Ten years ago yesterday, Donald Trump descended Trump Tower’s golden escalator to declare his candidacy for president of the United States. With that announcement and his chosen slogan, he launched the Make America Great Again movement. Trump himself defined and personally became MAGA and America First.
Generally speaking, MAGA and America First policies aim to avoid foreign wars, especially those that are long and wasteful. It does not mean isolationism or always avoiding conflict.
For example, when Israel struck Iran Friday in retaliation for decades of waging war on Israel and America, Trump cheered. “I gave them 60 days and they didn’t meet it,” he said of the Iranians and nuclear negotiations. “I gave Iran chance after chance to make a deal. I told them, in the strongest of words, to ‘just do it,’ but no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn’t get it done.” In other words, fool around and find out.
Trump provided cover for Israel via the Abraham Accords during his first administration. He isn’t backing down from supporting Israel now, either, reportedly telling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he wouldn’t get in the way of Israel’s retaliatory strikes.
Enter Tucker Carlson, a prominent MAGA supporter who on Friday hammered Israel for likely starting World War III. In his Friday newsletter, the former Fox News personality warned, “While the American military may not have physically perpetrated the assault, years of funding and sending weapons to Israel, which Donald Trump just bragged about on Truth Social, undeniably place the U.S. at the center of last night’s events. Washington knew these attacks would happen. They aided Israel in carrying them out. Politicians purporting to be America First can’t now credibly turn around and say they had nothing to do with it. Our country is in deep.” He added that Trump is “complicit in the act of war.”
We in our humble shop supported Carlson before and after Fox dumped him. But our enthusiasm has waned as, among other things, he ran propaganda videos about Russian subways and grocery stores and facilitated provocateur/historian Darryl Cooper’s flat-out wrong (to put it kindly) ideas about World War II.
Frankly, Carlson seems to have veered off course, especially when it comes to Israel, our best ally in the Middle East. He cloaks this in the guise of being a “peacemaker,” though. Over the weekend, he explained, “The real divide isn’t between people who support Israel and people who support Iran or the Palestinians. The real divide is between those who casually encourage violence, and those who seek to prevent it — between warmongers and peacemakers.”
Was Israel supposed to just sit and take it when the Iranian proxies known as Hamas slaughtered 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023, taking roughly 250 more hostage?
Carlson names names of the “warmongers” — “Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Rupert Murdoch, Ike Perlmutter and Miriam Adelson” — effectively arguing that anyone who supports Israel’s response to Iran, or who thinks the mullahs shouldn’t have nuclear weapons to exponentially expand their deadly terrorism worldwide, is fomenting endless war. (Carlson himself once said Iran could not have nuclear weapons, calling it “bad for everybody.” He no longer seems to think Iran even wants those weapons.)
As with Elon Musk’s recent meltdown, Trump didn’t take Carlson’s broadside lying down. “Well, considering that I’m the one that developed ‘America First,’ and considering that the term wasn’t used until I came along, I think I’m the one that decides that,” Trump responded. “For those people who say they want peace — you can’t have peace if Iran has a nuclear weapon. So for all of those wonderful people who don’t want to do anything about Iran having a nuclear weapon — that’s not peace.”
He got even more specific on Truth Social: “Somebody please explain to kooky Tucker Carlson that, ‘IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!’” On Monday, he even warned, “Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!”
Carlson didn’t back down, but he did shift the tone of his appeal. “I think we’re going to see the end of American empire, obviously other nations would like to see that and this is a perfect way to scuttle the USS America on the shoals of Iran, but it’s also going to end, I believe, Trump’s presidency,” Carlson explained on Steve Bannon’s podcast. Elsewhere, he also urged Trump to “drop Israel” and “let them fight their own wars.”
Carlson is hardly alone. Other MAGA figures have weighed in against helping Israel at all. For example, Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene says we’re “finding out who are real America First/MAGA and who were fake.” Others have more specifically accused Trump of betraying America First.
The rift is growing, and some of the online Right has traveled so far down the road that they’ve reached anti-Semitism. To say that’s unfortunate is an understatement.
That said, having vigorous debate in a movement is more helpful than mindless criticism from outside of it. The best ideas and policies survive the test of argument. Here’s hoping that what’s happening among the MAGA faithful right now serves to keep the movement on track to put America First.
