For the MAGA faithful, Trump's Iran strikes are all about ‘America first'
They've argued that Trump, who campaigned on keeping the nation out of foreign wars, shouldn't have involved the United States in the regional fight between Israel and Iran.
"Only 6 months in and we are back into foreign wars, regime change, and world war 3,' U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, D-Ga., posted to X. 'It feels like a complete bait and switch to please the neocons, warmongers, military industrial complex contracts, and neocon tv personalities that MAGA (Make America Great Again) hates and who were NEVER TRUMPERS!'
But for the hardcore faithful who put the Republican in the White House last fall, there's no conflict between Trump's foreign policy power play and his self-professed 'America First Agenda.'
That's the story that ABC News got when it talked to a half-dozen of Trump's most fervent supporters.
"I am not concerned about a long-term war, because President Trump will not put up with it,' Stephen Caraway, 40, of Ohio, told ABC News.
Carraway told ABC News that he was 'really proud of our military and thankful that the operation was a success and everyone is safe.'
Ditto for Andre Boccaccio, a 19-year-old Trump backer from Arizona.
He told ABC News that 'I think you can also see it as putting our military interests and our foreign assets and strategic interests first as well.'
New polling, however, shows that not all Americans feel the same way.
Nearly 8 in 10 respondents to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on Monday said they were worried that Iran might target U.S. civilians in response to the airstrikes. And 84% said they were worried about the conflict.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One as he headed to the NATO summit in Brussels, Trump, who had earlier lashed out at Iran and Israel over a seemingly collapsed ceasefire, said he did not want to see regime change in Iran.
'No. If there was, there was, but no, I don't want it. I'd like to see everything calm down as quickly as possible,' Trump said, according to the BBC, adding that 'regime change takes chaos, and ideally we don't want to see so much chaos.'
Elana Pritchard, a 43-year-old Texan, meanwhile, told ABC News she saw the weekend strikes as a preventative measure.
'I really do think that he was just throwing a big punch,' she said, according to ABC News. 'They were trying to preemptively stop what could have been more of an escalating crisis between Iran and Israel, which probably would have dragged the United States into the conflict anyway.'
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