Trump's 'America First' campaign battle cry gives way to military strikes abroad

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump, whose fierce denunciation of military adventurism abroad fueled his unlikely rise to the top of the Republican Party, risks becoming ensnared by that very type of conflict.

The U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran Saturday cemented Trump's decade-long transformation from a candidate who in 2016 called the Iraq War a “big, fat mistake" to a president warning Americans to prepare for potential casualties overseas and encouraging Iranians to “seize control of your destiny.” The strikes were also at odds with Trump's warnings during the 2024 campaign that his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, was surrounded by “war hawks” eager to send troops overseas.

Trump justified the action as necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons or developing missiles capable of reaching the US, less than a year after he said airstrikes “obliterated” their capability. US intelligence has also said Iran's weapons capability was substantially degraded.

For Trump, memories of the false pretenses underlying the Iraq War could lead to pressure to prove his assertion that Iran's weapons production posed an imminent threat to Americans. And for Republicans already facing a challenging election year weighed down by economic anxiety, the shift could force a reassessment of how the attacks fit into the “America First,” isolationist-leaning movement the party has embraced during the Trump era.

While Trump might benefit from an early rally-around-the-flag effect, that could be hard to sustain for weeks and months, if not longer, a far different scenario from the swift effort to remove Nicolás Maduro from power earlier this year in Venezuela.

Success on day one is one thing. The days after are inherently unpredictable.

“The question is whether Iran’s goal is simply to outlast America and whether Trump has strategic attention deficit disorder, which will allow the Iranians to rise from the ashes and claim victory,” said Michael Rubin, a historian at the American Enterprise Institute who worked as a staff adviser on Iran and Iraq at the Pentagon from 2002 to 2004.

Many Republicans get behind Trump

Many Republicans were quick to line up behind the president, including Texas Sen. John Cornyn and state attorney general Ken Paxton, who are fighting a competitive Senate primary election on Tuesday.

“Hopefully lives will not be lost needlessly, but this always entails risk,” Cornyn said Saturday at a campaign stop near Houston. "But we know that Iran will not stop unless the United States and our allies stop them.”

Others, like Sen. Todd Young of Indiana, praised the military and were critical of Iran while noting that Americans will have questions that “must be answered.”

And there was outright opposition from some who have long criticized overseas entanglements, including Sen. Rand Paul, the Republican of Kentucky, who lamented the start of “another preemptive war.” Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican who was once a close Trump ally, rejected the president's warning of Iran's nuclear capabilities.

“It’s always a lie and it’s always America Last,” she wrote online. “But it feels like the worst betrayal this time because it comes from the very man and the admin who we all believed was different.”

Little advance preparation for Americans

The administration did little in advance to prepare Americans for such a dramatic action.

Vice President JD Vance told The Washington Post this week there was “no chance” that the U.S. would become involved in a drawn-out war as it did in Iraq. During his State of the Union speech on Tuesday, Trump dedicated just a few lines to Iran, arguing the country and its proxies have “spread nothing but terrorism, death and hate."

That stands in stark contrast to the lengthy runup to the Iraq War.

President George W. Bush, for example, named Iraq as a member of the so-called axis of evil in January 2002. Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell delivered a now-infamous speech to the United Nations in February 2003, making the case for war based on the inaccurate assertion that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The invasion, which ultimately dominated Bush's second term, didn't begin until March 2003.

“We just have to be honest that there is a sense that this was not sold to the American public sufficiently,” Andrew Kolvet said Saturday on “The Charlie Kirk Show,” an online program founded by the late conservative activist who was close to Trump. “Perhaps there will be an opportunity on the backend of this.”

Kolvet was willing, however, to give Trump leeway, noting these are the types of challenging decisions presidents are entrusted with.

“President Trump has earned a big, long leash,” he said. “Not an unlimited one. But a very long one to make tough decisions.”

Polling suggests that many Americans share Trump's concerns about Iran's nuclear capabilities, even if they're less confident in the president's response. About half of U.S. adults were “extremely” or “very” concerned that Iran’s nuclear program poses a direct threat to the U.S., according to a poll this month from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Most Americans, 61%, said Iran is an “enemy” of the U.S., which is up slightly from a Pearson Institute/AP-NORC poll conducted in September 2023. But their confidence in the president’s judgment when it comes to relationships with adversaries and the use of military force abroad is low, the new poll shows, with only about 3 in 10 Americans saying they have “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of trust in Trump.

Democrats sense an opening

Democrats sense a political opening on the issue. In Maine, Gov. Janet Mills and Graham Platner are competing for the Democratic nomination to challenge incumbent Sen. Susan Collins in the fall. They both issued statements on Saturday pressing Collins, the only Republican on the ballot this year in a state won by Harris, to step up her oversight of the administration.

Collins was one of three Senate Republicans who backed an unsuccessful push last month for a war powers resolution that would have limited Trump's ability to conduct further attacks on Venezuela. Democrats said Saturday they would quickly seek a vote on a similar proposal for Iran.

“If we’ve started a war where we begin to lose American lives, that starts changing the political calculus,” said Republican strategist Ron Bonjean.

But he noted that Democrats have vulnerabilities of their own, particularly if there's a domestic terror attack while the Department of Homeland Security is closed as they demand changes to how immigration operations are conducted.

For now, Trump isn't offering much of a detailed strategy on what comes next. In a social media post Saturday evening, he said bombings could continue “as long as necessary.”