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The cracks in Trump's coalition ran deeper than anyone expected. Join us as we count down the most revealing reactions from conservative figures to President Donald Trump's governing in 2026 — from loyal allies drawing quiet lines to once-devoted supporters making very public breaks. Which reaction surprised you most? Let us know in the comments below!
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00:00Tonight, President Trump is defending his social media post of this AI-generated image that depicts him as Jesus Christ.
00:07Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at the reactions from American conservative figures that said the most about President
00:14Donald Trump's governing in 2026.
00:17It's not about aligning ourselves with right or left or Democrat or Republican. It's about being honest.
00:25Candace Owens, political commentator and conspiracy theorist.
00:29I know why Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens and Alex Jones have all been fighting me for years, especially
00:37by the fact that they think it is wonderful for Iran, the number one state sponsor of terror, to have
00:45a nuclear weapon because they have one thing in common, low IQs.
00:50By 2026, the cracks in Trump's coalition had spread deep into the media culture that once amplified him most enthusiastically.
00:59Candace Owens became part of that rupture, reacting to the Iran conflict as a betrayal of the kind of America
01:05-first politics many of her listeners thought they had signed up for.
01:09The Iran war represents a serious breaking point for the MAGA media sphere, with Owens among the right-wing voices
01:15openly condemning Trump's rhetoric and direction.
01:18Now, you can call Megyn Kelly a great many things.
01:21I have definitely had my political disagreements with her over the years.
01:26Low IQ?
01:28Really?
01:29Tucker Carlson?
01:29Low IQ?
01:30Me?
01:30Low IQ?
01:31The three of us unsuccessful somehow?
01:33When you write stuff like that, you just demonstrate nothing but your own irrationality.
01:38It just doesn't land.
01:40In response, the president publicly lumped Owens in with a cluster of right-wing personalities he accused of chasing attention
01:47by attacking him over the war.
01:49Her criticism helped show that by 2026, even parts of the loyal media machine were no longer willing to treat
01:56every Trump escalation as strategic genius.
01:59Do you understand that no one in MAGA, in true MAGA, cares about money, above truth, and protecting children?
02:08Could you connect that dot when we revolted against you saying, what about the Epstein files?
02:14That seems to be a theme with you.
02:16Protecting people who harm children.
02:19Why do you keep doing that?
02:20Lisa Murkowski, U.S. Senator from Alaska.
02:23There's a lot that we've got to do here.
02:27But there is one thing that we should not be doing, one thing that we should not be spending our
02:34time doing, and that is any effort that would seek to annex Greenland.
02:41The longtime Alaskan senator has never been one to avoid direct criticism of the president.
02:46Just look at her clear denouncements of Trump's stated goal to take Greenland from Denmark.
02:51In January, Lisa Murkowski emerged as one of the clearest Republican critics of the administration's pressure campaign against Federal Reserve
02:59Chair Jerome Powell.
03:01She called the Justice Department's threat against Powell, quote,
03:04nothing more than an attempt at coercion, while warning that undermining the Fed's independence could damage economic stability.
03:11The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment
03:19of what will serve the public,
03:20rather than following the preferences of the president.
03:24This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic
03:29conditions,
03:30or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation.
03:35She was also part of the broader cluster of Republicans made uneasy by President Trump's increasingly extreme rhetoric elsewhere.
03:44Senator Murkowski's 2026 criticism also carried extra weight because it came after years of tension with Trump,
03:51making her less an unexpected dissenter than one of the few Republicans with a long record of openly resisting his
03:57pressure.
03:58But again, Mr. President, in order to purchase something, you have to have a willing buyer and a willing seller.
04:04And Greenland has made very, very clear, and Denmark has made very clear, that Greenland is not not for sale.
04:14Ron Johnson, U.S. Senator from Wisconsin.
04:17I'm not supportive of the war with Iran, but that's because Iran declared war on America 47 years ago.
04:24They have blood on their hands of American soldiers, hundreds, probably thousands of them.
04:30But it's the Ayatollahs, it's the regime that declared war on America, not the Iranian people.
04:36So we're not at war with the Iranian people.
04:38Not every warning sign inside the conservative coalition came from someone eager to break with Trump.
04:44Senator Johnson's reaction mattered because it came from a loyal ally who still felt compelled to caution against taking the
04:51Iran conflict into even darker territory.
04:54The Iranian people are completely disarmed.
04:56It's going to be very difficult for them to rise up.
04:59And so it's a very difficult situation.
05:01Now, I hope, I hope that President Trump is successful in this, because if we could just imagine the world,
05:08if the Ayatollahs, the brutal Iranian regime is no longer in power, that's what we're trying to achieve.
05:15According to the Wall Street Journal, Johnson warned that attacking Iranian civilian targets would be a, quote, huge mistake, and
05:22made clear that such a move could cost Trump his support.
05:25His comments landed at a tense time, in which the president's threats towards Iran were rattling allies and critics alike.
05:32Senator Johnson's response showed that even among conservatives who broadly accepted hard power and confrontation, there were still limits.
05:40We have to finish the job.
05:42Again, there's multiple ways of potentially doing it, short-term, long-term.
05:46There are multiple avenues we can approach here, but we have not yet finished the job.
05:52Tom Tillis, U.S. Senator from North Carolina.
05:56I've seen the videos more recently, and they're very disturbing.
05:59I want the ICE officers who were involved to get a fair shake, but they need to be investigated.
06:06To the casual observer, to most people across the United States, it doesn't look right.
06:10It certainly doesn't look like us.
06:14But there are so many examples of where we want to turn up the pressure when the American people want
06:20us to tone it down.
06:21Immigration was supposed to be one of Trump's strongest political issues, but in 2026, it also became one of the
06:28clearest tests of how far some Republicans were willing to follow him.
06:32After the deadly and politically explosive Minnesota crackdown, Republican concern was on the rise.
06:38This was particularly over the fact that the force and optics of Trump's immigration operation were becoming liabilities rather than
06:45assets.
06:46Do you think Stephen Miller should go?
06:49Oh, of course I do.
06:51I think Stephen Miller is one of the, one of the, not only does Stephen really want to just paint
06:57a picture, he's not worried about substance, he's more worried about form.
07:01But I also think that he has an outsized influence over the operations of the cabinet.
07:04Senator Tillis then shaped that discomfort into a direct attack, saying Homeland Security advisor Stephen Miller had repeatedly embarrassed the
07:13president by speaking first and thinking later.
07:16This wasn't vague unease.
07:18It was a notable Republican senator pointing at one of the president's most powerful advisors and saying the problem wasn't
07:24just the headlines, but the people guiding the policy.
07:27And I'm sick of stupid. I want good advice for this president because I want this president to have a
07:33good legacy.
07:34And this nonsense on what's going on with Greenland is a distraction from the good work he's doing and the
07:39amateurs who said it was a good idea should lose their jobs.
07:42Megan Kelly, political commentator.
07:45President Trump has picked up a new feud with Pope Leo the 14th.
07:51Seems like a great time to start a feud with a Catholic pope.
07:54Kelly's reaction was significant because it came from a mainstream conservative media figure with a long, very public history with
08:02Trump.
08:03Their feud dates back to the 2015 Fox News Republican debate when Kelly pressed him on his past comments about
08:10women and Trump fired back with an infamous remark that seemingly alluded to her menstrual cycle.
08:15So I have, you know, she, she gets out and she starts asking me all sorts of ridiculous questions.
08:22And, you know, you could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.
08:28But she was, in my opinion, she was off base.
08:33That history gave her later criticism more context and more bite.
08:38In 2026, Kelly was identified as one of the most prominent right-wing media voices criticizing Trump over the Iran
08:45war.
08:46It became increasingly clear that even some right-wing figures long accustomed to Trump's rhetoric were treating his language and
08:53judgment on Iran as too reckless to shrug off or excuse as mere bluster.
08:58I don't want a pope, writes Trump, who criticizes the president of the United States because I'm doing exactly what
09:03I was elected in a landslide to do.
09:05Are you, Mr. President? Were you elected to start another Middle East war? I don't think so.
09:10Rand Paul, U.S. Senator from Kentucky.
09:13Our founders thought that the House of Representatives elected every two years were closer to the people.
09:18And the things they feared the most were big taxes and big government.
09:23They said taxes must originate in the House.
09:26And yet these taxes are originating with the White House.
09:31For conservatives still committed to limited government, President Trump's approach to tariffs remained one of the clearest points of tension.
09:38Rand Paul's reaction fit that mold exactly, framing the administration's trade policy as both constitutionally suspect and economically reckless.
09:47Allowing taxes to be levied, doubled, tripled, and then one day perhaps forgiven is a recipe for chaos.
09:55The tariffs are implemented. The tariffs are canceled. The tariffs are delayed. The tariff rate changes daily.
10:03Just this week, the president added a special 10 percent import tax on Canada because he was mad about the
10:11nation's Ronald Reagan ad.
10:13Paul was one of the few Republicans actively fighting Trump's punishing tariffs.
10:17And insisting that Congress, not the president, should control it.
10:21That critique gained extra relevance amid legal scrutiny over the administration's sweeping global tariff policy.
10:27With courts examining whether Trump had stretched trade law beyond recognition.
10:32Paul therefore gave voice to an older tension in the Republican Party.
10:36Whether Trump-style populism is compatible with constitutional restraint and market conservatism.
10:41How did we all get here? I mean, the whole debate is so fundamentally backwards and upsides down.
10:47It's based on a fallacy. And the fallacy is this, that somehow in a trade, someone must lose.
10:54That somehow when you trade with someone, there's a loser and someone's taking advantage of you.
10:59And China's ripping you off or Japan's ripping you off. It's absolutely a fallacy.
11:04Thomas Massey, U.S. Representative for Kentucky's 4th District.
11:08Why are we going to war with Iran? We owe our military service members a clear mission.
11:16And American families in my district want to know how this is going to help them pay for groceries.
11:21How does this make them any safer in their schools or in their neighborhoods?
11:26Some conservatives objected to Trump's tone.
11:29Thomas Massey challenged the mechanics of how he governed.
11:33In February 2026, Reuters reported that Massey was part of the congressional push
11:38to block Trump from striking Iran without lawmakers' approval,
11:42putting him squarely in Trump's crosshairs.
11:44Some told us this war was about nuclear weapons.
11:47But six months ago, we were assured our last strike on Iran decimated their nuclear program.
11:53I have a theory. I think my colleagues don't want to go on record
11:58because we have a terrible track record of meddling in the Middle East.
12:03They don't want their name associated with this when it doesn't turn out well.
12:08By March, the president had escalated the feud by endorsing a primary challenger against him,
12:13with Massey described as one of Trump's most prominent Republican critics in Congress.
12:18That wasn't all. Alongside Democratic Representative Roe Khanna,
12:22Massey has challenged Trump on the Epstein files as well,
12:26making transparency and executive accountability another front in their standoff.
12:31It's not a hoax. It's not a moot point. It is a very serious thing.
12:35There are a thousand victims and there are survivors who have had a press conference with Roe Khanna and I,
12:40and that's what we're fighting for, justice for them.
12:43Tucker Carlson, political activist and commentator.
12:46The whole thing is a fantasy. The United States went to war in Iran in order to affect regime change,
12:52to throw out the people who ran the country and collapse it at the behest and then the demand of
12:58Israel.
12:59And that's a demand the Israelis have made of the U.S. government for decades,
13:02and President Trump fell for it.
13:06Tucker Carlson's break with Trump reflected a real fracture inside the populist right,
13:10not just another media squabble. In 2026, he emerged as one of the most prominent conservative critics
13:17of Trump's Iran policy, helping turn private America-first frustration into a public split.
13:23The rift also fit into a broader pattern.
13:26Carlson's fallout with Trump could be directly linked to earlier tensions over issues like Venezuela
13:31and the Epstein files.
13:33So crazy. This is like, this is honestly one of the craziest things I've ever seen in my entire life.
13:39And I just think it's very dangerous to play around with this stuff.
13:44Like, very dangerous.
13:45Well, it's like...
13:46I don't want a revolution, but if you wanted a revolution, this is how you would act.
13:49That meant he wasn't merely a pundit throwing punches.
13:52He was one of Trumpism's biggest validators, becoming one of its most visible internal critics.
13:57The rupture was significant enough that even talk of Carlson as a possible 2028 presidential contender started surfacing.
14:05As for Ted Cruz, he says he's running against me for president.
14:08I almost want to run for president just to debate Ted Cruz,
14:12because I think it would go about the way it went last time.
14:16And for my part, I deeply enjoyed it, which is why I've never tweeted about it,
14:19because I just keep that little spark of joy inside me for rainy days.
14:24And I think about that conversation and smile.
14:26J.D. Vance, vice president of the United States.
14:29What we know is that the United States accomplished its military objectives.
14:33What we know is the United States could have imposed significant additional military and economic costs on Iran
14:39and still has the capacity to do so.
14:41But we think, thankfully, at this point, I think, have a ceasefire,
14:45thanks to the leadership of the president of the United States.
14:47The president's fiercely loyal attack dog represented the pro-Trump side of the conservative split.
14:52In 2026, he became one of the administration's most visible defenders of Iran,
14:57publicly warning that pressure would resume if diplomacy failed,
15:01and then leading the U.S. delegation in 21 hours of talks in Islamabad that ended without a deal.
15:08That made his role especially revealing.
15:10We actually think that we are seeing signs that the straits are starting to reopen.
15:14I think you guys have probably seen oil prices have come down.
15:16So I think the oil markets, the gas markets are seeing the same thing.
15:19But the president's been very clear.
15:21The deal is a ceasefire, a negotiation.
15:24That's what we give.
15:25And what they give is the straits are going to be reopened.
15:28If we don't see that happening, the president is not going to abide by our terms
15:32if the Iranians are not abiding by their terms.
15:33Vance had long styled himself as wary of reckless foreign intervention.
15:37Yet he now found himself explaining and managing Trump's war policy.
15:41More than a cheerleader, he became the administration's chief conservative translator,
15:46trying to make Trump's force-first approach look strategic, controlled, and purposeful.
15:51We've had a number of substantive discussions with the Iranians.
15:55That's the good news.
15:56The bad news is that we have not reached an agreement.
15:58And I think that's bad news for Iran much more than it's bad news for the United States of America.
16:03So we go back to the United States having not come to an agreement.
16:06We've made very clear what our red lines are, what things we're willing to accommodate them on,
16:11and what things we're not willing to accommodate them on.
16:13Marjorie Taylor Greene, U.S. Representative for Georgia's 14th District.
16:18How can any person that is mentally stable call for an entire civilization of people
16:24to be murdered, to be wiped out, to never come back again?
16:29That's what the president called for.
16:31When one of Trump's most devoted congressional defenders starts warning that his rhetoric on Iran
16:36has gone too far, the cracks on the populist right become much harder to ignore.
16:42That was the significance of Marjorie Taylor Greene's reaction in 2026.
16:46After years as one of Trump's most visible and aggressive allies,
16:50she was among the conservatives publicly alarmed by his threat to wipe out Iran's, quote,
16:55whole civilization.
16:57I'm sorry. That's not tough rhetoric. It's insanity. It's calling for the murder of an entire civilization
17:03of men, women, children, of innocent civilians. That is not what I would call proper or even decent.
17:14Her break with Trump wasn't limited to Iran either. Greene has also clashed with him over the Epstein files,
17:20saying she stood with the victims and later recalling that Trump called her a traitor for doing so.
17:25Today, President Trump writing, Marjorie Trader Greene is a disgrace to our great Republican Party.
17:30Part of a series of posts about Greene, including this one, in which he said he was withdrawing his support
17:36and endorsement of the Georgia Congresswoman, saying all I see wacky Marjorie do is complain, complain, complain.
17:42Which reaction shocked you the most? Are there any conservative voices we missed?
17:47Be sure to let us know in the comments.
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