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

Episode Date: March 3, 2026

The Trump administration's justification for war in Iran is exacerbating tensions within the president's political coalition and highlights an increasing disagreement on what "America First" means.Support NPR and hear every episode of Trump's Terms sponsor-free with NPR+. Sign up at plus.npr.org.To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

I'm Scott Detrow, and this is Trump's terms from NPR. 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. I'm Ame Martinez. And I'm Lela Faldon. When President Trump ordered a tax 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. 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. His America first position of no foreign intervention goes back more than a decade. Years before he was a presidential candidate, Trump promoted dealmaking over military action. And in a 2011 social media video, he had this to say about President Obama.

Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. he's weak and he's ineffective. Staying out of what Trump called stupid wars became a major 2016 campaign theme at rallies such as this one in North Carolina. 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. 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. 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. 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. We projected four to five weeks, but we have capability to go far longer than that. We'll do it. NPR, 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? 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. All right. So let's start with the critics, Stephen, because those are typically the juicier things. So what have they been saying? The general gist is there's a sizable block 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. Confused. What's confusing about this?

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. 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. 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 Americas. That's embodied by voices like Tucker Carlson, who spoke on his podcast Monday before Rubio's comments. 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. All right. So that's a lot. counter to the Trump administration, what have they been saying in response? Walsh's viral ex post earned a lengthy response from Caroline Levitt, 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.

Now, you've talked before about the split among MAGA voters to this president campaign on the idea of no new wars. It seems like a new war right now. And it seems like a new war right now. And it 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? 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 ex-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 bear nominee in the 2008 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.

That's NPR Stephen Fowler. Stephen, thanks. Thank you. 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 Plus 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.