Addressing a Saudi Arabia-backed investment conference in Miami on Friday, US President Donald Trump insisted his Make America Great Again political movement was “stronger than ever”.
Trump has for weeks maintained that the ardent base of supporters who delivered him another four years in the White House is united behind his decision to wage war in Iran.
But as the conflict in the Middle East enters its second month, the Pentagon sends thousands of additional troops to the region, and global markets remain in turmoil, there are signs that even the president’s most enthusiastic supporters are growing wary of what he claimed would be a “little excursion”.
That unease was palpable this week at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Grapevine, Texas, just outside of Dallas, where thousands of conservative activists gathered for their annual jamboree. A conference that began in the 1970s as a celebration of Ronald Reagan’s brand of conservatism has morphed in the past decade to become a festival of all things Trump and Maga.
“I come from the wing of the Republican Party that is only loyal to one nation and that is the United States of America,” former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz told attendees from the main stage on Thursday.
“I want President Trump to have every diplomatic tool at his disposal, and I do trust that he knows a great deal more than I do,” added Gaetz, who Trump initially named as his pick for US attorney-general in November 2024 before withdrawing the nomination.
“But a ground invasion of Iran will make our country poorer and less safe. It will mean higher gas prices, higher food prices, and I’m not sure if we would end up killing more terrorists than we would create.”
Trump’s decision to launch strikes on Iran cast a long shadow over this year’s conference, which the president skipped for the first time in 10 years. A White House official blamed Trump’s schedule for his absence, saying: “He is heavily engaged in the ongoing Iran conflict and managing other critical issues.”
In Texas, big-name speakers and rank-and-file conference attendees alike were split about whether the president had done the right thing by going to war with Tehran.
Many questioned whether he and fellow Republicans would pay a political price in November’s midterm elections for the high-stakes geopolitical gamble. Others — including a large contingent of Iranian-American monarchists who are campaigning to install Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former Shah, as the country’s next leader — cheered the president’s interventions.
From the conference stage, evangelical leader Franklin Graham applauded Trump’s leadership, saying: “Other presidents in the past have just kicked the can down the road on these hard issues, but President Trump has the guts to take these tough decisions and I appreciate that.”
But the next day, conservative podcaster and Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon implored attendees to voice their disapproval for the conflict at a time when the administration has not ruled out putting US troops on the ground in Iran.
“The decision in going forward is obviously the commander-in-chief’s. But . . . people have to have his back,” Bannon told a cheering crowd. “You have to be convinced that this is the right thing to do, particularly now that we are on the eve of potentially the insertion of American combat troops.”
CPAC chair Matt Schlapp told the FT that while he supported Trump’s decision-making, he also welcomed debate on the right.
“If CPAC stayed the same every year, that would be so much easier for me, but it would be really boring,” he said, adding it was a “very minority view” that Trump had been wrong in going after Iran’s nuclear capabilities.
“What I get from people is: they love Trump. They trust Trump. They actually like what he has done in foreign policy,” Schlapp said. But he conceded many conservatives were nevertheless “nervous about Iran”.
“That does not mean that we are divided, and that does not mean that there is some kind of civil war,” he said. “It just means they are nervous about where does this go next.”
Those nerves were on display in an adjoining conference hall where conservative groups and right-wing media outlets had set up stalls promoting their causes.
One self-described “America First” group — Republicans for National Renewal — had set up an informal poll asking attendees if they were for or against the war. Passers-by cast their votes by dropping a pinto bean in one of two jars. On Thursday evening, the jars were roughly evenly split, with slightly more votes in favour of the operation.
John Kent, the group’s treasurer, said he backed the war and trusted Trump to do the right thing: “That is one thing that we do on the right . . . we implicitly trust what President Trump is doing and we want to support him.”
But Alex Johnson, a 26-year-old activist from Atlanta, Georgia, disagreed, saying: “Frankly, I think there are so many bigger issues that the American public need to address before we focus on Iran.”
“I want a cheaper cost of living. I want to be able to buy a house. I want to be able to have the American dream,” Johnson said, insisting many fellow Gen Z voters felt the same way. “I don’t care about what happens in countries where most of my peers can’t find on a map.”
A university student from Tampa, Florida, who declined to give his name, dropped a pinto bean in the jar opposing the war, before telling the FT that while he had voted for Trump in 2024, the US was now engaged in a conflict in the Middle East “for the wrong reason”.
“You have to take the president at his word, but knowing the history of our military action . . . I’m already on edge,” the student said. “How much do I trust him?”
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