As the United States is once again stuck in another war in the Middle East, it is worth remembering many people voted for President Donald Trump, and some of his most implacable conservative foes opposed him, precisely because they thought he might avoid costly nation-building projects.
While the Never Trump movement was somewhat eclectic, it was always disproportionately hawkish. Some of the original Never Trumpers returned to the Republican fold when Trump turned out not to be a Trojan horse liberal. Others more animated by character concerns—things like Trump’s nasty parting shot at the former special counsel Robert Mueller—never came back. And we are learning in real time what certain prominent people would pick if forced to choose between opposing Trump and supporting a war in Iran.
Trump actually succeeded where the Never Trumpers failed: He forced a change in leadership of the Republican Party. George W. Bush no longer has the same hold on the grassroots he once did. Dick Cheney died having most recently endorsed a Democrat for president. His daughter Liz frequently campaigned for Kamala Harris after losing the GOP primary for the House seat her father once held by 37.4 points. Mitt Romney left the Senate after a single term, with a lesser standing among some conservatives than when he was a moderate Massachusetts governor.
John McCain was still highly respected when he died and remains fondly remembered by the Washington press corps. But his status on the right was surely diminished, though his relationship with movement conservatives was complicated before Trump. Nevertheless, Trump sent many neoconservatives packing for their ancestral homes in the Democratic Party. Many of neoconservatism’s leading pundits are now functionally liberals, their primary audiences having shifted from Republican congressmen and center-right policymakers to Resistance wine moms.
It is all the more bewildering, then, that Trump did not decisively break with their ideology and instead delivered the regime-change war many neoconservatives really wanted far more than the ouster of Saddam Hussein.
Which brings us to the conservatives who have long supported Trump but have broken with him on Iran. We are constantly reminded that there is a disconnect between the podcasters and the polls on whether this war divides MAGA. That’s true so far as it goes, though MAGA is an imprecise category that self-selects for those who trust Trump the most. It’s also probably true that many more Trump voters than pundits believe his promises that this won’t be a forever war, which none of his previous military interventions have turned out to be.
There is something that the doves of MAGA can learn from the Never Trumpers, however. Never Trump spoke to concerns about Trump’s temperament and commitment to conservative causes that were somewhat more widely shared by Republican-leaning voters, but few went along with the movement’s willingness to vote against Trump once he was the nominee. As these commentators and consultants deepened their hostility toward Trump at the same time he was strengthening his emotional connection to the base, they fell into irrelevance, at least within their former party.
Never Trump was really an elite phenomenon. At its peak, its primary power came from starving Trump of top Republican talent in campaigns, government, and media. This, as much as Trump’s personal whimsy, contributes to the chaos that surrounds him to this day. Trump was able to win without them, and some of this talent proved overrated. But it has also taken a decade for Trumpworld to shed its amateurishness, and it has left MAGA highly vulnerable to grifters.
The conservatives who backed Trump because they wanted to see changes to Republican positions on foreign policy, among other issues, are in a similar position. They have provided a great deal of the energy, intellectual firepower, and ideological coherence for what might otherwise be a cult of personality. They matter beyond their numbers.
As Trump now wages war in Iran, the biggest media megaphones behind him were reluctant adopters of the president at best—some were even OG Never Trumpers—whose audiences are dominated by people who were already going to turn out and vote Republican in the midterm elections anyway. Paradoxically, some of the conservatives who trusted Trump the least now have the most riding on his ability to succeed where past Republican presidents have failed.
Perhaps Trump can live without his erstwhile “new media” admirers as easily as he did the Never Trumpers. The conservative influencer space is, to put it mildly, highly flawed. Some of the most prominent podcasters are too fixated on Israel to be all that persuasive to Republicans over 40, though they are reaching audiences that helped Trump in 2024.
But Trump is going to war with the media army he has. It’s not the army he once had, and we’ll soon learn if it’s the one he might want or wish to have at a later time.
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