WATCH LIVE: White House briefing may address US strikes on Iran, war powers vote

NEW YORK (AP) — For President Donald Trump, some of the harshest criticism he faced in the early days of the Iran war came from media figures who were once loyal to him and much more accustomed to praising him.

White House Press Secretary Carolyn Leavitt will hold a press conference at 1 p.m. EST. Watch the live stream in our video player above.

Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly and Matt Walsh were among those who expressed their displeasure. This has been observed in the White House, which has been playing defensively on social media and in interviews.

Watch live: The Senate is expected to vote on a war powers resolution after the US-Israeli strikes on Iran

These critics are certainly in the minority in the media world, where Fox News’ biggest stars remain fans. But their words illustrate the influence of conservative media and how important it is to Trump when everything is running like a well-oiled machine — and, by contrast, the scale of the problem that could arise if it breaks down.

Much of the criticism has focused on Israel’s influence on Trump’s decision to go to war. Carlson, a former Fox News star who built his own independent operation, told ABC News over the weekend that the attack was “absolutely disgusting and evil.”

“It’s hard to say, but the United States did not make the decision here,” Carlson said on his podcast, referring to the Israeli prime minister. “Benjamin Netanyahu made the decision.”

“No one should die for a foreign country”

“No one should die for a foreign country,” Kelly, another former Fox anchor, said of the American victims on her show.

“I don’t believe these soldiers died for the United States,” Kelly said. “I think they died for Iran or Israel.”

He watches: Hegseth announced that the United States had sunk the Iranian warship

Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s comments before a news conference on Capitol Hill were a flashpoint. Rubio said that Trump gave the green light for the operation knowing that Israel was ready to strike and that he feared Iran’s retaliation against American bases in the region.

“We knew that if we didn’t go after them proactively, before they launched these attacks, we would suffer even greater losses,” Rubio said. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Los Angeles, said that if the Trump administration had not acted, lawmakers would have wondered why.

Walsh, a Daily Wire host, wrote on X that Rubio “was flat-out telling us we’re at war with Iran because Israel forced us to. That’s basically the worst thing he could say.”

The Republican president told journalist Rachel Budd in an interview that he did not believe the views of Carlson and Kelly were shared by his base of supporters. “I think MAGA is Trump,” he said. “MAGA not the other two.”

Former Republican US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who has presented herself as an influential and media figure since her bitter break with Trump, said in a Kelly podcast that she was angry about the US military action. “It was supposed to be America first, not Israel first,” Green says, “to make America great again.”

Will Trump supporters return to the fold?

Perhaps Trump is right to believe that most of his supporters will return to the fold if they are unhappy with the Iranian attack, said Jason Zengerle, author of Hated by All the Right People: Tucker Carlson and the Disintegration of the Conservative Mind. Given the consistency of his views on the subject, Carlson is likely Trump’s most important conservative critic, Zengerle said.

“If the war goes poorly, I think that will strengthen the hand of someone like Tucker,” he said. “This is all a debate about what happens after Trump is gone anyway.”

Carlson was at the center of a controversy last fall over anti-Semitism in conservative media over his interest in polarizing influencer Nick Fuentes through an interview on Carlson’s podcast. Fuentes described Adolf Hitler as “brilliant,” suggested that there was genocide against whites, and said that his young followers were “tired of hearing about slavery and the Holocaust.”

There were cracks in conservative media support for Trump before Iran, particularly with the broad and sprawling narratives around the Jeffrey Epstein report. But this week’s criticism has sparked some internal vitriol. Ben Shapiro of The Daily Wire called Kelly “wildly inconsistent” and cowardly. Elisabeth Hasselbeck denounced Kelly for suggesting that American soldiers died for Israel. “How dare you?” Hasselbeck said Tuesday on “The View.”

Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity said Carlson “wasn’t the person I knew when he was at Fox.” Kelly denounced Hannity as a supplicant who “won’t say anything else but piss off Donald Trump.”

It is worth noting that most of what readers and viewers see in conservative media supports Trump. Howard Polskin, publisher of The Righting newsletter, estimated Tuesday that about 95% of what he monitors on websites is behind the president. “Trump stands tall against Iran,” The American Spectator said in a headline.

Read more: Trump has spent years mocking foreign entanglements. Now, he has taken the United States to war with Iran

The most popular personalities on Fox News — who remain at the top of the conservative list — remain supportive. Hannity, Brian Kilmeade and Mark Levin were among the most vocal in the run-up to and after the attack. “The president has shown more courage, and this Pentagon, this Pentagon led by Pete Hegseth, has performed wonderfully again,” said Kilmeade, the Fox & Friends host.

“I think MAGA is giving him the benefit of the doubt, no question about it,” Sean Spicer, White House press secretary during the early part of Trump’s first term, said on his podcast Tuesday. “I think he’s gained a lot of credibility with Al Qaeda… Look, I’ve had PTSD from a lot of our previous leaders between Iraq and Afghanistan in particular, who only know forever wars, so I understand that. But this president has now proven twice that he knows what he’s doing.”

Criticism of starting the war draws a special rebuke from the White House

The podcast influencers who helped push many young people into Trump’s camp during the 2024 campaign have been largely quiet.

Some of Walsh’s criticisms this week were apparently so hurtful that they prompted a pointed rebuke from White House press secretary Carolyn Leavitt.

He watches: Trump responds to conservative voices critical of the Iran war

“We have heard so far that although we killed the entire Iranian regime, this was not a regime change war,” Walsh wrote on Monday. “And even though we erased their nuclear program, we were forced to do so because of their nuclear program. Although Iran was not planning any attacks on the United States, they might have been, depending on who you ask. And although we are not fighting this war to liberate the Iranian people, they are now free, or may be free, depending on who takes power, and we have no idea who that will be. And the messaging around this is, to put it mildly, mixed.”

Levitt posted a lengthy response to X explaining Trump’s rationale. “The Iranian terrorist regime simply will not say yes to peace,” she wrote.

Kennard reported from Washington.