Since the Iran war began, it’s been a hell of a roller coaster for MAGA:
- From the feeling that the strikes will be short and decisive, the certainty is now that it is not sure when it will end.
- From the feeling they know why, to the feeling they have no idea.
- Initially they had been assured that the war would only be fought from the air. After a few days, there was the possibility of ground troops, and a few later they were told thousands of marines were on their way to the hot zone. Later, Trump said there would be no troops on the ground… and soon the opposite will be whispered in MAGA ears.
Under the Trump presidency, life for MAGA people is like the president they cheerfully voted for:
- without minimal certainties
- minimal seriousness
- The lies are flowing
- Promises are given, serenely, and taken back
- The bill always falls on the bitter
As the war approaches the three week mark, it seems like it might unfortunately stretch on, which us beginning to dig into the foundation of Trump’s universe, not just the regime in Tehran.
In the MAGA world, the cracks have widened with a key moment being the sensational “defection” of the head of American counterterrorism, Joe Kent.
This resignation is sensational, for these reasons:
- It is a high-ranking official, with access to the most sensitive classified information. And based on the secret data he had access to, he says that the president lied to the nation and was manipulated by a foreign actor: Iran did not pose an imminent threat to the United States, and Israel drew the United States into the war.
- The official had been appointed by Donald Trump, and was an official who was perfectly aligned with the MAGA (the one preached by Trump during the campaign).
- Finally, he is a character has taken the step towards publicly denouncing Trump (he published an open letter, gave a long interview to Tucker Carlson, in 24 hours). At the same time, Joe Kent expresses himself coherently and, moreover, with enough charisma to have a chance of catching public attention enough to create an eventual MAGA 2.0 project, competing against the original one. It’s hard to believe that it was just an accident that Tucker Carlson offered a springboard to Joe Kent. The same Tucker Carson was asked the other day, by The Economist if he “tries to shape the path or direction of the United States.” His reply was curt but suggestive: “As much as I can.”
Trump and his original MAGA project risk major unrest because of Joe Kent and the possibilities that his gesture of revolt brings.
What Kent is now saying and what he believes are shared precisely by key members of Donald Trump’s team.
There are three landmarks: Israel’s role, the threat posed by Iran, wars that America must not fight. Let’s consider three names: Rubio, Gabbard, Vance.
- Joe Kent confirmed what Secretary of State Marco Rubio initially said in the first days of the war. Kent said: “It is clear that we started this war because of pressure from Israel and its influential American lobby.” Marco Rubio initially stated: “We knew that Israel would take action. We knew that this would precipitate an attack on American forces, and we knew that if we did not preemptively attack them before they launched these attacks, we would suffer much greater losses.”
- Joe Kent confirmed what Tulsi Gabbard, the coordinator of US intelligence, also said: “Since then (the June 2025 bombings), there have been no efforts (on Iran’s part) to try to rebuild its (uranium) enrichment capacity.”
- Joe Kent has a belief that America should not fight wars like Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and now Iran. As a military man, Kent spent five years in the long and bloody war in Iraq and says today that he understood from that that the U.S. leaders of the time had acted foolishly. Trump’s vice president, J.D. Vance, has always campaigned with the same conviction as Kent. In 2024, for example, Vance said: “Trump’s best foreign policy? Let no war start.” It should be noted that several of Vance’s public poses have left a strong impression that the war in Iran is tearing him apart: at one end, it’s a conflict he hates most, and he has to defend the conflict with undisguised conviction as Trump’s second-in-command.
This communion of ideas and information between Joe Kent, a fresh “defector” from the president’s team, and the three officials, who remain with the president expose Trump as a Michelangelo nude, and on the other hand suggest that there is a potential for MAGA to split.
As America’s war with Iran takes on more of the features that automatically invite comparisons to the famous endless wars, the MAGA world is getting closer to reshuffling cards for the 2028 presidential elections.
Until now, it seemed the ground was adequately prepared for a Vance-Rubio competition (I know, Rubio said he attack Vance, but I also know that Rubio once considered Trump a crook, vulgar, unprepared, unstable, a danger, a disgrace, and then jumped onto Trump’s boat).
The war in Iran, in which Trump is sinking like a swamp, creates a new framework for the emergence of new MAGA figures to challenge the pedestal of Vance and Rubio.
They are already strongly delegitimized by the war in Iran, because by justifying it and being accomplices, they risk appearing to lick today where they once spit. And Joe Kent’s appearance on the scene, who can generate an entire phenomenon, will only complicate their situation.
Joe Kent who, like Tucker Carlson, dropped some “bombs” in the direction of Israel: He suggested that Israel was not necessarily a stranger to the murder of Charlie Kirk, in his campaign to persuade Trump to attack Iran. This needs to be investigated more deeply.
In the scenario of a MAGA split, with Iran the catalysis, the figure of President Trump will become the perfect electoral nutrient, like the whale, when it dies, feeds the plankton.
The game is increasingly open, and the “whale” is enough: an “epic” struggle may follow between the pro-Israel camp around Trump and the anti-Semitic core inside MAGA; between MAGA opportunists and MAGA purists. Maybe the MAGA “deep state”, installed by Trump, will turn against him.
If so, this could relaunch the race for Trump’s succession within MAGA.
The mistake the US made in Ukraine increases the price it pays in Iran
