Chris Bambery argues that there is a generational split in the Maga movement and the ‘No Kings’ protests are likely to make it bigger

Last weekend saw the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas Texas. It brings together key figures from Donald Trump’s Maga movement, where attendees are supposed to rally round the great man.

Last year’s conference left us with some abiding, if unsettling memories. Elon Musk took to the stage wielding a chainsaw to promise he would slash federal bureaucracy. Vice President J D Vance stated that undocumented immigration was the ‘greatest threat’ facing the United States and Europe. President Donald Trump, as usual, was the keynote speaker at the closing rally, and spoke at length, praising his own accomplishments.

This year, Trump and other administration figures were missing. They claimed they were busy with the Iran war, but perhaps they’d got wind of a changing mood among the Maga faithful.

The message from organisers was the need for unity behind Trump. Trump defender and evangelist, Franklin Graham, said that war with Iran made this a critical time for the country adding, ‘We can discuss our differences, but do it with respect without attacking and tearing down the other person. Save that for the socialists.’

Conservative influencer Benny Johnson said he was well aware of debates over the war within the conservative movement but argued that Trump’s supporters should focus on his victories, such as tighter border security. Like many Trump defenders he talked up the danger of ‘Marxists’ who are going to be ‘running hard against us in the midterms’, and tried to slap down any criticism of the war effort.

Although most platform speakers kept to the script and avoided mentioning the war, it was the elephant in the room and managed to barge its way into proceedings. Former Republican representative for Florida, Matt Gaetz, told the conference that, ‘A ground invasion of Iran will make our country poorer and less safe. It will mean higher gas prices, higher food prices, and I’m not sure we would end up killing more terrorists than we would create.’ Erik Prince, the former CEO of the Blackwater mercenary group, told the conference that he had ‘counseled as loud as possible against doing this in the first place’, and warned that a ground attack on Iran would present Americans with ‘imagery of burning US warships’. He rightly said the political fallout would be immense.

However, political realism couldn’t overwhelm xenophobia completely. The former crown prince of Iran, Reza Pahlavi, the son of the former Shah, received a standing ovation after pledging to take Iran from chanting, ‘Death to America’ to ‘God Bless America’. He thanked Trump for the war and vowed to ‘make Iran great again’, concluding that, the Iranian regime must be completely removed.

He was oblivious to the deaths of two thousand Iranian civilians or that both Washington and Tel Aviv have recognised that much of the population has rallied around the flag because of US-Israeli bombing.

Nevertheless, the conference revealed a clear split between older and younger Republicans, and this reflects national trends. Research shows that  whereas 61% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the war, among Republican supporters 69% approve of how Trump is handling the conflict and 71% think the U.S. made the right decision to go to war. But that is far stronger among older Republicans.

Eighty-four percent of Republicans who are 65 and older approve of how Trump is handling the conflict, but among eighteen to 29 year olds that falls to 49%. And those younger, dissenting voices were heard from the conference floor.

One attendee was thirty-year-old Joseph Bolick, an Army and Marine Corps veteran from Tyler, Texas, who has voted for Trump since 2016 but now says he no longer supports him and feels betrayed because Trump promised to end wars and help Americans who are suffering. Benjamin Williams, a 25-year-old marketing specialist for Young Americans for Liberty, told reporters, ‘We did not want to see more wars. We wanted actual America First policies, and Trump was very explicit about that. It does feel like a betrayal, for sure.’ Sean O’Brien reiterated the view that the war is a ‘betrayal’ and added on the thought of a ground attack on Iran, ‘that’s what keeps me up at night.’

While younger attendees worried about being drafted and the cost of living, older ones were supportive of Trump. Retired defense contractor Joe Ropar of McKinney, Texas, told the LA Times: ‘I don’t believe he [Trump] started a new war. He was acting in response to a forty year-old war by Iran, How long were we supposed to wait? I think he did what he had to do when he had to do it.’

Kelle Phillips, a 61-year-old author and religious instructor from Frisco, told the paper:

‘You campaign on what you want to do and then the world’s dynamics happen, I think the difference is if you have someone in the Iranian regime who wants to destroy America, you can’t reason with them.’

The gap between young and old in the Maga movement is likely to grow. There is a mass movement confronting Trump that is bound to eat into the confidence of the Maga faithful.

Organisers of the ‘No Kings’ protests across the US claim that ‘at least 8 million people gathered this past weekend at more than 3,300 events across all 50 states.’

What was striking about the wave of protests was that almost half of the protests took place in Republican strongholds like Texas, Florida and Ohio; each of which had over a hundred events, and states like Idaho, Wyoming and Utah that had events in double figures.

Trump’s plan for a ground invasion of Iran is bound to ignite more protests and open up more cracks in his base.