Natalie Kitroeff

It's really a mess.

You have people who are still steadfast in their support for what the administration is doing.

There are an awful lot of people, however, and I'm talking not only about the right-wing influencer ecosystem, but also all the way down to voters who are saying, is this what we voted for?

We thought no wars.

We thought America first.

What are we doing over there?

What's this about $200 billion that Trump now wants from Congress to appropriate?

Where was $200 billion when I wanted to buy a home?

It has really, really become a problematic matter for the Trump administration.

Yes, anger and disbelief, an inability to square what is happening in Iran with what Trump said on the campaign trail and what Americans face as domestic challenges.

So we should go back to what I believe was the fourth Republican presidential primary debate in November of 2015.

And there, on that stage, Trump explicitly said that the Iraq War was no one's idea of a success, but instead was a tragic waste of American blood and treasure.

And differentiated himself from other candidates who had basically repeated Republican orthodoxy about the Iraq War.

Yes.

It was understood that thou shalt not speak ill of a Republican president, George W. Bush.

And so for an office seeker, a Republican office seeker, to stand up and say that this war was just an unambiguous screw-up and you're never going to see me do this kind of thing was really singular and, I think, memorable to voters throughout the campaign.

No, that's right.

So for Trump to do that really, I think, you know, opened Republican voters up to the notion that, you know, we don't have to embrace a militaristic viewpoint the way hawks on our side of the aisle are constantly urging us to, particularly when we have seen what it's done to a whole generation of Americans.

Yeah, I mean, it tapped into the notion that...

America's leaders were not to be trusted, and he was drawing a clear distinction between what he was saying about our troops and what he was saying about our leadership.