On MS NOW's The Weekend, Angelo Carusone discusses right-wing media criticism of the Iran war
Carusone: “When they talk about their criticisms of Trump at the war, they then immediately open up new fronts in criticism”
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From the March 29, 2026, edition of MS NOW's The Weekend
MOLLY JONG-FAST (CO-HOST): As the No Kings movement organized massive demonstrations across the country, the target of those protests, Donald Trump, appears to be disorganized. While a White House official tells MS NOW, Trump is growing bored with the war in Iran and wants to move on from the conflict. Reports say the president is considering sending at least ten thousand more combat troops to the Middle East. And as Americans struggle with long security lines at airports, so much so that travelers are actually paying people to wait on line for them. Trump arrives in West Palm Beach on Saturday for yet another weekend of golfing at his course. Former congressman Joe Walsh and Angelo Carusone are back with us. Angelo, what are you seeing on conservative media about this? You watch a ton of it. I apologize in advance.
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS): It depends on which part of it. I mean, the top line is that they're sort of fracturing in ways that, you know, we sort of expected. There are small cracks, but they're fully now blowing open.
JONG-FAST: But the war —
CARUSONE: And that's — they just, broadly speaking, there's one bucket that says escalate no matter what. So reports come out about potential food crisis, the issues with fertilizer, escalate. $10 to $20 gas, Newsmax is saying, just bear with it for another couple weeks, please, so suck it up sort of thing. That anything, any development, any negative story, any warning about the consequences is a call for escalation. So that's Hannity, you know, that's the usual affair. That's the Fox News, the traditional sort of right-wing media.
And then there's that bucket outside of it that are actively and vigorously against it. They are against any escalation. And one of the things that is a significant takeaway that ties into what you're talking about with No Kings is that when they talk about their criticisms of Trump with the war, they then immediately open up new fronts in criticism. So now, it turns into corruption. Right? It turns into incompetence. Right? So they don't just begin and end, and now I'm mad at him about this. It's like, well, now I'm going to start taking other shots.
And I think that's the one of the things that that's happening is that they're using it as a launch pad for a wider swath of criticisms.
EUGENE DANIELS (CO-HOST): But this — Sorry, go ahead, Jackie.
JACKIE ALEMANY (CO-HOST): Well, I guess, do you feel like, though, this debate has transcended from the MAGA-lectuals to actual Trump voters?
CARUSONE: There's definitely — yeah, there's definitely — yes, absolutely.
DANIELS: But the polling shows that the MAGA line voters, 90%, I think — control room, check me on that, but 90% in the NBC News poll —
CARUSONE: Yep.
DANIELS: That came out like a week ago said that they were fine with the war.
CARUSONE: That's right. Anyone that's going to self-identify as MAGA is going to — that's basically saying I'm self-identified as a Trump loyalist or a Trump cultist. That number is going to be at 30%, and the people within that bucket, they're not going to move. They're going to stay as high as 90 because they one of — it's a pass/fail test, and their pass is whether or not they're continuing to support Trump no matter what.
But even Megyn Kelly noted that when Trump is citing those stats, he's ignoring the fact that that's only a very small subset of the larger population. There's still a larger universe that MAGA in a sense that they voted for Trump last time, there was a part of the MAGA coalition on the media landscape — that's different. If you pull those sort of influencers or podcasters that were part of the MAGA storyline in 2024, they are not in that in that bucket, and that's where these terms are going to start to have shifting definitions over the next few months as this continues to evolve.
JONG-FAST: Who are the anti — anti-war voices or the dissent?
CARUSONE: I think the big bellwether — I mean, obviously, Tucker, right? You know, that — Megyn Kelly to a degree, but I think Joe Rogan. But then there's this other bucket, and I think there's two that are notable.
One is Shawn Ryan, who is a sort of a former military guy who does a lot of conspiracy-type podcast news and stuff. He's fully switched now. He's completely opposed now, no matter what. And then the second layer that's really anti, it's all the people you wouldn't think about. So video game streamers that were voting for Trump. These manosphere guys, this guy, Sneako, probably the most influential person that no one here has ever heard of or the audience. Okay? He's got a massive crowd, mostly speaks —
DANIELS: Everyone's writing down —
CARUSONE: He's a far-right figure, broadly speaking — Fully, vigorously against this. So that second layer has basically been evaporated.
JOE WALSH (GUEST): And it filters down to Trump voters on the margins. Again, I engage with hundreds of them every day. On the margins, the Epstein thing peeled some of them off. On the margins, the tariff and the fact that everything costs so much, peels some of them off. And this war has peeled off some of Trump voters on the margins.