The joint American-Israeli military operation against the Iranian regime has now lasted three weeks, but a more insidious war is raging on the home front. President Donald Trump’s second administration is facing a highly coordinated shadow war—one waged both by influential right-wing voices outside and, more dangerously, by subversive allies within his own government.
If this campaign is not decisively defeated, the consequences could be catastrophic: a second Trump term that slips into a lame-duck status not due to voter backlash but because of an internal insurrection.
This column has previously referred to the effort as “Operation Divide MAGA.” It has reached fever pitch. While President Trump has begun addressing MAGA-related issues with commendable resolve, the need for a thorough cleanup of the Augean Stables remains urgent.
In any healthy political movement, debate is natural and often beneficial. However, what we have seen from certain high-profile podcasters, such as Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, amounts to a full-scale assault on Trump’s agenda. These provocateurs first surfaced last summer by accusing Trump of concealing a global (Mossad-tied?) pedophile ring in his Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files. More recently, their subversion has focused on foreign policy—specifically Iran and Operation Epic Fury.
Trump is a conservative nationalist whose foreign policy relies on confidence and “peace through strength”-style deterrence. Yet Carlson, Kelly, and their allies have condemned the Iran conflict as everything from “evil” (Carlson) to “clearly Israel’s war” (Kelly). This duo has accused Trump—the man they campaigned for in 2024—of engaging in heinous acts and of being an unwitting pawn of a foreign government.
It is true that Carlson and Kelly do not represent the MAGA base. A recent J.L. Partners poll shows that 83% of Republican voters support Operation Epic Fury, and Republicans agree with Trump on foreign policy by a margin of 84%-6%. Nevertheless, their platforms are vast. When Carlson, Kelly, and their allies consistently criticize the administration’s priorities they purport to support, the effect is Republican voter confusion, resentment, and depression as we approach November in a midterm election year.
Even more alarming, these subversives are not merely shouting from the rafters. They have allies inside the administration, with whom they are all but assuredly coordinating, engaging in outright sabotage against the one man—the president of the United States—who was elected to wield the “executive power” of the federal government and serve as commander in chief.
The most concerning developments are emerging from within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), where Tulsi Gabbard now holds sway. A former Democratic Hawaii congresswoman with a pro-Moscow slant once seen as a heterodox ally, Gabbard has created an environment that increasingly bears the markings of an anti-MAGA coup. Her recent rehiring of Dan Caldwell—a man dismissed last year by his (former longtime friend) Secretary of War Pete Hegseth amid allegations of leaking—reflects this shift.
Leaks of this nature are not bureaucratic slip-ups; they are direct assaults on national security and the integrity of the constitutional chain of command. It is difficult to interpret Gabbard’s move as anything other than a direct shot across the bow at Hegseth—and, by extension, Trump, who has so passionately defended since Operation Epic Fury began.
Consider Joe Kent, who until recently served under Gabbard as director of the National Counterterrorism Center. Kent very recently resigned in flamboyant fashion, rationalizing his stunt with hyper-conspiratorial, antisemitic rhetoric better suited for a Code Pink rally than government letterhead. Within hours after tendering his resignation, Kent announced he would join Carlson to tell his story. An alleged serial leaker, Kent is now under FBI investigation for spilling national security secrets. Unsurprisingly, Iranian regime propaganda television gobbled up the interview and regurgitated it for an impressionable English-speaking audience.
Kent’s move to Carlson is no coincidence. After being fired by Hegseth last year, Caldwell similarly ran to Carlson to tell his side of the story. Moreover, one of Caldwell’s higher-ranking colleagues at ODNI, Will Ruger, shares Caldwell’s professional background in the isolationist Koch network. The White House Presidential Personnel Office (PPO), formerly directed by ex-Senator Rand Paul, R-Ky., staffer Sergio Gor (since shipped halfway around the world to India), has allowed in individuals across defense, intelligence and national security spaces that are functionally anti-MAGA.
Gabbard, in U.S. Senate testimony this week, could not bring herself to agree with her boss’s assessment that Iran posed an “imminent threat” prior to the launch of Operation Epic Fury. The success of the remainder of Trump’s second term hangs in the balance.
