President Donald Trump, across both of his terms, has regularly shaped federal policy in response to the propaganda he hears from his sycophants at Fox News. But his decision over the weekend to launch a war of choice against Iran without a clear goal may prove to be the most consequential example of this feedback loop to date.

Trump is deeply immersed in the Fox universe. He famously consumes the network’s content; highlights particular segments that strike his fancy on social media; hires its employees to run his administration; consults its personalities for advice on domestic and foreign policy; and doles out contracts and pardons alike based on what he sees on its airwaves.

And for decades, the Fox stars Trump trusts most have consistently called for military strikes and regime change in Iran.

That campaign took on new urgency when Trump returned to the White House.

Last June, Fox personalities — particularly Trump loyalists Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and Brian Kilmeade — used their programs to urge Trump to follow up on Israeli attacks on Iran by launching strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. They warned that Iran is, as Kilmeade put it, “our enemy,” that it posed an imminent threat to American citizens and that, in Levin’s words, “force” is the “only thing to stop” Iran.

Other MAGA media figures from non-Fox outlets opposed U.S. involvement in the conflict. But the overwhelmingly pro-war Fox coverage — and a White House meeting Levin had with the president — were apparently dispositive.

And after Trump ordered the U.S. military to attack three Iranian nuclear sites, Fox’s war hawks rewarded the president by showering him with praise for what Hannity said would “go down in history as one of the greatest military victories.”

The same pattern appears to be playing out eight months later, albeit on a much larger scale.

A Fox-fueled push for war with Iran

Over the past weeks, as U.S. military forces converged in the Middle East, the same Fox figures again urged Trump to attack. Notably, their argument was noticeably light on defining a goal for U.S. military operations after the bombs began to fall.

Instead, they argued that because Iran could, at some point in the future, pose a threat, Trump should act now while he is empowered to do so — and that the result would be an easy U.S. victory. “I cannot think of any reason not to take this regime out,” Levin argued. The U.S. would “lose credibility forever” without a strike, Kilmeade claimed. For Hannity, “The world is going to be better and safer.”

While some on the network seemed to shy away from the topic, criticism of potential strikes largely took place elsewhere in the MAGA media — outside of the Fox programming the president himself watches.

On Friday, hours before the attack began, the trio made their final pitch.

“I hope the president chooses to go at it,” Kilmeade said Friday morning. “We have been looking at these headlines for 47 years, and we have an opportunity to end it. And this president likes to make history.”

“This president knows right from wrong,” Levin told Hannity that night. “He knows good from evil. He knows that this regime is a death cult. And he knows that there's only really two countries that are prepared and willing to put an end to this.”

“We don't need to put up with their crap,” he concluded, as Hannity nodded along. “It's time to put it to an end.”

They got what they wanted: The U.S. and Israeli militaries began attacking Iranian targets that night. Since then, hundreds of Iranians have reportedly been killed, including Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the Pentagon has reported the first U.S. casualties in the conflict. There is no end currently in sight — the Iranian government remains defiant, while the U.S. is sending more troops to the region.

The propaganda war has an aim. The real one doesn’t.

Trump, meanwhile, has had trouble articulating what he’s trying to accomplish.

He first suggested his aim was regime change when he urged the Iranian people to “take over” the government in his first public statement after the attack, but in interviews since then, he just seems to be riffing. He told The Washington Post he is seeking “freedom for the people” of Iran, but he bemoaned to ABC News that regime figures he expected to take over the country had also been killed in the initial strikes. Trump also stressed to The New York Times that his model was the U.S. attack on Venezuela, where the dictatorial regime remained in place after U.S. forces seized its leader. But he also suggested that the Iranian military could turn over its arms to its public. “They would really surrender to the people, if you think about it,” he explained.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a former Fox & Friends host, added to the incoherence of the administration’s message when he said at a Monday morning press conference, “This is not a so-called 'regime change war,' but the regime sure did change.” But the Iranian regime currently remains in place, and according to at least some of his statements, Trump may prefer it that way.

Perhaps the reason there doesn’t seem to be a clear goal for the U.S. bombing of Iran is because the goal, as laid out by Trump’s Fox propagandists, was for the U.S. to bomb Iran. That is the aim the likes of Kilmeade, Hannity, and Levin had in mind, and now that they’ve goaded Trump into following through, they are cheering him on.

“Donald Trump did what nobody else could do for half a century,” Levin marveled on Saturday. “How do you like that? And you know why he did it? Because he loves his country.”

So what happens next in Iran? That’s beyond the remit of Trump’s Fox Cabinet. Instead, they are gearing up for a propaganda war in which they declare Trump a world-historic victor and paint his critics as terrorists and traitors. For them, the details of what happens to the Iranians is for someone else to handle.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like anyone within the official Trump administration has answers either.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet