Tag: israel
Polls Show Americans Oppose Trump's War On Iran

Polls Show Americans Oppose Trump's War On Iran

Within hours of President Donald Trump announcing his decision this weekend to bomb multiple military sites in Iran, public opinion polling showed a plurality of Americans opposing the action.

Trump reportedly chose to launch the attack after hours of watching Fox News’ positive coverage of Israel’s attacks on Iran, prompting Iran to respond on Monday with missile attacks on American bases in Qatar and Iraq.

In a YouGov poll taken on Saturday and Sunday, 46 percent of respondents said they strongly or somewhat disapproved of the bombing campaign that Trump instigated. The biggest bloc of people opposed were Democrats, with 70 percent disapproving of the Republican’s actions. Among independents, 51 percent opposed the bombing and even among Republicans, 13 percent said they didn’t back Trump.

A plurality of those who were polled (44 percent) also said they believed Trump’s attack would make Americans less safe. Only 25 percent bought into Trump’s argument that the bombings would secure the country, with 20 percent responding that they were not sure and 11 percent saying that it would neitjher improve nor degrade safety.

The new polling echoed public opinion before the bombing kicked off. In a June 18 Washington Post poll, airstrikes were opposed by 45 percent of the people answering the poll, with 25 percent supporting action.

One woman who was polled, a 74-year-old Republican from Washington who voted for Trump, explained to the outlet, “I think Pres. Trump and the U.S. needs to continue negotiations and alternatives before the U.S. bombs Iran and starts a World War III.”

Trump is following the drumbeat being played on Fox News, but even members of his own party are expressing some level of dissent.

On Monday, Trump complained in a Truth Social post that Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky is a “simple minded grandstander” for voicing opposition to the bombing. “MAGA should drop this pathetic LOSER, Tom Massie, like the plague!” Trump fumed.

Trump also made it clear in another social media post that he is unprepared for the economic fallout from his bombing run.

“EVERYONE, KEEP OIL PRICES DOWN. I’M WATCHING! YOU’RE PLAYING RIGHT INTO THE HANDS OF THE ENEMY. DON’T DO IT!” he wrote.

Oil supplies could be tightened as world markets and governments assess the fallout from Trump’s escalation and that could lead to higher gas prices. Trump spent much of the last four years complaining about gas prices under former President Joe Biden and claimed he would lower them on his first day in office.

Like his promises of “peace,” that didn’t happen.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Dogfight Erupts In Right-Wing Media Over War With Iran

Dogfight Erupts In Right-Wing Media Over War With Iran

As Israel’s conflict with Iran escalates into open hostilities, MAGA media figures are divided over whether the U.S. should intervene in the conflict and have resorted to attacking each other. Opponents of U.S. military intervention in Iran — like right-wing podcast host Tucker Carlson — have gone after Fox News, calling its pundits “warmongers” and claiming that pro-war talking heads have “empty, tormented personal lives.” Some right-wing figures who support war with Iran have attacked Carlson, with Fox’s Mark Levin calling his former colleague “increasingly unhinged” and claiming that anti-interventionists “have never been MAGA.”

Right-wing media draw lines in the sand over U.S. intervention in Iran as Carlson and Trump spar

  • Following Israel’s attacks on Iran and Iran’s counterattack on Israel, many right-wing media personalities have chimed in to advocate for or against U.S. military intervention. Some in right-wing media have argued this is “not our war,” while others like Fox’s Sean Hannity have said, “America doesn't have any choice but to get involved in this.” [Media Matters, 6/18/25]
  • The Trumpist right, usually united against Democrats, have split into “rival factions” over the conflict and are fighting “over the true meaning of an ‘America First’ foreign policy.” The isolationists include online talk show host Tucker Carlson and War Room host Steve Bannon. On the other side, Fox News fixtures like Sean Hannity and Mark Levin are making the case for the U.S. to intervene directly in the conflict. [The Atlantic, 6/17/25]
  • After Carlson suggested Trump was “complicit in the act of war” against Iran and that the conflict “will define Donald Trump’s presidency,” Trump fired back, calling him “kooky Carlson” and emphasizing that “IRAN CAN NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON.” [The Hill, 6/16/25, 6/17/25]

Some in right-wing media are calling out Fox News for being “warmongers” and having “amnesia” about previous wars in the Middle East

  • Tucker Carlson called Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and Fox Corp.’s chairman emeritus Rupert Murdoch “warmongers.” Carlson posted: “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. Who are the warmongers? They would include anyone who’s calling Donald Trump today to demand air strikes and other direct US military involvement in a war with Iran. On that list: Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Rupert Murdoch, Ike Perlmutter and Miriam Adelson. At some point they will all have to answer for this, but you should know their names now.” [Twitter/X, 6/13/25]
  • On WarRoom, Carlson also said, “My temptation in a moment like this is to go low and to note that a lot of the people pushing for this stuff have really empty, tormented personal lives.” Carlson added, “This is a way to kind of feel powerful. I mean, nothing makes you feel more powerful than killing other people.” [Real America's Voice, War Room, 6/16/25]
  • On Jones’ show, far-right media personality Nick Fuentes questioned if Fox host Greg Gutfeld has “amnesia” for arguing “we need to forget” the legacy of Middle East wars and “trust Trump.” Jones then attacked Levin for his “sophomoric” comments calling Jones and Carlson a “lovely couple." [Infowars, The Alex Jones Show, 6/17/25]
  • Bannon attacked “the same crowd at Fox News” for “sounding the war tocsins” and arguing that “we have to go on offense.” Bannon: “When you start making decisions that are predicated upon the assumption that America is going to come in not just for defense but for offensive because the same crowd at Fox all weekend has been sounding the war toxins, ‘America's got to go on offense, we have to go on offense, we have to support — we've got the equipment, we've got the pilots, we have the refueling, … we have to be there.’ No. We have to make decisions that put America first.” [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 6/16/25]

Other personalities have attacked Carlson for being “increasingly unhinged” and shamed “isolationists” for trying to “co-opt” MAGA politics

  • Mark Levin reacted to Carlson’s disapproval for war with Iran, calling him “increasingly unhinged” and “a special pleader for all kinds of evil, genocidal, maniacs.” Levin said, “He’s defending a country that has killed American soldiers. Israel’s taken them on. Israel took on Hezbollah that killed American soldiers. A whole barracks of marines. And I could go on and on and on. So Tucker Carlson is an apologist. He’s an appeaser. He’s actually worse. He's a special pleader for all kinds of evil, genocidal, maniacs. And he’s not alone.” [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 6/13/25]
  • Levin later wrote an op-ed in the New York Post attacking “isolationists” on the right, writing, “These reprobates have never been MAGA.” The op-ed is titled, “Isolationism is the same as appeasement – and it’s keeping Trump, Netanyahu from transforming the Middle East.” Levin also claimed, “The isolationists, such as ‘Chatsworth Qatarlson’ (Tucker Carlson), are turning on our president, as they’ve spent months demeaning Netanyahu. They prefer the likes of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who apparently is more MAGA than Trump. They wind up turning themselves into pretzels, actually characterizing the Iranian regime as oppressed and victimized.” [The New York Post, 6/16/25]
  • Fox contributor Ari Fleischer called Carlson “a carnival barker and a clown” whose “entire career was marked by lurching from one cause to the other with no ideological consistency.” [Twitter/X, 6/16/25]
  • Sean Hannity accused isolationists on the right of trying to “co-opt” the MAGA movement. Hannity claimed, “Donald Trump has never been an isolationist,” adding later, “People that can't seem to understand that kind of puzzle me. But it's not up for them to decide what Donald Trump's foreign policy or how to define the MAGA movement but it looks like they are trying to co-opt it.” [Fox News, Hannity, 6/17/25]
  • Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro said that Carlson’s arguments on Iran are not “rooted in reality, rooted in rationality at this point.” He also said, “President Trump calls Tucker Carlson kooky Tucker, which again, I think is a very, very good descriptor of Tucker Carlson at this point. Let’s just say that he has pushed a bunch of theories that are specious in the extreme, unbased in evidence or reason.” [The Daily Wire, The Ben Shapiro Show, 6/17/25]
  • Fox News host Kayleigh McEnany compared Bannon and his allies who are advocating for “just sitting back and taking it easy” to “Biden’s foreign policy.” She added later, “America first is not sitting in a beach chair and using words. It’s taking decisive action when we can take out Fordo with one swoop of an airplane.” Fordo is a fuel enrichment plant in Iran. [Fox News, The Five, 6/17/25; CNN, 6/18/25]
  • Newsmax host Rob Schmitt told viewers not to “fall for Tucker and Bannon, as much as you probably love them.” Citing a statement from National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard in which she said “too many people in the media don’t care to actually read what I said” about Iran, Schmitt argued she was “probably talking about Tucker and Bannon.” [Newsmax, Rob Schmitt Tonight, 6/17/25]

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Echoes Of Iraq Invasion As Trump Lurches Toward War On Iran

Echoes Of Iraq Invasion As Trump Lurches Toward War On Iran

President Donald Trump is publicly toying with the possibility of joining Israel's war on Iran, ignoring his own administration’s intelligence assessment that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon”—giving nightmarish flashbacks to President George W. Bush’s war on Iraq.

“I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do. I can tell you this, that Iran’s got a lot of trouble,” Trump said on the White House lawn Wednesday morning.

According to The New York Times, Trump is inching closer to U.S. involvement in Iran, even though national intelligence disputes Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that Iran was weeks away from achieving nuclear capabilities. It’s the same claim Netanyahu has been falsely asserting for three decades, making him sound like the boy who cried wolf.

Meanwhile, Trump is feuding with Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who testified before Congress in March that Iran isn’t building a nuclear weapon and is now seemingly trying to deter Trump from going to war.

“I don’t care what she said,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Tuesday. “I think they were very close to having a weapon.”

And like Bush, who was goaded into invading Iraq by fellow bloodthirsty Republicans—like Vice President Dick Cheney, who falsely claimed that Iraq had "weapons of mass destruction”—Trump is being provoked by GOP hawks advocating for bombing Iran.

"He's very focused, very calm," warmonger Sen. Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, told CNN. "I feel like when he says no nukes for Iran, he means it. He gave them a chance for diplomacy. I think they made a miscalculation when it comes to President Trump."

And Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, told Margaret Brennan, host of CBS’ “Face the Nation,” that Iran is "very close to having enough pure weapons-grade uranium for several weapons."

He also said that Trump has "appropriately kept all options on the table."

This is terrifying because Trump has a history of believing the last person he speaks to on an issue. And given that the Iran hawks now have his ear, it looks like Trump may be swayed by their bloodlust and enter the United States into another aimless war.

"He’s easily manipulable, but this is on him. That is where we are now. He has engaged the U.S. in a new war in the Middle East, and he seems to be on the brink of going just all in," Matt Duss, executive vice president of the Center for International Policy, told the New Republic.

What’s more, Republicans and right-wing media are also painting people against U.S. involvement in the war as un-American—trying to pressure Trump’s base, which is uneasy about it, to fall in line. It echoes right-wing media tactics used to sell the public on the war in Iraq in 2002.

"This is good versus evil. You’re either a patriotic American who is going to get behind the president of the United States—the commander-in-chief—or you’re not," Fox News personality Mark Levin said Tuesday night.

Sound familiar?

As the saying goes: history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

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