The China Mail - Trump's Iran war tests MAGA 'America First' creed

On the opening day of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in the Dallas suburbs, attendees framed the conflict not as a departure from Trump's worldview, but as its natural extension.

"Americans have been getting killed by groups being funded by Iran for years, many years," said Serena Devoogd, a 26-year-old conservative social media influencer from Oregon and an Army veteran.

"And so it was a long time coming -- this was something that needed to get done," she said.

Nevertheless, the latest US war in the Middle East, now approaching its fifth week, has exposed a fault line inside Trump's coalition between long-standing hawks and a populist wing shaped by years of rhetoric against "forever wars."

Polling shows approval of military action against Iran is slipping nationwide into negative territory.

The war has also drawn particularly searing rebukes from prominent voices in Trump's Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, such as former Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly.

But ordinary self-identified MAGA voters see things differently, backing the war by wide margins -- 92 percent and 81 percent in recent CBS and Politico polling.

- 'Knows what he's doing' -

On the ground in Texas, doubts were often muted -- or deferred entirely to Trump himself.

"I think he knows what he's doing and I support him... I trust him 100 percent," said Penny Crosby, 62, from Beaumont, Texas.

"I think he's protecting us, because he said they were maybe starting a nuclear bomb and stuff," Crosby told AFP. "So that could have been headed right for us."

The instinct to place faith in Trump over institutions surfaced repeatedly among supporters interviewed at CPAC, billed as the world's largest conservative gathering.

Diane Hartgraves, 79, also from Texas, said she supported the strikes partly out of concern for how Iran might use a nuclear weapon.

"I believe that Iran does not need the nuclear bomb because they're not smart with it -- they're reactive," she said.

For Hartgraves, any dissonance with Trump's campaign promises to avoid foreign wars was easily reconciled.

"I don't think it's a 'war' war yet," she said, calling the strikes "proactive, pre-emptive" action that still fit within an "America First" approach.

Over four days in Texas, speakers are expected to strike a similar tone -- unapologetically hawkish, but framed through the lens of deterrence and strength rather than open-ended war.

That message seems likely to resonate with many of the attendees interviewed by AFP, even as some acknowledged a tension with MAGA's isolationist past.

- Flickers of unease -

Still, there were hints of unease, particularly over how long the conflict might last.

Ray Myers, 81, from east of Dallas, backed Trump's actions but warned that support could fray if the conflict dragged on.

"When you start a war, there's a risk, and you never know what can happen," he said, warning that rising fuel costs back home could test patience.

"That's the barometer... the gas prices for the general public."

Outright opposition was rare, but not absent.

Razi Marshall, a 19-year-old business student at the University of Southern California and a member of the Young Republicans, said the war could become a costly and open-ended intervention.

"It doesn't help the United States in any way. It's actually been an abject failure," he said, warning that a push for regime change could lead to a ground war.

"This is the guy... who won because he was so anti-Iraq (war)," he told AFP. "And now he's doing the exact same thing with the exact same playbook."

For now, such dissent remains on the margins at gatherings like CPAC.

For most attendees, the calculation is simple: Trump deserves the benefit of the doubt and the war will be acceptable as long as it is fought quickly.

"I think it is America First," Hartgraves said. "When you don't want to be bombed? Yeah, I think that's America First."

H.Ng--ThChM