When The Federalist — a publication whose editorial sympathies run as close to MAGA as any outlet in American media — publishes a piece telling the president he is failing to prepare the country for what comes next, the political ground beneath the war has shifted. John Daniel Davidson’s essay is not a critique from the antiwar left or the foreign policy establishment. It is a warning from inside the tent: Trump cannot declare victory and walk away from Iran, and pretending otherwise is destroying his credibility with the very base that put him in office.
The argument is simple. The Strait of Hormuz is shut. Oil tankers are burning. Iran is wounded but fighting. And every day Trump tells Americans the war is “pretty much over” while Iranian attack boats strike commercial shipping in Iraqi waters, the gap between rhetoric and reality widens into a credibility chasm that no social media post can bridge. “If the message is that the Iran war will be a walk in the park,” Davidson writes, “and it turns out that major, months-long operations are going to be required, that will erode support for the war faster than anything.”
The Base Is Restless
The fracture within the MAGA coalition over Iran has been the war’s most underreported story. Before the first bombs fell, Trump’s political identity was built on a single foreign policy promise: no more forever wars. He ran against the Iraq invasion, mocked neoconservatives, and told rally crowds he would bring troops home. That promise was central to his appeal among the working-class voters and populist-right commentators who form his most passionate constituency.
The war has put that coalition under severe strain. Steve Bannon called it “Netanyahu’s war” and said American blood should not be spilled for Israeli interests. Tucker Carlson warned his audience that “the same people who lied us into Iraq are lying us into Iran.” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, once among Trump’s fiercest defenders, said the operation “was not what we voted for.” Representative Thomas Massie’s resolution to end hostilities won 212 House votes — seven short of a majority, but far more than the White House expected.
A recent AP-NORC poll found that only 24% of Americans said Trump had explained the war’s goals clearly. Among his own voters, the numbers were only marginally better. Republican support for the war has held in the mid-50s — a number that would be unremarkable for a Democratic president but is startlingly low for a Republican commander-in-chief addressing his own base during the opening weeks of a military campaign. A YouGov survey found that 42% of Republicans said they would be less likely to support the operation if it led to US troops being killed or injured. Seven have been killed. Roughly 150 have been wounded.
The economic pain is landing hardest in Trump country. Gas prices have jumped over 50 cents a gallon in two weeks. Farmers in the Midwest — a core MAGA constituency — are watching fertilizer costs spike as Gulf shipping disruptions ripple through agricultural supply chains. Senator Rand Paul said he is hearing from Kentucky farmers “impacted by rising oil costs that stem from the war” and has vowed to oppose any supplemental funding.
The Hormuz Problem Has No Easy Answer
Davidson’s central argument — that the war cannot end until the Strait of Hormuz reopens — cuts to the heart of the administration’s strategic failure. The Pentagon and National Security Council significantly underestimated Iran’s willingness to shut down the waterway. Marine traffic has collapsed from 129 daily transits to single digits. Two oil tankers were attacked in Iraqi waters on Wednesday, extending the maritime campaign beyond the strait itself.
Trump has ordered the largest-ever release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve — 172 million barrels — and announced the US Development Finance Corporation would offer political risk insurance to vessels transiting the Gulf. But the Navy has not yet begun escort operations, and officials say it may not be ready for weeks. Retired Navy Captain Lawrence Brennan told CNN: “You can’t have victory if you can’t use the Strait of Hormuz. This is going to go on far longer than any of us hope.”
The options for reopening the strait are all unappealing. Mine countermeasures are time-consuming and dangerous — and the US Navy’s dedicated minesweeping fleet has shrunk to its smallest size in decades. Escort convoys would require sustained naval commitments that stretch an already overstretched fleet. And any military operation near Iran’s southern coast risks escalation with IRGC fast-attack boats, anti-ship missiles, and the underwater drones that have already struck tankers in Iraqi territorial waters. Jennifer Kavanagh of Defense Priorities framed the dilemma: “Even if you get it open now, what keeps it open?”
The Conversation Trump Won’t Have
What Davidson is really asking for — and what makes his essay significant — is something no president enjoys doing: telling the public that a war is harder, longer, and more expensive than advertised. He wants Trump to “begin a concerted and coordinated effort to assuage Americans’ concerns about getting bogged down in Iran” and to define “what is the end-state for Iran that we want.”
That conversation has not happened. In two weeks of war, Trump has not delivered a prime-time address to the nation. He has not asked Congress for authorization. He has not presented a theory of victory beyond “we’ve won” and “we haven’t won enough.” His defense secretary renamed the Pentagon the “Department of War” and dismissed questions about civilian casualties as liberal media bias. The White House posted a video splicing real airstrike footage with Call of Duty killstreak animations.
Davidson frames the stakes in terms Trump should understand: political survival. “Support for any overseas military action often depends on managing Americans’ expectations.” If the gap between what the president promises and what the war delivers continues to widen, the erosion of support will come not from Democrats — who already oppose the war — but from the populist-right voters who believed Trump when he said he would never do this.
The deepest irony is that the advice Davidson offers — be honest, prepare the public, define victory, communicate clearly — is advice Trump is constitutionally incapable of following. His entire political persona is built on projecting dominance, never admitting difficulty, and treating any acknowledgment of complexity as weakness. That approach works in real estate negotiations and cable news feuds. In war, it produces the precise outcome Davidson warns against: a president who has promised a quick win discovering that wars have their own logic, their own timeline, and their own terrible arithmetic — none of which respond to declarations of victory on Truth Social.
Original analysis inspired by John Daniel Davidson from The Federalist. Additional research and verification conducted through multiple sources.
By ThinkTanksMonitor
