Trump's 'last straw' of broken promises lined him up for MAGA 'battering': columnist

Donald Trump is hyper aware that his Iran deal is tearing his party apart — but he's especially concerned that he's left his MAGA base "seething," a columnist wrote Friday.

Even the president's most loyal supporters didn't mince words when they blasted the deal Trump is expected to sign in an effort to end the Iran war.

Ted Cruz, the Texas senator who has spent years carrying water for the MAGA was clearly reeling from Trump's freshly inked Memorandum of Understanding with Tehran.

"Giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is not a good idea," Cruz said. "I think the President unfortunately is receiving bad advice on this deal."

It was a remarkable moment, wrote the I Paper's Simon Marks. One of Trump's most reliable foot soldiers openly breaking ranks over a deal signed just hours earlier in Versailles.

Cruz wasn't alone. Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana declared that "Ronald Reagan is rolling over in his grave" over what he called Trump's capitulation.

"Iran's nuclear ambitions were not curbed, and they have learned that threatening the Strait of Hormuz works," Cassidy warned, "and will undoubtedly leverage it in the future."

The fury didn't start Wednesday. When Trump launched his military campaign — entirely sidestepping the War Powers Act and the congressional approval it requires — prominent MAGA voices were already uneasy. Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens accused Trump of outsourcing American foreign policy to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Now, with a preliminary deal on the table, those same voices smell betrayal on a grander scale, Marks wrote.

Vice President JD Vance has insisted no American taxpayer money would be involved — that regional allies would foot the bill. But the optics are brutal: the United States went to war to topple a regime it is now proposing to bankroll.

But it's Trump's base he's most worried about, wrote Marks.

"Politician fury is one thing, but the reaction of his base is another thing entirely for the President. Trump will be watching very carefully the reaction of MAGA, and will be out to convince them that his deal is good for American consumers," he wrote.

"He already got a small bit of good news this week, with US petrol prices dropping to under $4 a gallon for the first time since mid-April.

"However, Trump’s virulent base has a long memory and his damaging war with Iran could be the last straw for some.

"The deal with Iran, and the negotiations that follow, is also only going to intensify the battering the President’s Republican colleagues will likely face on American doorsteps ahead of the crucial midterm elections in November."