The MAGA coalition has always contained multitudes. Donald Trump won the last presidential election with a tent wide enough for nationalist hawks; neo-isolationists; free traders; anti-globalists; evangelicals who love Israel; and Groyper shitposters obsessed with the Jewish state.
For the first 13 months of the second Trump administration this new Trump party has hung together, more or less. But the second Iran war is tearing MAGA apart, and that has put Vice President J.D. Vance in a bind. Vance, who is usually impossible to keep off social media, went radio silent throughout the weekend.
On Monday evening he went on Fox News with Jesse Watters to explain that Donald Trump did not authorize Operation Epic Fury on behalf of the Iranian people or Israel’s safety. The president went to war to “make sure Iran would never have a nuclear weapon.” In other words, this was not the kind of endless war that Trump and Vance campaigned against in 2024.