As conservative radio host Clay Travis opened his mouth Tuesday night on Fox News, he was hyper-aware of the viewer-in-chief.

President Trump is “probably watching” this show, Travis said to Fox host Sean Hannity as both men urged the president to eliminate Iran’s nuclear program.

“We have to do it,” Travis said, adding, “We can’t go halfway here.”

The president’s television habits once again have serious foreign policy implications as the Trump administration weighs further US involvement in Iran.

The Israel-Iran conflict has exacerbated a deep rift in MAGA media over how the US conducts itself abroad, especially when it comes to Israel. Republican hawks are clashing with MAGA isolationists, and many of the arguments are happening on social media sites like X, as well as podcasts like Steve Bannon’s “War Room.”

But Trump’s favorite network, Fox News, isn’t making as much room for debate. Guest after guest on Fox has played to Trump’s ego — simultaneously praising the president and pushing for US intervention through his television screen. (At one point, Fox host Kayleigh McEnany, a former Trump aide, waxed poetic about him being a Churchillian “man of action.”)

On Hannity’s show Tuesday night, weekend host Mark Levin literally screamed on-air as he depicted a battle of “good versus evil” and doubted the patriotism of the isolationist camp.

Levin’s view is dominant on Fox’s air. While some guests on Fox have warned against escalation, they’ve been few and far between, and not nearly as loud or omnipresent as Levin.

Tucker Carlson’s absence is palpable. After he was fired from Fox in 2023, Carlson built himself a digital media platform with a big megaphone on X, as he proved again Tuesday night by teasing a contentious interview with Sen. Ted Cruz.

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/06/18/media/fox-news-mark-levin-tucker-carlson-maga-media-israel-iran

But Carlson and his isolationist views are no longer as visible to Trump, who has an old-school, cable-centric mentality about the media.

Tucker Carlson vs. Mark Levin

Levin and Carlson embody the right’s competing forces on foreign policy. Levin wants regime change in Iran; Carlson wants the US to stay out of it. Both men say they are representing the “America First” MAGA movement.

Their weeks-long feud turned especially ugly last week, after Israel launched airstrikes in Iran, which in turn pulled out of scheduled nuclear talks with the US and retaliated with a series of missile strikes.

Carlson called on Trump to “drop Israel” and “let them fight their own wars.” He branded Levin, Hannity, and Fox patriarch Rupert Murdoch as “warmongers” pushing the president to join the conflict.

Levin responded by calling Carlson an antisemite and a “maggot.” He dredged up Carlson’s past criticism of Trump and questioned the former Fox star’s allegiance to the MAGA movement.

While Levin’s name-calling has been petty, the back-and-forth has serious impacts. Two weeks ago, when Trump and Levin dined together at the White House, Carlson caught wind of the meeting and immediately tweeted a denunciation of Levin “hyperventilating” about Iran’s nuclear program.

Levin’s lunch with Trump is a testament to the bombastic radio and TV host’s wide influence on the right.

Contrary to Carlson’s recent claim that “nobody watched” Levin’s weekend TV show, Levin is actually one of the most popular figures on Fox’s weekend lineup and is a regular presence on Hannity’s weekday show as well.

Hannity threw shade at Carlson on Tuesday night, though not by name, when he said Iran is “the biggest existential threat to the entire western world,” and “people that can’t seem to understand that kind of puzzle me.”

Wednesday morning’s “Fox & Friends,” another one of the president’s cherished shows, also promoted an interventionist point of view. To “people who say it’s not our fight,” host Brian Kilmeade said, “you could say that, but you’re not paying attention. Since the 1980s, they have been killing Americans.”

Then, Kilmeade threw to a video clip of Levin’s pro-war arguments from the night before.

“I’m not one that wants to get involved in things. I’m not. But we have no choice! They are our enemy!” co-host Lawrence Jones said.

The MAGA media schism

This foreign policy feud has torn apart other pockets of the MAGA media world.

Far-right podcaster Candace Owens exited The Daily Wire last year after she called Israel’s war in Gaza a “genocide” and openly embraced antisemitic conspiracies. The conservative media empire’s co-founder Ben Shapiro, who is adamantly pro-Israel, called Owens’ comments “disgraceful,” kicking off a battle that has since rippled throughout the extremely online right.

Some Fox shows have acknowledged the divides. “On the right we have a big difference of opinion here, but unlike the left, we are not afraid to show it,” Greg Gutfeld said Tuesday afternoon on “The Five.” However, that segment was the only direct mention of Carlson on Fox in recent days, according to a closed captioning search of the network’s coverage.

Fox is clearly more comfortable in a different mode: Ridiculing the left. “MIDEAST CONFLICT DIVIDES DEMS” read one banner on “The Ingraham Angle” Tuesday night.

Carlson has seemed bemused by Fox’s handling of the unfolding conflict, telling Bannon that his former employer is “doing what they always do — turning up the propaganda hose to full blast and trying to knock elderly Fox viewers off their feet and make them submit to a new war.”

Carlson could have been alluding to the 79-year-old president, whose Fox fixation is so well-established that CEOs and foreign leaders jockey for airtime with the hopes that Trump will see their segment.

On Monday, when a reporter asked Trump about Carlson’s comment that the president was “complicit” in Israel’s strikes on Iran, the president said he didn’t know what Carlson was saying online.

“Let him go get a television network and say it so that people listen,” Trump said — a barb reflecting Carlson’s post-cable existence largely out of the president’s view.

>>1414396 (OP)
Hilarious article, especially the parts about Laura Ingraham blaming dems and then Greg Gutfeld on The Five claiming there is a difference of opinion. And then the Fox&Friends morning people saying
>But we have no choice! They are our enemy!”
lol classic FoxNews, like the Bush years all over again.

>>1414396 (OP)
>We have to do it
https://www.buzzfeed.com/pocharaponneammanee/marjorie-taylor-greene-propaganda-nypost-fox
'Marjorie Taylor Greene Is Now Calling Fox News "Propaganda" For Supporting "Foreign Wars"'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1wp72224jzo
'Trump's Iran dilemma exposes bitter split in president's circle'
'Trump often railed against "stupid endless wars" in the Middle East on the campaign trail, but has also maintained that Iran "can't have a nuclear weapon".
The possibility that he might draw the US into another foreign entanglement has pitted the isolationist and hawkish wings of his party bitterly against one another'
George the Dumbyer and his 'Weapons of Mass Destruction'. Trump the Hypocrite and his 'No More Foreign Wars'. Remember that Tweet of yours in 2011 in which you said that in order for Obama to be re-elected, he would start a war with Iran.
You should be remembering what the GOP did do George the Dumbyer, Trump the Dumber Still. There's also the little matter of what all those Republicans financially suffering in the last several months are going to do to you in the midterms. Still, a little war as a distraction, eh Trumpy? For yourself from what those who won't be distracted will be doing to you two years from now
All those Republicans who won't forget your own words: 'No More Foreign Wars'. How those words of yours have aged like fine milk under the Florida sun.

Neocons gonna neocon.

>>1414396 (OP)
>Nixon: Would you buy a used car from this man?
>Trump: Would you buy a used car from this man?
>Gulf War
>Middle East War
>Weapons of Mass Destruction
>Nukes in Iran
>a war involving USA due to a Republican presiden's claims
>'No More Foreign Wars' is an election platform claim by a Republican candidate
>Bush II
>Donald 'Grover Cleveland 2.0' Trump
Would you accept a 'Fell For It Again' award from this man?
Trump cultists: 'We have to do it'

>>1414407
>>1414414
lmao

>>1414396 (OP)
>Americans are war mongering savages
What a surprise!!

>America First

I Heard it through the rapevine that in the west wing Stephen Miller hasn't stalled a closed circuit cable channel feed that only tRump gets. Miller has created a fake Fox News set and has a Laura Ingram look alike pornstar read the news with her legs wide open showing inside her vagina. She says please save me president tRump, as Mexican rapists have crawled up my vagina and they must be removed before they damaged by uterus. A hannity look a-like shows tRump fake news coverage of fat greasy Palestinian terrorists raping a Ivanka look alike. Net & Ya hoo pays for it all. Demented Donnie believes it all

>>1414469
Oops HAS INSTALLED. (My voice to text gets confused over my EAASL accent.

>>1414469
>my vagina and they must be removed before they damaged by uterus
>by
>damaged by uterus
>69
Kinky

>>1414469
>Net & Ya hoo
Kan'tye Worst, is that you?

>>1414466
>Jews first
Fixed that for you.

The right really doesn't like refugees, but they sure like making more of them. It's syria and iraq all fucking over

>>1414396 (OP)
>Trump's response when asked by reporters if he had made a decision on Iran was unironically "two more weeks"
It hurts.

>>1414530
The "how do you do fellow kids" memelord energy this administration has is fucking incredible. And what's even more incredible is that some people are actually buying it.

>>1414532
It takes some fucking balls to be like "hmmm, yeah, I'll make a decision on this current military crisis that is actively escalating as we speak in two weeks."

And I don't mean this in a "wow, such bravery!" way. I mean it in the "retard sinks to depths of stupidity you didn't think was possible" way.

>>1414539
>Will we go to war with Iran? Tune in next week!
This is just who he's always been, but how the fuck do career politicians sucking his dick not get that Americans absolutely despise the thought of going back to the Middle East? They're not even getting that much money from AIPAC all things considered.

>>1414557
Even other repubs are starting to turn on him on this. It's just his immediate circle are purely yes-men.

But jesus christ, this is literally the weakest display possible. If you have an answer, say it now before things escalate. If you don't, say you're still deciding. But saying a fucking exact wait time just makes it seem like you're dragging out the response for fucking clout instead of dealing with the rapidly changing situation in the moment.

>>1414558
I think the repubs turning on him will be back. Elon went from calling him an ungrateful pedophile to begging for his approval in the course of 2 days. These people are incredibly weak-willed.

>>1414559
If I had a dollar for every time I've heard "The republicans are turning on Trump!" just for them to go crawling back to him and for nothing to come of it, I'd be able to fund my own presidential campaign.

>>1414559
>>1414560
The entire republican movement is being held together solely by Trump as a load-baring pillar right now, and half of them are fully aware this is a fucked situation. They hate him because he's made it so self-focused the second he dies the entire party is going to fall the fuck apart.

>>1414561
all trump is is an extremely low brow grifter, probably the biggest on the planet. i'm sure republicans can just find a runner up in that category

>>1414561
I bet all it would take to get those repubs back on his side is calling them woke radical leftists
These guys are the definition of spineless

>>1414397
Never thought I'd find myself agreeing with Tucker Carlson. Leave the middle east alone, it's such a massive waste of international goodwill.

That being said, all this foreign policy stuff is a major distraction from the fascist happenings in the U.S.A.

>>1414396 (OP)
It's been crazy to watch maga go from the least retarded option to sucking Israeli dick and defending the flight logs never being released because they've figured out their deity is probably on them.

So heres the thing. If you learn to read between the lines you'll recognize is that this is part of the Presidents chess strategy. Hes successfully duped Israel into starting a war it can't win and he won't support them like he suggested he would. They've fallen for the trap and will soon be destroyed.

But even if Trump did decide to do something in this war, if he does it with purely missiles and bombings instead of a ground invasion, then thats all to the good, Obama and Biden bombed plenty of people and no one ever said they were at war. Besides, Iran is an evil regime and can not get a nuke.

>>1414604
>Obama and Biden bombed plenty of people and no one ever said they were at war
Are you joking? There are chuds and ivans on this board right now who think Obama and Biden started the Arab Spring, created ISIS, and used the CIA to force Putin to land grab Ukraine.

>>1414604
>Hes successfully duped Israel into starting a war it can't win
Is this the latest chud cope?
Netenyahu forced the war and made Trump respond, and Trumps handlers showed him a bunch of clapping warhawks to make him approve
He's getting played like a fiddle.

>>1414608
newly developing shill narratives are always the funniest ones

>>1414604
His "Chess Strategy" is manipulating you retards into thinking he's still doing things with the best interests of the American people in mind

>>1414604
>Hes playing 8D snakes and ladders!
This meme didn’t work his first term because everything he did was a failure and he’s clearly a drooling retard

>>1414399
>“Let him go get a television network and say it so that people listen,” Trump said
maybe they can listen to it on their record players too

>>1414396 (OP)
>>1414397
Reminds me of a doddering king surrounded by corrupt, scheming, and flattering courtiers, who hates the one man who tells him the truth. It's like Timon of Athens, King Lear, basically any Shakespeare play.

>>1414557
They’ll just start yelling about brown people and “trannies” to distract their voters around the next election