• Some Fox News and Newsmax personalities are urging their viewers to accept spiking gas prices as a patriotic sacrifice to take on Iran, and are claiming that prices will come back down quickly. Newsmax’s Carl Higbie, for example, said, “Hold on for like two or three tanks of gas for — it will be an extra 10 to 12 bucks a tank, while Trump wraps this up. I’m asking you to trust the guy here.” 
• Newsmax’s Greg Kelly defended Donald Trump after he wore a baseball hat during a dignified transfer: “It’s beautiful, it’s respectful, and it’s presidential.”
• A Fox Business contributor reacted to more bad economic news: “We've got essentially a situation of stagflation light.” 

Less than two weeks after President Donald Trump launched an ill-conceived, ill-planned war in Iran, the Fox News Cabinet members who urged him to launch military strikes there are either pushing him to escalate or stressing what a great job he’s done. 

Though the U.S. and Israeli forces have bombed a wide variety of Iranian targets and assassinated its former supreme leader, the U.S. military also appears to have killed scores of Iranian children. Iran is responding to the attacks by closing the Strait of Hormuz. It remains unclear what a strategic victory for the U.S. could look like. 

Despite the blowback, some Fox figures have been urging Trump to escalate the war. Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade, for example, has been pushing Trump to expand the war effort in a way that would require putting American troops on the ground in Iran. Hosts Sean Hannity and Mark Levin have been telling their viewers — which could include the president on any given night — that the war is going swimmingly and anyone who says otherwise is lying. 

• Axios reported this week that the White House has been urging House Republicans to stop emphasizing “mass deportations” and instead focus their rhetoric on deporting violent criminals. As Media Matters’ Matt Gertz shows, Trump’s Fox News propagandists walked away from describing his immigration policy as “mass deportations” weeks or months ago. 
• Joe Rogan said “people feel betrayed" by Trump’s war in Iran: “He ran on no more wars.” In response, Ben Shapiro said, “No one is feeling betrayed unless they fundamentally misunderstood President Trump’s foreign policy.”
• Ben Shapiro continued to air his grievances against other right-wing personalities who are opposed to the war in Iran. This week he went on a long rant in which he called Tucker Carlson a “nut,” Megyn Kelly a “coward,” and Piers Morgan a “little bitch.” Meanwhile, Carlson attacked Shapiro for his support of the war, saying, “It’s pretty weak coming from a guy who literally knows nothing about the rest of the world.”  
• Megyn Kelly said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) “is a homicidal maniac with bloodlust that is insatiable.” Kelly also said this week that “Sean Hannity is Lindsey Graham by a different name. It’s amazing to watch them cheerlead” the war with Iran.  
• A PBD Podcast panelist on the war in Iran: “I think we’re at the front door of quagmire.” 
• Podcaster Graham Allen: “If the devil had a podcast, it would look an awful lot like Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Ian Carroll, Stew Peters, the Hodge twins, and the list goes on and on and on.”

Prominent right-wing media figures have embraced regime collapse as a desirable, or at least acceptable, outcome of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. Although most of these commentators are light on specifics, in many cases they acknowledge that what they’re calling for is something that looks more like a failed state than a transitional government. 

It’s important to get the terminology clear — the phrase “regime change” implies, falsely, that external powers can replace a perceived hostile government at will with few repercussions or challenges to the state's legitimacy. “Regime collapse,” however, dispenses with even that thin pretext. All that’s left is destruction for its own sake. 

If right-wing pundits get their way and the U.S.-Israeli campaign collapses the government in Iran, the consequences would likely be disastrous for Iranians, the region, and the wider world. Already, some in conservative media are demanding the United States flood the country with small arms to incite a regime change or collapse, raising the risks of civil war in a country of more than 90 million people. If there is any country in the world that could benefit from plunging Iran into chaos, it’s Israel, which aims to remove Iran as a regional force that can resist its influence.

The conservative voices calling for regime collapse have largely abandoned any humanitarian pretexts for this war. They may yet get their wish for chaos and destruction.

• On February 28, an elementary school in Iran was bombed, killing about 175 civilians, largely young children. Right-wing media blamed Iran for this strike — but reporting indicates the strike likely was conducted by the United States. 
• Ben Shapiro: “A lot of Trump’s critics today are pointing out this tragic incident with an Iranian school at which 160 girls were killed. That is indeed tragic and it’s terrible. And it’s also called collateral damage in war.” 
• Benny Johnson reacted to missiles fired toward Jerusalem: “Keep an eye out for the end times.” 
• Trump’s media allies have been pushing the president to seize Iranian oil supplies. 
• Candace Owens has completely gone off the rails and into the realm of unapologetic conspiracy theories. And yet she’s never been more popular online. Media Matters’ Olivia Little and Kayla Gogarty wrote this great piece detailing Owens’ lucrative blabbering. 
• Daily Wire host Andrew Klavan said Pope Leo XIV’s call for peace is “girly nonsense.”

As the Trump administration seemingly contradicts itself over Israel’s involvement in bringing the U.S. into war with Iran, right-wing media figures are at odds over its messaging, further exposing long-standing divisions in the conservative landscape. One particular area of cleavage is over the role Israel played in American involvement in the war. 

After Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested the administration may have entered the war because it knew “there was going to be an Israeli action,” skeptics in right-wing media seized on the comments to suggest they revealed “Israel dragged us into this war” and Trump “fell in line.” Pro-war personalities, meanwhile, have launched attacks on their peers in return, arguing these “wannabe neo-Nazi influencers" have taken “the side of the enemy” and declaring, “Nobody drags Donald Trump into anything.” 

Media Matters’ Noah Dowe and Gideon Taaffe wrote this great piece detailing the fracture.