MAGA's narrative warfare gets all mixed up by Rupert Murdoch

It’s an unnerving feeling to find myself in agreement with Tucker Carlson, but it’s not unfamiliar. By my count, the last time was 2003 and the U.S. was embroiled in a Middle East quagmire. “I supported the war,” the conservative commentator, who was then chasing mainstream media success in a perch at CNN, told the New York Times of the 2002 US-led invasion of Iraq, “and I now feel foolish.” This time around, the U.S. is fully backing an unprovoked Israeli attack on Iran. And Fox News, Carlson said this week of his former employer, “is trying to lay the groundwork for American intervention.”

It’s how Donald Trump, a man who pledged no new wars on the campaign trail, has ended up on the verge of entering a new war less than six months into his presidency. According to reports, Trump’s heavy consumption of Fox News coverage is increasing his appetite for direct military engagement. Since my own obsession with Fox News might rival Trump’s, I've seen how the network’s one-sided coverage has unfolded from the beginning.

Twenty-two years ago, Carlson’s decision to break with the George W. Bush administration had ramifications. “I was absolutely hated for that by people I knew well and worked with and was friends with,” the popular right-wing media personality told Vox. At the time, the war drums resounded from conservative to mainstream media alike. In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, neocons in favor of military interventions dominated the Republican Party. Years later, even as the right was united in blasting former President Barack Obama’s 2015 deal with Iran, Carlson maintained his opposition to violent conflict. (Trump withdrew the U.S. from the deal during his first term.)

Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, for which Carlson has long been a leading booster, has since swayed the GOP into a “no endless wars” rhetorical stance, but it seems to be proving little match against entrenched bipartisan, pro-Israel hawks.

The week before Israel's attack, Trump was pushing diplomacy ahead of another round of planned denuclearization talks in Oman. Then, late on Thursday, June 12, Israel started bombing Iran. The following Sunday, Trump said that “it’s possible” the U.S. could get involved in Israel’s ongoing offensive against Iran. By the next day he was warning the roughly 10 million residents of Tehran, Iran's capital, to flee in the dead of night. In the meantime, the U.S. began shifting its military resources in the Middle East. On Wednesday, June 18, in true showman fashion, Trump ramped up the suspense of what actions the U.S. might take. “You don’t know that I’m going to even do it. I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do.” Yesterday he was more conciliatory, saying he would make a decision within two weeks.

From the outset, MAGA media has been split on the administration’s response. Rupert Murdoch, whose Fox News has long served as a key amplifier of Trump’s messages, has “privately complained to confidants about [Middle East envoy Steve] Witkoff’s efforts [to broker a nuclear deal],” Politico reported. Murdoch’s media outlets, which also includes the Wall Street Journal, have strongly supported Israel during a period of intense global scrutiny and spent the past week uncritically parroting the country’s claims that they initiated this conflict because Iran was on the brink of developing a nuclear weapon.

“These are people who chant ‘Death to America.’ They’ve tried to assassinate President Trump twice,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Fox News’ Bret Baier.

“You just said Iran tried to assassinate President Trump twice,” Baier noted. “Do you have intel that the assassination attempts on President Trump were directly from Iran?”

“Through proxies, yes, through their intel, yes, they want to kill him,” Netanyahu again asserted, unchallenged.

As CNN highlighted this week, Netanyahu has made the same case about Iran for decades.

CNN put together a collection of clips of Netanyahu warning Iran is close to a nuclear weapon going back to 1996 pic.twitter.com/Pt2Bmys994

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 18, 2025

When he testified to Congress in 2002, Netanyahu offered a strikingly similar warning — but about a different regime. “There is no question whatsoever that Saddam [Hussein] is seeking, is working, is advancing towards the development of nuclear weapons… If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region.”

At the time, Fox News championed Netanyahu’s remarks and was the head cheerleader for our disastrous march to war in Iraq. After the U.S. invasion and years-long occupation, Iraq became a failed state.

It’s remarkable how, in 23 years, some world leaders haven’t learned a single thing about geopolitics. And yet Tucker Carlson has.

Over the past week, Fox News has hosted few, if any, Iranian voices or much in the way of opposition to Israel’s war. Instead, it has featured a steady stream of war boosters like Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham. “Be all-in, President Trump, in helping Israel eliminate the nuclear threat,” Graham, who has made multiple appearances on the network in the last week, urged the president during Sean Hannity’s show. As he addressed Trump, Graham made sure to look straight into the camera.

Notably, Vice President JD Vance — who, during the campaign, criticized wars launched by past U.S. presidents — snuck away to Montana earlier this month for a surprise meeting with the Murdochs at the patriarch’s ranch. This week, Vance fully backed his boss’ hawkish shift.

But Murdoch’s media outlets are not the only organizations propping up the Netanyahu narrative. A fair share of credit must also go to the right-wing think tank behind Trump’s domestic agenda. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 laid the policy framework for the president’s second term, and its six-page Iran brief appears to map out the administration’s approach to Iran, arguing that only a credible threat of military action can force Iranian concessions. Should that fail, it argues, a joint Israeli-American strike is necessary.

The same message is being primed for consumption through right-wing media outlets by administration officials including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News host, who told the Senate last week that “there have been plenty of indications” Iran has been “moving their way toward something that would look a lot like a nuclear weapon.”

But in comments that illustrate the MAGA divide over military action, Trump’s own intelligence director, the famously anti-war Tulsi Gabbard, recently offered a different assessment of Iran's intentions in Senate testimony. “The [Intelligence Community] continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon," she said, "and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.” Yet Gabbard would prove to be as quick to throw her anti-intervention reputation under the bus as her boss was to throw her under the war tanks. “I don't care what she said,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday of Gabbard's comments. “I think they were very close to having one.”

DNI Gabbard tells us she and Trump are "on the same page" when it comes to Iran nuclear timeline

"Pres Trump was saying the same thing that I said in my annual threat assessment back in March. Unfortunately too many people in the media don't care to actually read what I said"

— Sarah Ferris (@sarahnferris) June 17, 2025

Trump has also lashed out at Carlson, who has long been one of his biggest boosters. “I don’t know what Tucker Carlson is saying. Let him go get a television network and say it so that people listen.”

Those are MAGA fighting words, and they seem to have officially set off a GOP civil war.

Backing up Carlson is none other than Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who shot back at Trump: “Tucker Carlson is one of my favorite people. He fiercely loves his wife, children, and our country. Since being fired by the neocon network Fox News, he has more popularity and viewers than ever before… That’s not kooky. That’s what millions of Americans voted for. It’s what we believe is America First.”

Greene also took to former Tea Party congressman (and current MAGA media personality) Matt Gaetz’s show on One America News to slam Fox News. “We have propaganda news on our side, just like the left does,” she said, “and the American people have been brainwashed into believing that America has to engage in these foreign wars in order for us to survive. And it’s absolutely not true.”

For those keeping score: I am now in agreement with both Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Broken clocks and all.

Of course, Fox News’ viewership dwarfs Carlson’s reach on YouTube.

Politico has reported that Fox News personalities like Mark Levin are privately and publicly lobbying the president in a push for increased U.S. involvement in Israel’s offensive against Iran. Levin barked at his Fox News audience: “You’re either a patriotic American who is going to get behind the president, the commander in chief, or you’re not.” Previous war skeptics like Greg Gutfeld, Jesse Watters and Will Cain have put up little resistance.

All this has led Turning Point USA's Charlie Kirk, a key influencer in Trump's online base, to admit that Israel's war has triggered “a major schism in the MAGA community.” For his part, Kirk attempted to divert attention from the unpopularity of a potential war with the MAGA base by fearmongering, claiming that supposed Democratic “open border” policies allowed Iranian “sleeper cells” into the country that might now execute terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.

Keep your head on a swivel. Biden let millions of people into America. Iran might activate some sleeper cells against Americans. Stay armed.

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) June 13, 2025

In the process, he made sure to reaffirm his undying commitment to Trump.

Moments like this I have full and complete trust in President Trump

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) June 16, 2025

According to Steve Bannon, one of the loudest voices in the MAGA movement against U.S. involvement, the cult-like devotion to Trump is sure to win out over any newfound anti-war principles that may have formed on the right. “We don’t want any more forever wars. And if you look at the cheerleaders” like Fox News, “it is unacceptable,” Bannon told reporters on Thursday:

If the president as commander-in-chief makes a decision to do this and comes forward and walks people through it, the MAGA movement — they’ll lose some — but the MAGA movement, the Marjorie Taylor Greenes, the Matt Gaetzes, we will fight it up to the end and make sure you get full information but if he has more intelligence and makes that case to the American people, the MAGA movement will support President Trump.

In a sign of just how upending Israel's actions have proven to the Trump coalition, former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson suggested to CNN’S Anderson Cooper that Laura Loomer, the far-right conspiracy theorist, may actually be the brains behind Trump’s decisions on bombing Iran. Then, on Thursday, Trump lashed out at a pair of Murdoch-owned outlets.

Donald J. Trump Truth Social 06.19.25 09:05 AM EST pic.twitter.com/KZFT19PsHG

— Commentary Donald J. Trump Posts From Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) June 19, 2025

Trump's unpredictability and erratic shifts in rhetoric toward Iran continue to muddy the waters surrounding potential U.S. action. But what's clear is that Fox News, with its shameless push for another nation-building project, appears committed to testing his promise to be a harbinger of peace. We will soon see if Rupert Murdoch gets the war he so obviously wants.