What was particularly striking about that last one: These views were almost completely nonpartisan. It was about 4 in 10 Democrats, independents and Republicans who said Israel’s business was none of ours.
That suggests that Trump’s injection of non-interventionism in the conservative movement has caught on, even as it relates to our most significant ally in the Middle East.
But it’s more than just non-interventionism; there are also plenty of signs that even Republicans have soured on Israel.
The Quinnipiac poll showed the percentage of Republicans who sympathized more with the Israelis than Palestinians dropping from 86% in October 2023 to 64% today. (Almost all of the shift was to a neutral position, rather than to the Palestinians.)
And the Pew poll showed unfavorable views of Israel among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents rising from 27% in 2022 to 37% in March. Most remarkably, right-leaning voters under the age of 50 were about evenly split in their views of Israel.
These modest but significant shifts have come as certain corners of the MAGA movement have adopted a more skeptical view of the American alliance with Israel and cautioned against a hardline approach to Iran.
Those tensions are perhaps best exemplified by an intense and ongoing feud between Fox News host Mark Levin and his former Fox colleague, Tucker Carlson.
Carlson on Friday morning went so far as to say the United States should decouple itself from Israel altogether. He said the Trump administration should “drop Israel. Let them fight their own wars.”
Carlson said the United States not only shouldn’t send troops, but that it shouldn’t provide any funding or weapons.
Also this week, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard used her personal X account to promote a cryptic video. She urged people to “reject this path to nuclear war” and said certain “elite warmongers” were carelessly pushing us toward it, in the knowledge that they personally had nuclear shelters that others didn’t.
It’s not clear if Gabbard was alluding to the tensions in the Middle East – as opposed to, say, the war between Russia and Ukraine. But she has long advocated a softer approach to Iran. Back in 2020, while she was still a Democrat, she called Trump’s killing of a top Iranian commander an unconstitutional “act of war.”
Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana responded this week that Gabbard should “change her meds.”
In other words, this isn’t even simple on the right anymore. Trump leads a country and a movement that are increasingly torn about the path ahead.
He has landed firmly in Israel’s corner thus far. But very difficult decisions could lie ahead.
The post Americans’ – and Republicans’ – increasingly complicated relationship with Israel appeared first on CNN.
