Donald Trump campaigned on a promise so simple his supporters could shout it back at him: no new wars. He said it at rallies, he said it in debates, he said it in his victory speech. It was among the clearest commitments he made to the voters who returned him to the White House in 2024.
On Thursday, he called those same voters’ favorite commentators “NUT JOBS,” “TROUBLEMAKERS,” and “stupid people” with “low IQs” — because they had the nerve to hold him to it.
The result was something that has rarely happened on Truth Social, a platform Trump built as a safe space for his base: a public revolt.
“You are actively alienating your base every day,” wrote one user. “I’ve just lost my support, Mr. President,” wrote another. “They didn’t leave MAGA, MAGA left them. MAGA left me too,” wrote a third. “You sold us out,” wrote a fourth. “They’re fighting you because you sold us out. We aren’t getting anything we voted for. No doge cuts, no mass deportations, no fraud and abuse getting cut — and a brand new war nobody wanted.”
The four figures Trump attacked — Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones — broke with him for exactly that reason. Each criticized his decision to launch the Iran war and his since-deleted Easter post threatening to destroy Iranian civilian infrastructure.
Read: Alex Jones Calls Trump ‘Demonic,’ Says Melania Knows ‘Ship Is Sinking’
Carlson called it “vile on every level.” Owens called Trump a “genocidal lunatic.” Jones called for his removal under the 25th Amendment. Marjorie Taylor Greene, also named in Thursday’s post, was bluntest: “I fought alongside Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones to help get Trump elected. And now he goes off on a rambling rant attacking all of us.”
“Trump would not have won the primary in 2016 had he run on Mitt Romney’s platform,” right-wing influencer Mike Cernovich wrote to his 1.4 million followers, “nor would he have won the 2024 election by running on new wars. It’s silly to claim Trump is MAGA. He rode a cultural wave, only he had the personal will to do so, but the issues matter, too.”
Carlson advised White House staffers to directly refuse any order to carry out mass civilian strikes. These aren’t critics of MAGA. They are MAGA — or were, until the war made that identity impossible to hold alongside their stated principles.
Related: Joe Rogan Accuses Trump of Starting Iran War to Distract from Epstein Files
Researchers studying the coalition see three distinct groups fracturing in real time. Dr. Annelle Sheline of the Quincy Institute told The New Arab: “Trump’s war has opened a real divide within the MAGA coalition, especially between young men, who largely oppose the war, and an older generation of Republicans more likely to support it. Those who voted for Trump in 2024 because they believed he wouldn’t start new wars feel especially betrayed.”
A TIME Magazine report found 63% of 18-to-29-year-olds oppose the war — the same young male voters whose shift toward Trump in 2024 was central to his victory.
The polling reflects all of this. Self-identified MAGA Republicans still back Trump at roughly 90% on Iran. But a YouGov/Economist poll found Trump’s net job approval at a record-low -23, driven by non-MAGA Republicans whose support dropped 11 points in a year.
Trump won in 2024 by 1.5 percentage points — the narrowest margin since 2000. He needed all of it: the diehard base, the soft converts, the young men, the “no new wars” voters.
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