Trump's Iran war tests MAGA movement's 'America First' creed

At large right-wing CPAC convention in Texas, many attendees put their faith in US president, despite antiwar rhetoric from right-wing podcasters and dissent from GOP lawmakers

AFP — For a decade or more, “America First” has been a rallying cry against foreign wars. But as American bombs fall on Iran, many of US President Donald Trump’s supporters are embracing a muscular campaign abroad — and insisting it still fits the doctrine.

On the opening day of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in the Dallas suburbs, billed as the world’s largest conservative gathering, attendees framed the conflict not as a departure from Trump’s worldview, but as its natural extension.

“Americans have been getting killed by groups being funded by Iran for years, many years,” said Serena Devoogd, a 26-year-old conservative social media influencer from Oregon and an Army veteran.

“And so it was a long time coming — this was something that needed to get done,” she said.

Nevertheless, the latest US war in the Middle East, now approaching its fifth week, has exposed a fault line inside Trump’s coalition between long-standing hawks and a populist wing shaped by years of rhetoric against “forever wars.”

Polling shows approval of military action against Iran is slipping nationwide into negative territory.

Tucker Carlson (left) speaks at a memorial for Charlie Kirk, September 21, 2025, in Glendale, Arizona. (AP/Ross D. Franklin); Megyn Kelly at the Capitol in Washington, DC, January 14, 2025. (AP/Alex Brandon)

The war has also drawn particularly searing rebukes from prominent voices in Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, such as former Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly. Some Republican lawmakers have voiced notes of dissent as well.

But ordinary self-identified MAGA voters see things differently, backing the war by wide margins — 92 percent and 81% in recent CBS and Politico polling.

‘He knows what he’s doing’

On the ground in Texas, doubts were often muted — or deferred entirely to Trump himself.

A vendor wearing Trump and MAGA paraphernalia is pictured at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center in Grapevine, Texas, on March 25, 2026. (Leandro Lozada / AFP)

“I think he knows what he’s doing and I support him… I trust him 100%,” said Penny Crosby, 62, from Beaumont, Texas.

“I think he’s protecting us, because he said they were maybe starting a nuclear bomb and stuff,” Crosby told AFP. “So that could have been headed right for us.”

The instinct to place faith in Trump over institutions surfaced repeatedly among supporters interviewed at CPAC.

Supporters of the war in Iran arrive at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Grapevine, Texas, Wednesday, March 25, 2026, as the annual gathering of thousands of conservatives from around the country and overseas begins. (AP/Thomas Beaumont)

Diane Hartgraves, 79, also from Texas, said she supported the strikes partly out of concern for how Iran might use a nuclear weapon.

“I believe that Iran does not need the nuclear bomb because they’re not smart with it — they’re reactive,” she said.

For Hartgraves, any dissonance with Trump’s campaign promises to avoid foreign wars was easily reconciled.

“I don’t think it’s a ‘war’ war yet,” she said, calling the strikes “proactive, pre-emptive” actions that still fit within an “America First” approach.

Over four days in Texas, speakers are expected to strike a similar tone — unapologetically hawkish, but framed through the lens of deterrence and strength rather than open-ended war.

President Donald Trump salutes as an Army carry team moves a flag-draped transfer case with the remains of Sgt. Declan Coady, 20, of West Des Moines, Iowa, who was killed in a drone strike at a command center in Kuwait, during a casualty return, March 7, 2026, at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware (AP/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

That message seems likely to resonate with many of the attendees interviewed by AFP, even as some acknowledged a tension with MAGA’s isolationist past.

Flickers of unease

Still, there were hints of unease, particularly over how long the conflict might last.

Ray Myers, 81, from east of Dallas, backed Trump’s actions but warned that support could fray if the conflict dragged on.

“When you start a war, there’s a risk, and you never know what can happen,” he said, warning that rising fuel costs back home could test patience.

“That’s the barometer… the gas prices for the general public.”

Gas prices are displayed at a gas station in Wheeling, Ill., Sunday, March 22, 2026. (AP/Nam Y. Huh)

Outright opposition was rare, but not absent.

Razi Marshall, a 19-year-old business student at the University of Southern California and a member of the Young Republicans, said the war could become a costly and open-ended intervention.

“It doesn’t help the United States in any way. It’s actually been an abject failure,” he said, warning that a push for regime change could lead to a ground war.

“This is the guy… who won because he was so anti-Iraq [war],” he told AFP. “And now he’s doing the exact same thing with the exact same playbook.”

An attendee wears a Persians for Trump shirt at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center, in Grapevine, Texas, on March 25, 2026. (Leandro Lozada / AFP)

For now, such dissent remains on the margins at gatherings like CPAC.

For most attendees, the calculation is simple: Trump deserves the benefit of the doubt and the war will be acceptable as long as it is fought quickly.

“I think it is America First,” Hartgraves said. “When you don’t want to be bombed? Yeah, I think that’s America First.”