A growing number of MAGA figures have broken with President Donald Trump over his deeply unpopular war against Iran, a conflict that has left the president’s remaining followers facing a difficult quandary – and the remainder of the MAGA movement, “in shambles,” participants in the “Daily Blast” podcast said Friday.
Featuring The New Republic’s Greg Sargent and journalist Virginia Heffernan, Friday’s episode of the “Daily Blast” centered around former Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s recent prediction that the GOP would suffer a historic defeat in November’s midterms.
“You want to know why ‘26 and ‘28 is going to be different [than 2024]?” Greene said in a Thursday video published on TikTok. “Because Donald Trump broke his big, big campaign promise of no more foreign wars, and actually has got us embroiled in a war with Iran, a war that should not be happening, and he’s not backing off of it.”
Sargent concurred with Greene’s prediction, and argued that Trump had inadvertently put his “Fox and MAGA figures” in a dilemma.
“They don’t know how to talk about Trump and the Iran war, because in their minds, Trump’s might and power and ability to impose his will on his enemies was always unquestioned,” Sargent said.
“And of course, the funny thing is, they’re required to treat it as fact that Trump’s defeat over Iran has been absolute, that it’s been one of the greatest military triumphs in world history. They’re required to repeat that, because Trump has said it. So now, how do they explain the fact that Trump can’t impose his will on Iran?”
By all accounts, Trump has failed to achieve his administration’s stated war objectives, among which include enacting regime change and preventing Iran from ever developing a nuclear weapon. U.S. officials admitted as much just short of one month into the conflict, and Trump has since privately floated abandoning his pursuit of a nuclear deal with Tehran, per the Wall Street Journal.
As such, MAGA has largely been left in “shambles,” Heffernan argued, with many former Trump supporters reevaluating their entire political identities.
“You see some people testifying to basically falling out with MAGA, or deconstructing their experience with MAGA. And they’re in shambles,” Heffernan said. “Their brains feel like they’re in component parts all around them. And they’re just going through, I can’t believe I believed this. I can’t believe I thought I should shoot bleach into my veins. Like, the whole thing. It’s like being lost all at once."
Greene joins a growing number of former Trump supporters who’ve since turned on the president, including right-wing influencer Candace Owens, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and right-wing media figure Tucker Carlson.
