Saturday, February 28, 2026

WAR WITH IRAN: FOUR LEGS GOOD, TWO LEGS BAD BETTER

As Dave Weigel reminds us, this was the Donald Trump campaign's messaging on the subject of peace and war in 2024:


You may think the Trump base is against war with Iran -- polling earlier this year said that only a minority of Republicans wanted this war. In a Quinnipiac poll in January, 35% of Republicans wanted to go to war with Iran, while 53% opposed war. A University of Maryland poll early this month also said that war with Iran had 35% GOP support (but opposition was only 25%).

As Trump has made it clear that being a good Republican means being in favor of whatever cockamamie war he wants to fight, GOP support for war with Iran has risen -- it's 58% in YouGov polling earlier this week.

Republican support for this will only increase now that it's underway. But overall support in that YouGov poll was only 27% (with opposition at 49%).

Because gerrymandering, the rural skew of the Senate, and a 2024 vote against the status quo have given Republicans more power than their numbers in the population would justify, once again we're doing something that's supported by the pro-Trump minority of the country and only the pro-Trump minority. (This is why Republicans in Congress will stand aside, as usual, and let Trump usurp their powers.)

Pro-war propagandists have their memes lined up. On X, the usually pro-Trump Andrew Tate declared opposition to the war:


In his replies, this meme shows up more than once:


Tate is told that Iranians are exultant:


And that this is a noble cause:


And here come the Trump-is-a-badass memes:


X's algorithm places these comments near the top, right under British racist Tommy Robinson's take:


You need to scroll down to see anti-war responses to Tate, and many of them are, unsurprisingly, anti-Semitic:


If any minds are being changed right now, or vague leanings reinforced, it's probably happening on social media. Musk's site will sell you right-wing propaganda one way or another. But it seems to be telling us that pro-Trump = pro-war, and 2024's MAGA principles have been replaced by the exact opposite, which are the new MAGA principles.

None of this should be surprising. Here's a Trump campaign ad that was released in 2023:


When it appeared, I wrote:
Yes, it attacks "the global elitists" who "send your kids to war." But it also stirs up anger at perceived foreign enemies. Eight seconds in, we see Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, China's Xi Jinping, a Mao poster, and people we're expected to read as jihadists. The narrator says:
Enemies and tyrants on opposite sides of the globe laugh at us.
At 1:16, we see a clip of Trump from his presidency; he's walking with a military escort. At 1:24, we see him saluting against a blue sky while military helicopters hover in formation overhead. A caption reads: DON'T MESS WITH US.


This is not Ron Paul-style isolationism. Trump's ad-makers know that the base doesn't want that.
I added:
... GOP voters were extremely pro-adventurism twenty years ago and are ready to embrace adventurism again, if it's sold by a president they like and if the enemy is someone they hate (or are carefully trained to hate).

I don't know if a reelected Trump would really get us into a war -- but if he does, his "isolationist" fan base will be 100% behind him. Maybe Tucker Carlson will be critical of the war on his podcast. It won't matter. Right-wing voters hate non-white foreigners too much to completely abandon militarism, just the way they did when the Bushes fought wars they unquestioningly supported. They want to believe Trump can give them "peace through strength" -- an America so intimidating that no one challenges us. But if that fails and there's war, they'll be there for it.
And here we are.

*****

And no, I don't believe this is meant as a distraction from Epstein.

This is not a distraction. Trump wants to be the most consequential person who ever lived, and he thinks he's within reach of that status.

— Steve M. (@stevemnomoremister.bsky.social) February 28, 2026 at 7:24 AM

This is the foreign policy equivalent of the ballroom or the arch. So what if it destabilizes the world and gets a lot of innocent people killed? It makes Trump feel special.
Posted by Steve M. at 10:39 AM

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