. I didn't take us to war in my first term.

I won't take us to war in my second term. You can count on it. But the notion that Trump was the peace president, that we inferred that from the things that he had said about the Iraq war, I think proved to be really misguided. I think that it was something that we fundamentally misunderstood about Trump and what you would call his ideology. Okay, explain that. What do you mean?

Sure. I mean, I think that we tend to fall into the trap of assuming that when Trump is espousing something that it is an ideology, when the belief, in fact, that he is espousing is self-belief. In other words, that he's not saying here is a core principle of what we believe in. Instead, he's saying other people are doing it stupid. I'm going to do it smart. And in fact, he was actually saying that in real time. during that presidential debate that I referenced earlier. Back in 2015, you mean? Yeah, yeah, November 2015. When he says, you know, terrible war, tragic. And then he says right after that,

and we should have kept the oil, believe me. We should have kept the oil. And we didn't take the oil. That's what we should have done. We should have taken the oil. And then, in fact, the previous debate, he had actually said, I'm a very militaristic person.

I'm a very militaristic person. It's about judgment. I didn't want to go into Iraq, and I fought it. But you have to know when to use the military. So there he was, explicitly saying, I'm not an anti-war president. I'm a smart war president is what I am.

You're saying this wasn't actually a genuine, heartfelt rejection of foreign intervention of using military power abroad. That we might have interpreted it that way, but that wasn't necessarily what we were actually seeing. Sure. Once Trump realized this was a winning message, then he began to say things that I think were very much against his core belief. He began to say, I'm the peace president.

I'll never start wars or anything like that. But in fact, his core principle was, I believe in myself, and I believe in leverage, and I believe in the assertion of power. And in fact, I'm even a militaristic person. But you have to know when to use the military. You have to know how to use strength. You have to know, in essence, how to win. And if there's any ideology to Trump, beyond self-belief, it's winning. Now, what this sounds like is a kind of conflict to points that are in diametric opposition to each other.

Right. That Trump is, on the one hand, someone saying, no endless wars. But on the other hand, saying, I'm a militaristic person. But whatever conflict, those two notions may have presented, did not yet reveal themselves in his first term. and only came to the surface recently. We'll be right back. So let's talk about this moment that we're in right now when the conflict between these different worldviews

on the question of foreign wars is now breaking out into the open. When did we first start to see this, as you said, really come to the surface? Well, we saw a glimmer of Trump the interventionist at the end of his first term in January 2020, when he ordered drone strikes to kill the head of Iran's Quds Force, Qasem Soleimani. And for that matter, we also saw him acquiesce to the generals and keep troops in Afghanistan.

But Trump, the interventionist, really came on full display this term, beginning with June of last year, when he ordered the bombing of Iranian nuclear sites. And then there were people like Tucker Carlson, Charlie Kirk, Steve Bannon, each of whom went into the old. office to implore Trump not to do this, afraid that this could lead to a protracted military conflict in the Middle East. But then once the bombing occurred, there was an about face by the doubters on the right, Charlie Kirk and the others, saying, in effect, what were we thinking? This happened quickly. This happened successfully. Nothing bad happened along the way. And we should have known. In Trump, we trust. So they back off then. But then, of course, these foreign interventions

continue, walk me through what they made of the U.S. intervening in Venezuela earlier this year. Yeah. Well, with Venezuela, it happened so quickly, while some people had experienced queasiness about it. Basically, the Maduro expedition kind of fell under the category of F-around and find out that here was a guy who had been hostile towards the United States and paid the price for it. And once again, without us seeming to suffer. any sorts of negative consequences. If anything, it appeared that the new regime in Venezuela was going to be getting the message that, you know, we're very, very interested in those oil reserves you have. And if you play ball with us, if you're on our sides, you'll be rewarded.

If you're not, well, you see what happened to the last guy. And so it looked like there was really nothing to argue about. Right. And in this case, he did the thing that he said in the past he wanted to do in Iraq, take the oil. I mean, here he's making good on some version of that promise. That's right. And what he's doing, Natalie, also, is a reflection of what he had been doing at home, right? I mean, so from the beginning of his second term, he was bringing his might down on universities, on media conglomerates, on large American law firms that he believed were adversarial to him. He was putting the muscle to them and forcing them to make concessions. That, in essence, was what he was doing to Venezuela. He has, as leverage, the greatest military and economic force in world history. And he is deploying that to gain concessions both abroad and at home. This to Trump is the way a smart, powerful person exercises their leverage. Okay. So basically, the Iran bunker bombs, the Venezuela action, those really prove Trump's theory, basically strength equals power. You can achieve goals essentially by using that on the

global stage and not necessarily suffering big political consequences for doing so. And then we get to the current conflict in Iran. Yes. And what happens then is that Trump is, in essence, applying what he did in Venezuela and what he'd done the previous June in Iran to a far more audacious notion, which is to attempt to decapitate the regime of a very powerful. nation in the Middle East that had been adversarial to America for a very long time to do this, and once again, to suffer no negative consequences. It's a real, real high-wire act. So to apply all of that to not just a series of structures in Iran, but to human leadership to this theocracy there

was a very, very different game altogether. Right. And we are now entering the fourth week of this war and learning just how difficult this is turning out to be for Trump. He can't just do what he did to universities to the government of Iran. He's learning that Iran is not Columbia University, is not Paul Weiss law firm, that it is a big nation that is smack dab in the middle of an extremely complicated region. And it is a hornet's nest that we have understood. never to kick. And Trump, in doing what he did, it's as if he forgot the history lesson that citizen Trump, candidate Trump, was giving on the debate stage 11 years earlier. And so what's the reaction to that? You know, how do people see this increasingly complex war

and Trump's efforts to justify it? Well, it depends on who you're talking about. There has been this clear fracture in the right-wing media ecosystem. This is a country that is a menace in the civilized world. And ending that is a very worthy goal, which I think is what the president is shooting for, whether it means a very weak... Where you will see Warhawks, Zionists, and Trump loyalists continue to support everything that Trump is doing. I'm going to support the president. And look, I'm not against bombing Iran. Laura Lumer.

But we need to comprehend what we're dealing with. That regime needs to be eliminated. Mark Levin. So how do we respond to this? You, however, also see people who have been fans of Trump, close to Trump, say, in essence, this is a big mistake. Everybody knows the only reason we're having this war is because Israel wants it. This is their last chance, they believe. Such as Tucker Carlson. Committing young American men to go die in Iran is not in their interest at all.

What just seems so insane based on what he ran on. And Joe Rogan. I mean, this is why a lot of people feel betrayed, right? He ran on no more wars. Saying this is not at all what I voted for. The whole situation internationally has been so tense already. And to add this to the pile, it genuinely feels like there's a real possibility

that we might be entering World War III. And in expressing their opposition to the war have found themselves in a kind of uncomfortable alignment with people they really didn't want to align themselves with. Donald Trump is treacherous. He is engaged in treachery with his Zionist cabal. People like the conspiracy theorist, Candace Owens. What does this administration do other than cover up the Epstein files, embezzle money through government contracts, and bring us to war for Israel?

And the white nationalist, Nick Fuentes. Do not vote in the midterms. And if you do, vote for Democrats. Shut it down. In 2026, shut it down. You mentioned Zionists on one side of this debate, kind of supporting Trump, supporting the war. And on the other, a group of influencers who have often been very much against Israel and its influence in this administration. So just explain that. How does Israel fit into the debate that you're seeing right now on the right?

To every question, seemingly, Israel has been the answer when those questions are posed to Tucker Carlson and to Candace Owens. They see Israel really behind every imagined conflict or conspiracy. Some of it has been abiding anti-Semitic sentiment. Right. And some of it also has been, I think, a newfound view that why are we engaged in a conflict in the Middle East? Well, we can see the Israeli government and Bibi Naini Niau in particular are only too pleased to have us there. Why do they have so much influence? Yeah.

I mean, it's clear that there is anti-Semitism baked into a lot of this criticism. The undertones are clear. But it does seem, in this case, as the Times has reported, that Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, was very much a driver of this joint war in Iran. So if you're someone who's already predisposed to believing that Israel leads the United States into bad arenas, this feeds directly into that. That's right. And I do think that people who'd never asked these questions before relating to Israel are starting to accept the framing of a Candace Owens or a Tucker Carlson that, well, this has been going on for a long time,

which has, from certain angles, in a particular times, metastasizing to outright anti-Semitism in certain corners. But there's no question that the role of Israel, and for that matter, support for Israel in America, is in a very different place than it was just a few years ago. And then just recently, we saw the head of counterterrorism for the administration resigning over the war in Iran. This is not just some podcast host, not to denigrate podcast. podcast host, but this guy presumably has access to very real information, right? Yeah. This guy is Joe Kent, who was the director of the National Counter Terrorism Center. This guy was a far-right, close ally of Donald Trump, a 2020 election denier.

So very much a part of the MAGA community, no one's idea of a rhino. And here he was submitting his resignation and walking out and making public exactly why he did result. saying that in his belief Iran did not constitute an imminent threat. But at this point, Robert, what's your assessment of how much of a political issue this is becoming for Trump and for the Republican Party? Because, yes, the chattering classes seem to be very up in arms about this. But what about, you know, regular people, voters? What do they actually think? What do we know?

Yeah, well, one reflection of it is that Republican-elected. officials, with exception of two Kentuckyites, Thomas Massey, and Rand Paul, have been full-throated in their support for Trump. They wouldn't be doing that if they believed that there's going to be hell to pay back home. And when we look at opinion surveys, they seem by and large to reflect the MAGA coalition being behind Trump and thus behind his war. I've seen another one, however, Natalie, from the Democracy Institute, which is a conservative group. And that poll very clearly shows that Trump is losing young voters. He's losing black and Latino voters. And his support amongst independents has utterly collapsed, all due to Iran.

That's interesting because those are the voters he won over. Those were the voters who were so key to getting him elected in 2024. That's right. He's completely underwater when it comes to the independence. And he's losing the people who enabled his victory in 2024. So what happens to those voters? Do they stay home? Do they support Democrats? The question is, will voters trust Democrats, voters who have stayed away from Democrats? And will the Democratic brand that has really, really eroded over the last decade, somehow managed to be burnished in a way that is sellable to voters? Will Democrats just content themselves with saying, look at Trump in his stupid war? Look at Trump in the cost of gas spiraling. Look at Trump in his intransigence on the Epstein files.

When they've yet to come up with their own sort of forward-thinking positive message that persuades people that maybe Democrats aren't so bad after all. I've yet to see any winning message in that regard coalesce. It's just been Trump bad, which may be enough for the 2026 midterms. But it remains to be seen whether or not that's going to be a sellable message two years later. What about the Republicans? Because obviously Trump is not going to be around forever. What do we think the Republican Party will learn from this particular moment of division? Because you can imagine a world in which this war spirals out of control lasts much longer. And the party concludes, look, we actually do need to lean into isolationism to the original core principle of no foreign wars. But if the conflict ends relatively soon with not a lot of American casualties, not a ton more money spent. You could see the party deciding maybe you can walk this tightrope that Trump is trying to walk. Sure, that's right. I mean, it's really difficult to tell how it's going to play out. And you can see that sort of hesitancy, even in the administration,

where Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, who has been alongside Trump, the public face of this war, And you could see Rubio, I mean, on the one hand, you know, him coming out and saying, look, we did this because we said we could see Israel was going to do it if we didn't. And then having to walk it back in essence and say, no, no, no, I mean, that's not what I was trying to say at all. That he recognizes that, you know, this war is going to be a difficult thing to explain to voters and a difficult thing to describe as a success. While in the meantime, kind of receding from view is the vice president. the seeming heir apparent to Trump, J.D. Vance, who clearly is not the cheerleader in the way that Rubio is. Yeah, and we've also seen reporting suggesting that Vance pushed back against this Iran plan, but apparently not that much because the Times reported that he also said, well, if you're going to do it, go big. Yeah, and so is he preserving a kind of position of independence in doing that?

and biding his time, basically, allowing himself either to pivot into, like, totally supporting a war just as it's ending, or being the guy who was exercising notes of concern and caution as the war protracts itself. And for these two figures that you are singling out, Vance, the vice president, the representative of this isolationist wing, and Rubio, who represents the more old-school neo-conservative side of this party, the difficulty is that the conflict is playing out in real time, and in many ways their futures, their political futures, and the futures of the party kind of hinge on it. That's right. Both Vance and Rubio are trying to preserve their options. They, in essence, have their feet on both sides of the line.

And in doing that, I mean, what they're really doing, Natalie, is personifying this moment of truth that has arrived for the Republican Party. It's kind of been sitting there for a while, actually, about just what they stand for. There was a bumper sticker, America First, which could be taken literally as stay out of other countries, just do stuff at home. And now it's a question of just what is America's role in the world. And nobody really wants to have that conversation. It's a complicated one. It's a difficult one to sell to voters.

But now it feels like the Republican Party almost has no choice but to confront it. As they try to explain to their voters, to Americans, what's this war about? Why are we doing this? How is it of value to Americans? Considering so many challenges that we have domestically, it feels like a moment where an explanation of what our role in the world is and when we should insert ourselves into complicated regions like the Middle East, it's a dialogue begging to be had that has been a voice. for years, which now it feels like can't be avoided much longer. Well, Robert, thank you so much. My pleasure. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Over the weekend, President Trump said that if the Strait of Hormuz, the vital oil shipping

route that Iran is blocking, wasn't fully opened by Monday night, the U.S. would, quote, obliterate Iranian power plants. Iran said it would retaliate against Iran. such strikes by targeting infrastructure used by Israel, the U.S., and American allies, including water desalination plants that are a lifeline for the entire region. In another sign of how desperate the Trump administration is to get control of the global energy crisis spurred by the war, the U.S. temporarily lifted sanctions on some Iranian oil on Friday, though it's unclear how much that move will affect global oil prices.

And Robert Mueller, the former head of the FBI, who became a political target of President Trump, died on Friday at the age of 81. On learning of Mueller's death, Trump said in a social media post, good, I'm glad he's dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people. As special counsel investigating Russia's attack on the 2016 presidential election, Mueller concluded that Russia had carried out a systematic effort to interfere in that election, and that the Trump campaign expected it would benefit electorally from that interference. But the investigation didn't find evidence that the Trump campaign had conspired with Russia, and ultimately, Mueller concluded that he could neither absolve nor accuse President Trump

of any crime. Today's episode was produced by Ricky Nevetsky, Muj Sadi, Mary Wilson, and Jessica Chung. It was edited by Paige Cowett and Rob Zing. Zipko, and contains music by Rowan Nemistow. Our theme music is by Wonderly. This episode was engineered by Chris Wood. That's it for the daily.

I'm Natalie Kittrow-F. See you tomorrow.