Trump is on the ropes as Maga turns against Israel

Donald Trump is already fighting one front in a growing war with his Maga movement over his involvement with sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. But soon he could be fighting a second front, this time over his involvement with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu.

On Monday night, Marjorie Taylor Greene became the first Republican member of Congress to brand Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocide”. Posting on X, the lawmaker broke with Trump on the issue: “October 7 in Israel was horrific, and all hostages must be returned”, she wrote. “But so is the genocide, humanitarian crisis, and starvation happening in Gaza.”

The Georgia Congresswoman has a complicated record when it comes to Israel and Jewish people. Until now, she has remained loyal to Trump’s policy of ironclad support for Prime Minister Netanyahu, even at times branding Democrat critics of Israel as antisemitic. Yet she is also known for promoting conspiracy theories, and in 2018 questioned whether the deadly forest fires in California could have been the work of space lasers connected to the Rothschilds, an antisemitic falsehood that she parroted in a now-deleted Facebook post. She later rejected claims she had held this belief.

Greene’s decision to use the term genocide came on the same day Trump told reporters that “real starvation” is taking place in Gaza, rejecting Netanyahu’s claim that no famine is occurring in the territory. “I see it and you can’t fake that”, he said during a trip to Scotland, referring to the images of emaciated people emanating from Gaza. “So we’re going to be even more involved.”

Trump himself is under growing pressure from other prominent figures within his own movement to break with Netanyahu. The seeds were sown last month, when the President’s former political adviser Steve Bannon declared that Israel can no longer be considered an “ally” of the United States.

“I’ve been a strong believer in Israel,” Bannon told Newsweek in an interview last month about US and Israeli military strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities. After describing pro-Israel figures within Maga as “Netanyahu town-criers”, he insisted the Israeli government was “not an ally”, adding: “And don’t ask me on that, ask President Trump.”

Former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz is another prominent Maga figure who has quietly hardened his position on Israel. Now an anchor on far-right broadcaster One America News, Gaetz caused consternation in Israeli government circles last week by devoting a segment of his nightly broadcast to the killing of Palestinian-American Saif Musallet by Israeli settlers in the West Bank. Branding the Israeli’s military actions “aggressive”, he called the killing “another scandal”.

“Are innocent people, families, even Americans just getting summarily slain?” asked Gaetz, rhetorically. “This isn’t an isolated tragedy”, he assured viewers of the network, which is hugely popular with Trump’s grassroots.

Behind the scenes, Bannon has reportedly been counselling Trump to heed growing disquiet among his younger supporters about Israel’s conduct in Gaza. Politico reported on Tuesday that “Maga is careening toward one of the last remaining Republican shibboleths: unconditional support for Israel”. Bannon told the site that “for the under-30-year-old Maga base, Israel has almost no support”. He predicted that Trump’s acknowledgment of starvation occurring in Gaza will only hasten a further collapse in support.

On Capitol Hill, Greene remains a lone Republican voice. No other elected member of the party has gone anywhere near the term genocide, and the vast majority of Senate Republicans continue to line up solidly behind Israel and its wartime leader. AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, remains one of the country’s most powerful political lobbies, donating more than $51m to lawmakers, political action committees and party committees in between 2023 and 2024.

They may be more than a year away, but the November 2026 mid-term elections are looming and Republicans in the House and the Senate will be cognisant of shifting opinions among their potential voters towards Netanyahu’s conduct in Gaza. Barring a ceasefire and resolution of the crisis in the territory, Republican incumbents may find the issue increasingly potent on the campaign trail.

Greene may be the first Republican lawmaker to use the term genocide over the crisis in Gaza, but in the months ahead she will almost certainly not be the last.