Iran war sees MAGA divisions emerge
As Donald Trump's potentially era-defining Iran war nears the three-week mark the signs for its impact on his legacy are ominous.
Average gas prices have surged from $2.90 to $3.80 a gallon, the financial markets are a daily blitz of red and the cost of groceries - voters' number one concern - remains painfully high.
The president is on a political high wire as he tries to achieve a long-term strategic goal - preventing Iran getting a nuclear weapon - while fending off an avalanche of problems at home.
With control of Congress at stake in November's midterm elections, the Democrats now have a rallying cry - opposition to a war costing billions of dollars and, more importantly, American lives. If they win, Trump could face another possible impeachment.
Most perilously of all, Trump's always rock solid MAGA base is showing its deepest fissures yet, as influential voices within it call the Iran war a mistake and even a 'betrayal' of the America First agenda he ran on.
On Tuesday, the internal MAGA crisis escalated as Joe Kent, head of the National Counterterrorism Center, became the first senior administration official to resign over the conflict, going public with misgivings others will only whisper.
MAGA could split if ground troops deployed, Sabato warns
The response from the White House was furious amid fears more doubters may follow. Many wondered what the private thoughts of Vice President JD Vance, perhaps the strongest opponent of 'forever wars,' must be.
If the conflict goes on for a long time and morphs into a ground war, the impact could be existential for MAGA, pollster Professor Larry Sabato, Director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, told the Daily Mail.
'The key question right now is, does he (President Trump) put in ground troops,' he said. 'If they send in ground troops, I think MAGA really will split. And I've always been hesitant to say MAGA will split. I think ground troops would do it because, inevitably, the coffins would begin to come back in greater numbers.
'He really has always counted on MAGA to follow him regardless and he's gotten his wish. But he has succumbed, as almost all two-term presidents do, to an obsession with legacy, and he isn't satisfied with a domestic legacy.'
If Republicans go on to lose Congress and the White House in 2028, Trump's legacy could be chaos in the party rather than a united political movement.
'If Republicans lose everything, and particularly the White House, then you have internal warfare,' said Prof Sabato.
Impact depends on speed and outcome, Luntz says
'You have the kind of Byzantine warfare that that parties always dread, and countries too for that matter, because you can't easily solve it, you can't resolve it, you can't bring it back together, there's nobody to bring them back together.'
Veteran pollster Frank Luntz told the Daily Mail the impact of the war on Republicans was up in the air, and the 60-day timeframe was all-important as to whether it was as ultimately viewed as a success or not.
Under the 1973 War Powers Resolution, after 60 days Congress must authorize any land deployments of US forces.
'It's impossible to predict with any accuracy what Iran will do to or for Republicans,' said Luntz.
'It depends entirely on the speed and the outcome. If the US eliminates the Iranian military threat in less than 60 days - before the War Powers Act kicks in - it will be seen as a success. If Congress gets involved, it will be much more muddled and messy.'
He added: 'The price of oil is temporary. The loss of American lives is permanent.'
The political turmoil has some Democrats salivating at what they believe could be midterm gains rivaling 2018's so-called 'blue wave' election during Trump's first term.
Democrats highlight rising prices, critics question war
'Democrats just have to keep reminding people that he (Trump) made a promise to bring prices down, and they're still going up,' said Democratic strategist Brad Bannon.
'And now they're going to go up even more because prices in gasoline can increase prices of everything else, including at the grocery store.'
'They (the administration) are flying by the seat of their pants, and the rest of us are paying the price,' said Kelly Dietrich, chief executive of the National Democratic Training Committee.
For perhaps the first time, Trump is facing strong criticism from some of his own most vocal supporters who claim he has not sufficiently explained why he started the war, or how he will end it.
Questions include why there was no coalition of the willing assembled in advance, why the US strategic petroleum reserve was not filled up beforehand, and why his timeline for the conflict appears to keep changing.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has admitted being surprised by how fiercely Iran lashed out at other countries in the region.
And there also appeared to be surprise that Iran went so far as to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world's oil flows.
Divisions emerge within MAGA
Great store had been placed in 'decapitation strikes' which took out the Iranian leadership, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the first day of the war.
But Iran's decentralized command structure allows military units to fight on regardless, with officers at the local level given tactical authority to launch their own weapons.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin has been emboldened after the US eased sanctions on some Russian oil shipments.
And, on the internet, false conspiracy theories are now proliferating that the war was started to distract from the Epstein files.
It has all set up, if not a civil war, then a bitter internecine feud within MAGA.
On one side are hawks who have long sought Trump's ear. On the other are those who point out that ending 'forever wars' was a central tenet of Trump's campaign.
The current winners are the hawks, like Senator Lindsey Graham, who have pushed for direct confrontation between Washington and Tehran for more than a decade.
'If the radical cleric in Iran had a nuclear weapon, he would use it just as certainly as Hitler were to use it. He would kill all the Jews, and we're next,' Graham said this week.
Public clashes
Jon Hoffman, a research fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, said: 'You're seeing (in Lindsey Graham) essentially a child on Christmas morning who has gotten everything that he's ever dreamed of.'
'When did Lindsey Graham become our president?' Megyn Kelly, the influential conservative podcaster, wrote on social media, going on to call Graham a 'homicidal maniac.'
Kelly has also been engaged in a vicious personal feud with Fox News host Mark Levin, a pro-Israel hardline conservative backing Trump's strikes on Iran.
'Poor Megyn Kelly. An emotionally unhinged, lewd, and petulant wreck,' Levin wrote on social media.
Kelly fired back by dubbing Levin 'Micro[private] Mark.'
The White House's alarm over such spats within the MAGA-sphere was made clear when Trump himself weighed in to back Levin with a 348-word statement on Truth Social.
Those who 'speak ill of Mark will quickly fall by the wayside, as do the people whose ideas, policies, and footings are not sound,' Trump warned.
Despite that, former MAGA congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene responded: 'Trump’s gigantic defense of Levin only enraged the base more. People are DONE.'
Carlson, Rogan among voices criticizing war
Tucker Carlson, the conservative media figure, called the war 'absolutely disgusting and evil' and predicted that it would have an impact on Trump's political movement.
And podcaster Joe Rogan, who endorsed Trump for president in 2024, said the war 'just doesn't make any sense to me.'
He said: 'It just seems so insane based on what he (Trump) ran on, I mean, this is why a lot of people feel betrayed, right?'
Former beauty queen and prominent Trump supporter Carrie Prejean Boller went further, telling Piers Morgan Uncensored: 'I’ve been a loyal supporter of the president for almost 20 years. I consider him a dear friend and I will tell you right now, I do not recognize our president.
'And MAGA, let me tell you right now, MAGA is dead. It is deader than dead, and Americans are furious. We do not recognize President Donald J Trump anymore.'
The White House rejects suggestions that support for Trump is waning among Republicans or within MAGA.
In a recent statement, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said: 'Republicans are supportive of President Trump's bold decision to launch combat operations and end the threat posed by the Iranian terrorist regime.'
Approval rating holds steady despite opposition to war
And, in a positive sign for Trump, despite a series of polls showing the public opposes the war, there has been virtually no movement in his own approval rating.
A Morning Consult poll published hours before the first strikes on February 28 showed Trump's approval rating at 44 percent and disapproval at 53 percent.
The same organization's next poll, taken between March 13 and March 16, showed Trump at 43 percent approval and 54 percent disapproval.
An average of polls shows Trump's approval rating was 41 percent just before the war, and on March 16 it was the same, 41 percent.
Trump himself has grown more agitated with negative news coverage about the war, bristling at reports he suggests have been influenced by Iranian propaganda.
He recently cheered on his broadcast regulator for threatening to pull licenses unless outlets 'correct course.'
The president has also increasingly shown his frustration with US allies, lambasting them by name and threating to upend the world order by distancing America from NATO.
'We no longer "need," or desire, the NATO countries' assistance - we never did,' he wrote on Truth Social on Tuesday, sending shockwaves through European capitals.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer appears to have become the irritant-in chief after declining to send British aircraft carriers to help the US effort.
Little sign of Trump deviating from his course
As prominent MAGA voices and international allies urged Trump to take a quick 'off ramp' and end the war, there was little sign of him deviating from his course.
Instead, a planned visit to China in early April was postponed by at least a month so he can focus on Iran.
Meanwhile, those who have long wanted to see regime change in Iran urged him to stay the course, despite the lack of support from allies.
'I think the military side of this is going well. I think the political side is not going so well,' said John Bolton, Trump's former National Security Advisor. 'I don't think the President made the case to the American people.
'While regime change is logical, indeed compelling, policy to pursue, he didn't prepare Congress for it, he didn't prepare the allies for it, and I'm very much afraid that Trump will have caused a lot of destruction in Iran but will leave the battle before the regime is changed.'
Professor Sabato said: ''There's no way it ends in the next week or two. This could really go on a while, and that will determine its effect in November.
'There is a direct connection between it and the gas prices and food prices. That was his fundamental pledge in the election and food prices haven't come down at all, in fact they've continued to go up. Gas prices did come down, but now they skyrocketed.'
