Trump faces MAGA backlash as online influencers shape the war narrative

Online influencers who helped build Trump’s 2024 coalition are trashing the war with a mix of isolationist and anti‑Israel themes. Read more at straitstimes.com.

HOUSTON – War is a hard sell in the best of times but US President Donald Trump has not even tried to sell his war on Iran.

Instead, as the fighting extends into the third week, Mr Trump has kept faith in his favoured communication style: randomly capped exclamations on social media coupled with sweeping, off-the-cuff remarks to the media. 

At all times, he emphasises American invincibility, but offers little clarity on why he launched the war at this time. Or when and how he plans to end it.

This abrupt and little-discussed offensive has set him up for heated battles with the largely liberal mainstream American media, which has reacted to the war with suspicion and caustic disapproval.

“We lament that Mr Trump is not treating war as the grave matter that it is,” The New York Times, the nation’s leading daily, said in an editorial on Feb 28, the first day of the joint US-Israeli military operation.

The conservative media is fractured, but only at the seams. The pro-establishment Fox News television channel, which has the largest cable TV audience, has largely stuck with the President. As has The Wall Street Journal, America’s second-largest read daily, which has 4.7 million subscribers compared with The New York Times’ 12.4 million.