Republicans aren’t uniting behind President Trump’s 3 a.m. Truth Social screed threatening military intervention in Iran.
An array of Trump supporters, critics, and former advisers came out to condemn the 79-year-old president’s Friday morning claim that the US was “locked and loaded” to rescue protestors if Iran “shots and violently kills [sic]” demonstrators calling for an end to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s 36-year rule in the country.
Chief among them was Trump’s former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, who criticized the president’s war-mongering from his podcast, War Room.
“Aren’t people teasing right now that Samantha Powers [sic] and Hillary Clinton must somehow have gotten invited to the Mar-a-Lago New Year’s Eve celebration?" asked Bannon, 72. “Because the president coming out today saying, ‘Hey, we’re locked and loaded,’ isn’t that straight from the Samantha Powers [sic] and Hillary Clinton playbook?”
Bannon was referring to UN ambassador Samantha Power and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who pushed for war with Libya during the Obama administration.
Bannon also said the U.S. should stay out of the Iran protests, arguing that Iran could handle its own business.
“You’ve got the opportunity right now for the people in Persia to overthrow these demons, right?” he said. “Let them get on with it. The Persians have been around a long time. They know how to do it, they did it in ’79.”
Bannon and other GOP critics of the threat believe Trump only made it after pressure from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu reportedly talked about a second round of strikes on Iran when he met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Dec. 29. Trump bombed Iran in June in an effort to take out the country’s nuclear capabilities.
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, a prominent Trump critic in Congress, argued the threat was about “the dollar, oil, and Israel.”
He enumerated his issues in an X post that read, “1) We have problems at home and shouldn’t be wasting military resources on another country’s internal affairs. 2) Military strikes on Iran require Congressional authorization. 3) This threat isn’t about freedom of speech in Iran; it’s about the dollar, oil, and Israel.”
Posting about Trump’s post and an interview in which Israeli cybersecurity billionaire Shlomo Kramer said “it’s time to limit the First Amendment,” former MAGA darling Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote, “An Israeli cybersecurity billionaire demanding to take away Americans guaranteed First Amendment Free Speech and President Trump threatening war and sending in troops to Iran is everything we voted against in ‘24.”
“The focus should be on tax dollars here at home and defending our God given freedoms and rights,” she added.
Right-wing podcaster and former Infowars host Owen Shroyer also bemoaned the Netanyahu angle to the threat.
“I was told Israel could handle this without us. Netanyahu comes to America again and now we’re threatening Iran,” he said.
Iran quickly fired back at Trump’s threat on Friday morning. Khameni advisor Ali Larijani wrote on X, “Trump should know that U.S. interference in this internal matter would mean destabilizing the entire region and destroying America’s interests. The American people should know — Trump started this adventurism. They should be mindful of their soldiers’ safety.”
