President Donald Trump’s loyal base has grown increasingly weary of the president’s war against Iran.
According to a new Politico poll, done in partnership with the Public First polling firm, self-identified supporters of Trump’s Make America Great Again movement have turned against the war in recent months.
In fact, MAGA’s support for the war has declined by 13 points since May.
Notably, pollsters framed their questions not in moral terms, but as a cost-benefit analysis.
For instance, the number of respondents who said the U.S. should continue the war even if it drives up costs in America has declined by 13 points since May, whereas those who say the U.S. should continue the war only if it does not drive up costs increased by eight percent.
Meanwhile, those who said the U.S. should not continue the war regardless of costs increased by seven percent.
Among non-MAGA Trump voters, the picture looks even more bleak.
Do you think Trump should continue war efforts in Iran?
Indeed, only 21 percent of voters who supported Trump in 2024 but do not consider themselves part of his decade-long movement consider the Iran war worth the effort regardless of its impact on costs. By contrast, 28 percent of those voters oppose the war regardless of costs.
Of course, by connecting war and inflation, the pollsters created an apples-and-oranges situation with regard to polling comparisons.
Nonetheless, diminished support for the war among Trump voters aligns with broader polling trends.
According to pollster Nate Silver, for instance, the latest aggregate of polling shows that Americans oppose the war by a margin of roughly 25 points.
In fact, an anonymous source characterized the Trump White House as “at a maximum level of frustration right now, and I was told by very senior people that the president is now fully aware that the only way to the victory that he wants is completely politically impossible. The American people just will not support the kind of escalation it would take at this point.”
Moreover, the casualties suffered this week will not help matters.
“We’ve got more dead Americans and a politically impossible situation,” the anonymous source added.
Meanwhile, White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales downplayed the polling.
“What matters most to the American people is having a Commander in Chief who takes bold action to keep them safe, which is exactly what President Trump is doing,” Wales said. “The President does not make national security decisions based on fluid opinion polls, but on the best interests of the American people.”
Trump echoed that sentiment.
“They won’t have any impact on me. I’m just here to do the right thing. I don’t view it as, gee, we’re having an election in a period of time. You know, everyone says, oh, I’m doing something before — no, the election — I can’t think about that having to do with this,” the president said on Tuesday.
Still, in a constitutional republic, a president can only ignore public opinion for so long.
“The American people quite simply do not get it, do not understand why we are in this war, and, yes, President Trump is king of the Republican Party,” Curt Mills, executive director of the American Conservative magazine, said. “Yes, the president can do a lot and has a lot of latitude with his own supporters, but kings are not invulnerable from political reality.”
As a sign of the public mood, an April 2024 tweet from Donald Trump Jr. began recirculating Wednesday.
“Remember when they said Trump would get us into a full-blown war with Iran? Times like these should make us all realize how lucky we were to have Trump, his strength and his resolve,” the president’s son wrote on the social media platform X seven months before his father won the 2024 election.
That post now has a Community Note attached to it: “Trump got us into a war with Iran.”
Remember when they said Trump would get us into a full-blown war with Iran?
Times like these should make us all realize how lucky we were to have Trump, his strength and his resolve.
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) April 13, 2024
Most alarming for the president, his own voters rated Trump equal to or worse than former Vice President Kamala Harris.
In fact, only 34 percent of Trump voters told Politico’s pollsters that gas prices would have increased more under a Democrat. By contrast, 35 percent of Trump voters said gas prices would have increased by the same amount. And a remarkable 20 percent of Trump voters said the president has made inflation worse than a Democrat would have.
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