Fox News host Laura Ingraham ended her brief experiment with independent thought on Tuesday, offering supportive comments about Donald Trump’s handling of his spiralling war of choice in Iran as the president prepares to deliver a prime-time speech tonight that the White House is billing as “an important update on Iran.”

Ingraham recently broke from her MAGA propagandist colleagues to voice notes of skepticism about the course of the Iran war. She warned last week that further escalations risked “cascading problems for the region” and “political problems for the president in a midterm election year.” Then on Monday, she pointed out “how quickly this can spiral out of control” and questioned whether Trump had been “fully briefed about the risks of all of this from the beginning” and “able to take it all in and understand the complexity of this.”

Ingraham’s critique mattered because Trump regularly watches her network’s programming and takes action in response to what he sees from its hosts. Her warnings stood out from the blithely supportive commentary of her peers as the president contemplated a series of risky military options to stave off a U.S. strategic defeat.

Several news outlets picked up Ingraham’s Monday remarks as a signal of rising discontent within MAGA media over Iran. Megyn Kelly, a former Fox host and critic of the network’s lockstep support for the Iran war, said the comments show that Trump’s handling of it is “so erratic that even Fox News, the biggest cheerleader of this war by far, is starting to ask some questions.”

But either Ingraham rethought her position overnight or Fox executives, Trump allies, or her audience got in her ear, because 24 hours later, the Fox host’s tone had changed dramatically.

Ingraham opened Tuesday’s broadcast by parroting Trump’s “blunt message to Iran, pairing hard-line negotiations with a stark warning.” 

“He's drawing the parameters of success, trying to make it clear to the American people this is not a quagmire,” she insisted. “We're not going to be here forever. Don't worry about that. And he says, essentially, the job will be done soon.”

The Fox host sneered at U.S. allies who have refused to get involved with a war they didn’t start: “Our so-called NATO allies, I’ve been talking about this around the edges here, have proven Trump was right again. Now, when they want help, we answer the call, but when we need help, they head for the exits.”

Ingraham also offered careful praise for the president’s consideration of a potential escalation.

“President Trump is going to make sure that we are ready, our military is ready for any contingency,” she said. “He never likes to rule anything out. That’s the way he operates. I like that, it keeps everybody on their toes. And it also includes planning to take control of Kharg Island.”

Notably, Ingraham used the debate over whether the Iran war is becoming a “quagmire” to distinguish herself from Trump’s MAGA critics. 

“Why are people calling this a quagmire after a month?” she asked Gregory Glaros, a former naval aviator. “If I hear the word quagmire on our friends’ and other networks, I mean, I can see criticism in America First, but quagmire, really?”

Then in her monologue, Ingraham walked back her past concerns about the potential political toll. Arguing that “Trump is taking some big risks, but with big risks come great rewards,” Ingraham said she was “choosing not to panic” about the midterm elections. 

All in all, it was a broadcast that no one in the White House could criticize as insufficiently deferential to the president. 

Ingraham is back in line with the jingoistic war propaganda of her fellow Fox evening hosts

Fox host Sean Hannity began his final show before the president’s “important update” by presenting a rosy picture of the war and denouncing those who failed to acknowledge its success.

“According to the president, Iran will not be lasting much longer,” he said. “Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, he says the U.S. will negotiate with bombs until Iran agrees to America's terms.

And take a look at your screen. Last night in northern Iran, a massive strike appeared to take out a massive stockpile of missiles and rockets. At the same time, oil tankers are now making their way through the Strait of Hormuz as sea traffic is picking up.”

“Now, tonight, through the fog of war, it is obvious the U.S. military is not just obliterating Iran’s ability to fight, but also their will,” Hannity later added. The host continued, citing a Harvard Center for American Political Studies/Harris poll to portray the war’s critics as out of touch: “In fact, despite nonstop cheerleading for Iran from the legacy media mob, Democrats, isolationists that are in the country, a vast majority of you, the American people, 76% believe the U.S. is crushing this rogue regime.”

Hannity did not address Fox’s own poll, which found that 58% of respondents oppose the war, 64% disapprove of Trump’s handling of the war, and 59% disapprove of Trump’s overall performance (his “highest for either term”). 

“Anyway, together, America and Israel, they are dismantling the world’s No. 1 state sponsor of terror,” the host concluded. “They are preventing your children and your grandchildren from having to live in a world with a nuclear-armed Iran with a death cult that believes in convert or die. All of this while our so-called allies in NATO are nowhere to be found — that will be dealt with.”

Jesse Watters, meanwhile, spent his time gleefully recounting the Pentagon’s accounting of U.S. strikes and assuring viewers that U.S. special operations forces are well-trained for a potential mission to seize Iran’s supply of uranium that he said “would be like something straight out of Hollywood.”

Chyrons Fox aired during the segment included “The Upcoming Hours Will Be ‘Decisive,’” “The Regime Can Run, But Can’t Hide,” and “Iranian Regime Begins To Collapse.”