The Israel-Iran conflict is tearing MAGA apart

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The news, in brief …

• Minnesota shooting suspect charged with first-degree murder

  Vance Boelter was charged with first-degree murder in the shooting of a state-level Minnesota Democrat and her husband. The “strong supporter” of President Donald Trump was captured by police after a days-long manhunt.

• Judge accuses Trump admin of blatant discrimination in funding cuts

  A federal judge accused the Trump administration of “appalling” discrimination in its recent funding cuts to LGBTQ+ and minority-focused research programs. The Ronald Reagan appointee said he “never seen government racial discrimination like this" while ordering the funding to be restored.

• The president is hawking cell phones

  The latest Trump family grift was announced by Eric Trump on Fox News.

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Troopsurge Domine

Imagine for a second that you’re Pope Leo X.

After a life of comfort in the Medici household, you find yourself ruling over the Papal States. You blundered your way through a war as a favor to your doomed nephew, but otherwise, the indulgences are flowing, and you can see real progress on St. Peter’s Basilica. You’ve surrounded yourself with the finest artists of the Italian Renaissance. Life is good, more or less.

Then some upstart German with more nails and sanctimony than sense waltzes into your life, smelling like ozone and carrying a list of all the ways you’re ruining the church. When you sat down to write your next papal bull, could you resist the urge to call Martin Luther small potatoes?

That’s a variation of the problem that Donald Trump faced on Monday, when former conservative kingmaker Tucker Carlson criticized him for straying from his “America First” campaign promises and warned him against being dragged into another war in the Middle East. Shortly after a costly military parade, and feeling himself thanks to recent Italianate updates to the White House, Trump told his perpetually open-mouthed Luther to try starting a church before he tells him how to run one.

"Let him go get a television network and say it so that people listen," Trump told reporters.

As fun as it is to see Carlson clowned, Trump can’t wave away his concerns. The former host’s fears represent a growing rift in the MAGA movement. Carlson and other isolationists who took Trump at his word are on one side. Benjamin Netanyahu, Republican hawks and the entire military-industrial complex are on the other. Some of Trump’s loudest attack dogs have come out against involvement in the Israel-Iran conflict. Marjorie Taylor Greene called the clamoring for U.S. involvement from her fellow Republicans “disgusting” in a post to X.

It’s doubtful that Carlson’s complaints will have the same Earth-shaking effect as Luther’s. The last several years of Republican politics have shown us that the party will reshape itself on the whims of its main man, and Trump was willing to lean on his own infallibility even before the Supreme Court said he can do no wrong.

As the president declared this weekend, a few days before calling for the evacuation of Tehran, America First means whatever he says it means.

What do you think? Will involvement in another war be the thing that finally splits the MAGA base? Is this just another Muskian moment? Sound off in the comments.

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Before you go …

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