Of all the ways to try to influence President Donald Trump, the absolute worst is to threaten him. And yet, there is a segment of MAGA world podcasters and influencers insisting that if the commander-in-chief takes direct action against Iran, it will divide and crush Trump’s base.
Don’t count on it.
The argument from podcast land is that Trump ran on a promise of no new wars and that any direct American action against Iran would betray that promise and plunge America into another forever war in the Middle East.
Let’s slow down a bit. In his first term, Trump killed Quasim Soliemani, the top Iranian general, to howls from the left, and some of these same right-wing podcasters, that it would start World War III. It didn’t. They were wrong, Trump was right.
Here we are again, the president faced with a choice. He can use U.S. bunker bombs to deal the lethal blow to Iran’s nuclear program, or he can take the Joe Biden route, and sheepishly back off his demand for unconditional surrender, and let Iran continue its march to nukes.
Depending on the polling, about 80% of Republicans think that a nuclear Iran poses a critical threat to the United States. And while voters are more split on direct U.S. action, Trump is laser-focused on stopping Tehran’s bomb.
Trump excels at solving problems everyone else says are impossible. Just look at the southern border, sealed tight as a Ziploc bag, even though everyone swore only Congress could do that.
Likewise, in Iran, Trump doesn’t want to hear a rehashing of the 8 million reasons why nobody can stop their nuclear program. He wants to hear how to stop it, and if those urging restraint can’t tell him how, he’s going to listen to those who can.
This goes back to the farcical threat that Trump is going to lose his base if he bombs Iran, that the guy in an Ohio diner is going to side with the podcasters over the president he voted for. How did that work out for Elon Musk?
The analogy is an apt one, because Musk’s threats and criticisms over the Big Beautiful Bill potentially raising the debt had real resonance among GOP voters, and yet, they chose Trump over a chastened richest man in the world. They support Trump’s overarching economic goals more than they dislike the debt.
Same thing in Iran. Is there skepticism about using direct American military might? Of course. This ain’t a pickup game of shirts and skins. But do they trust Trump overall to stop Iran from getting nukes? Absolutely.
Talk of regime change and threats to kill Iran’s supreme leader understandably make Americans jittery 25 years after the launch of the disastrous war in Iraq, but Trump isn’t talking about invading with boots on the ground, and his base knows this.
What the podcasters don’t seem to understand is that the only way to influence Trump is to influence his voters. He doesn’t care how many followers an influencer has on social media, half of which could be bots from foreign information operations, anyway.
Actually, one has to wonder if our geo-political foes, whose bot farms seek to manipulate social media platforms in America and sow discord, are disappointed by their return on investment.
On X, it seems like to bomb or not to bomb is a divide ripping our country apart. In real life, it simply isn’t.
The final thing that Trump understands and that his base trusts, is that the United States was losing the international status quo under his predecessors, on global trade, on the border, on China policy, and yes, in the Middle East. In all of these cases, he is determined to reverse that trend.
There is nothing wrong or unpatriotic about arguing that direct U.S. action against Iran would be a mistake, and Trump no doubt welcomes lively debate. But as Vice President JD Vance, no chickenhawk, pointed out Tuesday, this is Trump’s decision to make.
Trump promised that Iran would never obtain a nuke, and he has a habit of keeping his campaign promises, even when taking slings and arrows from noisy voices on his own side.
There isn’t a podcast in the world that can keep Trump from fulfilling this promise as he sees fit, and his base, the real power behind the administration, expects nothing less.