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Donald Trump's rise in U.S. politics over the past decade has been inextricable from his "America First" foreign policy and withering criticisms of the Iraq War, nation building, and both the neoconservatism that led the Republican Party to disaster during George W. Bush's presidency and the Washington establishment that still thought America could police the world. Trump's message of a restrained foreign policy and pledge to avoid getting dragged into forever wars especially seemed to resonate as he ran to take back the presidency in 2024—there was no end in sight to the war between Ukraine and Russia, and Israel was committing genocide in Gaza as Bibi Netanyahu walked all over an exhausted, only occasionally lucid Biden.
But less than half a year into President Trump's second term and the failure negotiations with Iran, Israel bombed that country's nuclear facilities and assassinated their negotiators and nuclear scientists—and just over a week later, so did Trump when he ordered the dropping of massive "bunker buster" bombs to try to destroy the nuclear facilities Israel could not.
In this episode, we once again talk to executive editor of The American Conservative, Curt Mills, a leading voice of the restraint and realism wing on the right, to try to understand the war within MAGA set off by the "Twelve Day War" with Iran. Why did Trump bomb Iran? Who was he listening to, or not, as he made that decision? How did the various factions within the MAGA movement respond, and what is the state of play currently in Trump World? What was Israel's role in all this? And how much longer will Trump tolerate Netanyahu's constant efforts to get the American military to fight in Israel's wars? We take up these questions, and more.
Sources:
Ian Ward, "The MAGA Split Over Israel," Politico, June 13, 2025
Joe Gould, et al, "MAGA Largely Falls in Line on Trump’s Iran Strikes," Politico, June 21, 2025
Katy Balls, "Trump is Taking Fire Over 'Forever Wars,' but MAGA’s Real Battle Awaits," The Times of London, June 22, 2025
Jude Russo, "What Next?" The American Conservative, June 24, 2025
Sohrab Ahmari, "Did Iran win the 12-day war?" Unherd, June 25, 2025
Well, Kurt, you know, one of your points was that the Iran file was kind of hot from the get-go when Trump took office again And that issue was kind of particularly vexing from your point of view, right? From the kind of MAGA Restrainer America first Purists Iran has always been kind of maybe a weak spot for Trump or a place where he Seemed vulnerable to persuasion to do certain things if you want to put it that way And I guess what I'm saying is what changed in these past weeks or months what made Trump move more recently Well, he was about to sign a deal. So I mean Trump tweets out or truths out I believe like in the dead of night or the early morning two separate times a video of this Iran negotiator of Ali Shumkhani who is Putatively constantly area to the supreme leader and he is the head of the Iranian negotiating delegation Trump tweets this guy out and like Shumkhani like basically says again and again We have a deal no new hula leopard will sign it and then on the strike day You know the morning of the 13th the Israelis try to murder him So when we talked to you a few months ago, you were feeling pretty good, right about how well You know the Restrainers were winning the kind of it transition fights, right? You were getting your people in the right places you have Tulsi Gabbard at DNI you have bridge Colby in the government now And you guys got Mike Waltz out and there's this story that we've told and I think we told last time You're on here that like of the lower rungs of the sort of staffing apparatus of the administration Especially those younger people they tend to be even more so, you know And my point is that you guys especially relative to Trump won you got into a pretty good position with staffing here And you might have imagined that that would mean that in a situation like this you might think they're not gonna do it because we've got our people in there and we can see that it's wrong and Trump has the instincts that he has so then the question is like why do they arrive at the decision to drop these bombs? I think we're just kind of talking about it There is an interest group here that wants regime change in Iran that wants the US national interest to be you know Infected with Israeli national interest. These are no secrets I mean like Trump has accepted financing from the Edlesons, you know the Home Depot guy Paul Singer And then additionally like I think he's not small part of this and like the quality of a towel Whatever, but like is Trump's diet of Fox News, which is Dominated by like his absolute frenemy somebody who like I think it's fair to say that he is like quasi-obsessed with as well Rupert Murdoch go through Murdoch's whole career or the obsession with Iran the absolutely messianic foreign policy the absolutely Cascading faith in the quote free market. These are all like extremely 70s 80s 90s end-up history center-right things So it's programming is just open IDF people open CIA people open MIC people and like they are calling Trump Alexander the Great if he drops one bomb over Tehran You You You You You You You You You You You ♪ When you're real, God is ♪
Matt and Sam are joined by Curt Mills of The American Conservative to discuss the intra-MAGA conflict over Israel's war in Iran.
