The Republican Identity Crisis Over the Iran War

The Daily

The New York Times

News, Daily News

4.3 • 107.6K Ratings

🗓️ 23 March 2026

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The war in Iran has created strong divisions among President Trump’s supporters. An anti-interventionist wing of the Republican coalition and some senior administration officials partial to Mr. Trump’s criticism of long overseas conflicts have quickly become uneasy about the war, which has shown no immediate signs of ending. Robert Draper, a domestic politics journalist for The New York Times based in Washington, discusses Mr. Trump’s justification for the war and whether he is explicitly violating a pact he made with his base not to start another.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the New York Times, I'm Natalie Kittrowef. This is the Daily.
0:09.0	From the moment President Trump barreled into American politics, one of his central messages
0:16.2	that resonated most with voters was his promise to keep the country out of endless wars.
0:23.6	But now, as the war in Iran enters its fourth week, leading figures on the right are
0:29.7	questioning whether Trump may have gotten the U.S. into exactly the sort of complex and costly
0:35.6	conflict he railed against for so long.
0:39.4	Today, we talked to my colleague Robert Draper about Trump's political evolution on the question of war
0:45.3	and the identity crisis it's caused for the Republican Party.
0:53.5	Music It's Monday, March 23rd.
1:05.9	Okay, Robert, you cover the right, and you functioned for us here at the Daily as our guide, really, to all the complexities of Trump and his party.
1:15.6	And right now seems to be a moment of reckoning within that exact group over the war in Iran, specifically the justification for it, and whether Trump is explicitly violating a pact that he made with his base of not starting another war.
1:33.7	So what is the level of tension that you're seeing right now inside the MAGA movement?
1:41.0	It's really a mess.
1:42.0	You have people who are still steadfast in their support for what the
1:46.6	administration is doing. There are an awful lot of people, however, and I'm talking not only about
1:51.2	the right-wing influencer ecosystem, but also all the way down to voters who are saying,
1:58.0	is this what we voted for? We thought no wars.
2:01.7	We thought America first.
2:03.3	What are we doing over there?
2:04.7	What's this about $200 billion that Trump now wants from Congress to appropriate?
2:10.1	Where was $200 billion when I wanted to buy a home?
2:13.2	It has really, really become a problematic matter for the Trump administration.
	...

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