Divided by the war, Maga and America First are threatening to rip apart Trump’s presidency

Stopped by reporters in the members’ car park of the US Capitol, the Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert was blunt about the spiralling cost of the war with Iran.

“I am so tired of sending money elsewhere,” she said. “I’m tired of the industrial war complex getting all our hard-earned tax dollars. I have folks in Colorado who can’t afford to live. We need America First policies right now… We’ve got to get our act together.”

Boebert was until recently a diehard Trump loyalist. Not any more. Asked if the US should get out of Iran, she shot back over her shoulder: “That’s up to the president.”

Her comments underscore growing dissent among congressional Republicans as the impact of the war is felt at petrol pumps and in supermarkets across America. With a global oil crisis as midterm elections approach and thousands of US troops head to the Middle East, Trump’s Maga coalition is fracturing.

Trump’s war now threatens to upend the race to succeed him. As the crisis deepens, vice-president JD Vance and secretary of state Marco Rubio, favourites for the Republican presidential nomination in 2028, have stood beside the president to defend a conflict that is already deeply unpopular with voters.

In bars and restaurants around Washington, Republican unease is swelling. “The gossip is: “Fuck me, I wish we weren’t doing this. Fuck me, there was no planning. Fuck me, when are we getting out?” said Raheem Kassam, a Trump-world ­operative and co-owner of Butterworth’s, the Capitol Hill ­restaurant that is a favourite hangout for the Maga crowd in DC.

“And I’m talking about administration staff, I’m talking about Hill staff. Not a single person has tried to make the case to me that this was a good idea. Not one.”

Simmering unrest burst into the open  this week when Joe Kent, Trump’s director of the National Counterterrorism Center, announced his resignation in protest at the war. In a bombshell letter posted on X, Kent claimed that Trump had been “deceived” by Israel into abandoning his America First doctrine and rushing into a war “that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of American lives”.

“Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” Kent said.

Blindsided bythe resignation, the White House scrambled to discredit Kent. Officials briefed that he was “a known leaker” who was cut out of Iran war planning. Trump attempted to claim that the man he appointed to a senior counterterrorism post was “always… weak on security”.

Kent was no closet dove. A former Green Beret and Maga diehard, he has previously embraced pro-Trump conspiracy theories, including the claim that the FBI orchestrated the January 6 attack on the Capitol in 2021.

Even before Kent’s departure, prominent rightwing media personalities were already in open revolt. Claims that Trump was strong-armed into war by Israel has fuelled an ugly row between conservative podcasters that has strayed into naked antisemitism and amplified rifts in the Republican party and the rightwing media ecosystem.

The war has prompted startling defections. Joe Rogan, the influential podcast host who endorsed Trump in 2024, said Americans feel “betrayed” by the president, who won re-election on a promise to end US involvement in needless foreign wars.

Stewart Rhodes, leader of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, whose jail sentence for his role in the January 6 riot was commuted by Trump, has announced that he is “no longer Maga”. Carrie Prejean Boller, a conservative influencer and former Trump appointee, declared simply: “Maga is dead.”

Republican operatives have sought to dismiss the rift as opportunism by rightwing personalities pandering to the party’s lunatic online fringe. Others fear that a fundamental schism is opening up as the political right contemplates life after Trump, with an America First movement emerging in opposition to Maga and unchecked US support for Israel. “If you want to bet on the future of the Republican party… you would side with the isolationists,” the conservative podcast host Megyn Kelly said last week. “Because there is not a person under the age of 40 who’s a voting Republican who’s in favour of this.”

So far a majority of Trump’s base is holding firm. A Politico poll released yesterday found that 81% of self-identified Maga voters still back the war. But among swing voters who shifted to the right in 2024 and will decide the midterms, the GOP is haemorrhaging support.

“A generational coalition squandered,” conservative activist Mike Cernovich lamented on X  this week.

Even among Maga loyalists, polls suggest that support could crumble if the war drags on, the economic cost grows and more US lives are lost.

“There’s very little for people to judge right now. What they will be judging is the fact that gas prices yesterday hit Biden-level highs. The housing market is collapsing. Taxes will go up, inflation will go up,” Kassam said. “These are basic economic facts that will become basic economic realities to people in the next two months.”

Republican strategists privately despair at the chaotic messaging from the administration. White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett sought to play down fears of economic disaster last week before admitting the war “would hurt consumers”.

Trump’s own mixed messages, declaring victory as oil prices surge, have fuelled concerns that the war on Iran is slipping beyond his control.

“Their leaders are all gone. We’re having a hard time. We want to talk to them and there’s nobody to talk to,” Trump said of the Iranian regime at a White House event yesterday.

“We have nobody to talk to,” the president trailed off. “And you know what? We like it that way.”

With the White House under friendly fire from rightwing critics, Trump’s war is complicating life for those vying to replace him. Vance, an Iraq war veteran and avowed isolationist, has now been forced to defend the conflict.

Critics pounced when Vance vanished from public view in the early days of the war. Strategic leaks to the press that the vice-president was sceptical about military action only fuelled claims that he was cravenly signalling to the America First crowd without publicly crossing Trump.

“Where the fuck is this guy? The most online vice-president in history, throwing himself in front of the cameras… getting ready for ’28. Where did he go?” far-right podcaster Nick Fuentes, a n outspoken critic of Vance, told listeners. “Have you ever noticed that whenever the Trump administration totally shits the bed… JD is nowhere to be seen?”

The White House  has brushed off the “fake narrative” that Vance has distanced himself from the Iran campaign, insisting that “the entire administration is fully aligned” on the war.

One Maga consultant close to the administration said that Vance’s absence “has been noticed”, however.

“If the media is saying: ‘Where’s JD Vance? He’s not standing with Trump on this. Where’s JD?’, Trump notices that,” this person said. “And at that point, the president’s perception becomes reality… Get your rear end out onstage a bit more prominently.”

Vance duly resurfaced alongside Trump in the Oval Office this week, dismissing questions about his U-turn on military action and reaffirming his faith in the president “to get the job done”.

Addressing Kent’s resignation at an event in Michigan, Vance said it was “one thing to have a disagreement of opinion” but stressed that “whatever your view”, Trump had the final word. “If you are on the team and you can’t help implement the decisions of his administration… then it’s a good thing for you to resign,” he said in comments that were keenly watched.

Vance’s apparent caution has contrasted with the prominence of Rubio. The secretary of state has been a public face of the interventions in Venezuela and Iran, his reputation as Trump’s most capable strategist reviving talk of him as a future president.

Trump has reportedly taken to asking White House visitors if they favour Vance or Rubio to top the GOP ticket in 2028. But the war with Iran has placed both men in a bind that could hurt their presidential ambitions as the Maga coalition splinters.

“Without a clear signal from the president, Vance remains the frontrunner,” the Maga consultant said. “But the war could shake up the 2028 race. We won’t know who’s made the smarter bet until this is over.”

Photograph by Elizabeth Frantz-Pool/Getty Images, Nathan Howard/Getty Images