By Jonah Goldberg
Wednesday, March 04, 2026
I can’t deny it: I’m enjoying the tumult on the right.
Let’s start with poor J.D. Vance. He has spent the last
few years grounding his support for Donald Trump in Trump’s wise rejection of
“forever wars,” “stupid wars,” “regime change wars,” etc. Now, he’s stuck
trying to explain why this war on Iran is not—and cannot possibly be—any of the
above without looking exactly like what he is: a guy who reinvented himself as
a Trump vassal for political power.
Back in 2023, he wrote in the Wall Street Journal that Trump “has my support
because I know he won’t recklessly send Americans to fight wars overseas.” The
op-ed title: “Trump’s Best Foreign Policy? Not Starting Any Wars.”
Now, I will cut Vance a tiny bit of slack. Presidents
often say that the first requirement of a vice president is to be ready to be
president on Day 1 if necessary. Maybe. But that’s not sufficient criteria.
Another non-negotiable attribute required, to one extent or another, of every
vice president is a willing appetite for coprophagia.
If you aren’t up for eating a healthy portion of crap 365 days a year,
presidents don’t want you. Vance has been fairly quiet on social media, for
obvious reasons. . And on TV he’s spinning
so hard he might risk scrotal torsion. But the net effect is that he spends his
days taking huge bites of the “that’s not-Shinola!” sandwich Trump is serving.
The problem for Vance is that unlike other presidents,
Trump has no guiding principles or intellectual restraints that can restrict
the fecal flow. What I mean is that normal presidents have somewhat coherent
worldviews and ideological commitments, and they pick vice presidents who
either share those commitments or are reasonably willing to bend to them. But
Trump has none of those restraints. The result for Vance is that if you offer
any criteria for why Trump is awesome other than the petitio principii formulation
“Trump is awesome because he’s awesome,” you’ll end up holding the bag.
I’ve been making the point that Trump offers no intellectually and
ideologically coherent safe harbor for the intellectuals and politicians who
attach themselves to him for a decade now. Love him because he’ll lower taxes?
Great, now explain how tariffs aren’t taxes. Support him because he’ll end
lawfare, fight corruption, revere the Constitution, resist foreign adventures?
Bahahaha. Look at you now.
Last summer, Vance took respite from his scatological
repast by landing on the argument that Trump can go to war because, unlike all
the previous presidents, he’s not dumb. The best you can say for this defense is
that it sounds like a defense. It has no more merit, rigor, or grounding in
reality than saying that the difference between Trump and previous presidents
who launched wars is that Trump is bipedal.
Meanwhile, Megyn Kelly informs us: “I’ve got serious doubts about what we’re
doing. I support the president. I voted for the president. I campaigned for the
president, as you know. But that doesn’t mean—and being a conservative or being
a Trump supporter or being part of MAGA does not mean you have to accept
another Middle East war without questions. And anybody who tells you that can
suck it.”
It’s schadenfreudetastic to hear this from Kelly, who has
been perfectly happy to denounce as “RINOs” conservatives who didn’t need a war
with Iran to realize that Trump is not the measure of all things. She was fine
with pretty much everything else he did, and perfectly comfortable ridiculing
critics who objected—until now.
I’m also enjoying the effort to claim that this is not a war.
Now, I understand that this can get a little muddled
because Congress doesn’t want to call this a war. If they do, it would call
attention to the fact that presidents aren’t allowed to declare war, only
Congress can. And congressional Republicans want to hide in the basement
playing Call of Duty rather than do their job. So, Sen. Markwayne Mullin of
Oklahoma is out there insisting ,“This isn’t a war. We haven’t declared war.”
He adds, “We’re not at war with Iran. We’re making sure that they do not have the
capability to harm us anymore.”
Oh, is that all?
I’m no military scholar or legal expert, but if blowing
up another country’s supreme leader, sinking its navy,
and bombing the stuffing out of every military asset it has isn’t a war, then
the word “war” pretty much has no meaning. Imagine if Iran bombed Trump and the
whole Cabinet at Camp David and then saying, “Iran’s not really at war with
us.”
By Mullin’s Möbius strip “reasoning,” the president can
go to war and call it a war, but it won’t actually be a war until
and unless Congress declares one. This is, of course, pure nonsense wrapped in
legalistic nonsense, seasoned with craven sycophancy. I long ago got exhausted
with the phrase “gaslighting,” but for fornication’s sake, “lying” is too
paltry a word for this Orwellian assault on the truth.
But perhaps the most delicious thing about the
Trump-loyalist jackasses braying that this isn’t what they voted for is how
they are revealing their irrelevance. The self-styled MAGA vanguard typically
claims to speak for his most devoted supporters, but among Republicans,
approval for Operation Epic Fury is around 90 percent in one survey of likely voters. A CNN
poll says that 77 percent of Republicans generally are supportive and 83 percent think—bizarrely—that Trump
has a “clear plan” for Iran. That can change, of course. But it won’t change
because of anything Kelly or Tucker Carlson say. After all, Tucker, an
apologist for Russia’s wanton slaughter in Ukraine, doesn’t have a lot of
credibility when he calls the Iran attack—which doesn’t deliberately target
civilians the way Russia does—“absolutely disgusting and evil.” Kelly insists that “no one
should have to die for a foreign country,” a standard hard to square with both
world wars, the Vietnam War, the first Iraq war, and the NATO charter. “I don’t
think those service members died for the United States,” Kelly said. “I think
they died for Iran or Israel.” I’d have more respect for her—a low bar —if she
just said they died for Donald Trump. That’s not how I see it, but it’s closer
to the truth than her demagogic tirades.
Meanwhile Trump has no patience for his fake-MAGA
detractors. “I think that MAGA is Trump—MAGA’s not [Megyn Kelly and Tucker
Carlson],” Trump told Rachael Bade. “MAGA wants to see our country thrive and be
safe. And MAGA loves what I’m doing—every aspect of it.”
Now, I’ve been clear on my views on the desirability of
regime change in Iran. I also think, as I wrote in my Los
Angeles Times column this week, “This is no way for a constitutional republic to go to war.” So, I have some
sympathy for some of the complaints from the bitter MAGA exiles. But I relish
their anguish as they listen to Trump spew nonsense about how he prevented a “nuclear war.” “[I]f we didn’t do what we’re doing right
now, you would have had a nuclear war, and they would have taken out many
countries,” Trump said Tuesday.
Trump has been making up stuff like this forever, as
president and as a private citizen (remember when he claimed to have “de-nuclearized” North Korea?). Until now, his praetorians
have been fine with these lies because the lies served both their purposes.
Indeed, they were happy to denounce those who pointed out his lies as cucks,
RINOs, wimps, losers, and victims of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Who are the RINOs now?
Now, it’s revealing that Kelly, Carlson, Steve Bannon, et
al. were more or less fine with all of the lies, but they draw a line at
anything that might be in Israel’s interest.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think this is a war for
Israel, certainly not in the way Carlson and Kelly suggest. But given how
horribly this administration has messaged the issue, it’s understandable that
people looking to blame this on the Israelis would blame this on the Israelis.
Let me finish by picking up a point I made in my column.
“Be careful what you wish for” is not a warning that only
applies to American or Western policymakers. It’s a universal admonition. A few
thousand years before the term “blowback” gained currency in national security
circles, the Greeks had the term “hubris.” The Greeks also had the story of
Eos, the goddess of the dawn (and a bit of a trollop). She asked Zeus to do her
a solid by making her lover Tithonus immortal. But she forgot to ask that he be
made eternally young, too. So, he kept aging until he made Joe Biden look like
Achilles. The Hebrew Bible is also full of careful-what-you-wish-(or
ask)-for stories. In the Book of Samuel, the Israelites ask for a king like
other nations. They get one good and hard.
In literature and pop culture, this caution about the way
the world works runs like a cold, bracing, current from antiquity to like half
the episodes of The Twilight Zone. King Midas, The Monkey’s Paw,
Frankenstein, Faust, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man—the chorus of cautionary
tales is massive.
“Careful what you wish for” is as close to the essence of
the conservative temperament as any idea I can think of. It captures the
fundamental wisdom that planning is really hard and what seems like a slam-dunk
idea can bite you in the keister because of all those unknown unknowns as well
as the very known-known of human nature. Man plans, God laughs, and all that.
It enlists the idea that you should be content, even grateful, for the bird in
your hand, rather than bet everything on the two in the bush. It’s adjacent to
“measure twice and cut once.” If you fully grasp the idea, you can skip whole
chapters in Edmund Burke’s Reflections, huge slices of Friedrich Hayek’s
oeuvre, and the writings of a whole generation of neoconservative
intellectuals.
Anyway, my point in my LA Times column was that we
should be mindful of unintended consequences or “blowback” when launching a
war. Russian President Vladimir Putin wasn’t when he launched what was supposed
to be a weeklong war on Ukraine. Russia has now suffered more casualties than the
United States did in all of World War II, and it’s literally losing ground to
Ukraine. Hamas wasn’t heedful of “careful what you wish for” when it launched
the October 7 attacks, which resulted in plans to turn Gaza into a resort town
run by Jared Kushner, the gutting of Iran itself, the death of Hezbollah’s
longtime leaders and the gelding of Hezbollah’s best thugs in Operation Grim
Beeper.
But there’s a domestic analogue that comes to mind. Megyn
Kelly, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker Carlson, and countless others made a
Faustian bargain with Trump and Trumpism, thinking they could manage the golem,
teach Frankenstein’s monster to dance to “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” or foresee all
the possible permutations of their monkey-paw wishes. The orange Stay Puft
Marshmallow MAGA Man would never hurt us. We can use him for good
things.
It speaks to something deep about their characters and
their judgment that everything up until this week counted as good things. The
election denial, the cruelty, the lies, the China Syndrome-level spill of toxic
egoism: that all counted as good. But a “war for Israel,” that is where they
get off the Trump train and get offended at being told to eat off J.D. Vance’s
plate (again, I don’t think it’s a war for Israel, but when even Marco Rubio
suggests it is one, the Israel haters are going to run with it).
The only sad part is that I don’t think any of them are
actually offended for reasons of principle. Not really. They used the Trump era
to carve out high-profile niches in swamps festering with antisemitism, racism,
conspiracy, and illiberalism. They might have convinced themselves they believe
everything they say and do in their effort to pander to their audience, but
they’ve already demonstrated they don’t care about the truth or even decency.
Or, they might tell themselves that they can play footsie with bigots and
jabroneys without that abyss looking into them. It doesn’t really matter.
Because the truth is, they’re just pissed that the monster they helped to
create has turned on their corner of the village in his latest rampage.
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