When President Trump ordered B-2 stealth bombers to fly 37 hours from Missouri to the Middle East and back to drop bunker-busting bombs on Iran’s nuclear facilities last month, he wasn’t merely backing up Israel’s war or demonstrating superpower military competency. He was also rejecting the growing clamor from a visible faction of the MAGA coalition that sees the use of American power abroad as fundamentally illegitimate and a danger to the American people.

These voices had spent months issuing hysterical warnings about “World War III” if America became involved in the war. Candace Owens took a break from musing on the validity of blood libels to urge active-duty military personnel to desert rather than “die in a foreign land,” should war break out with Iran. The libertarian comedian Dave Smith, who endorsed the president in 2024, defended Iran against Israel’s military campaign, saying Tehran’s leadership “probably don’t feel that they have the option not to respond.” He called Trump “a war criminal who should spend his life in prison,” and said the president might be “the most impotent bitch of a leader imaginable.”