There are those who cry out about the broken campaign promises and the betrayal of the isolationist policy that they expected from the leader’s second presidency. And there are also Trump defenders, no matter the cost; among them is activist Laura Loomer, a known Islamophobe, who posted: “Trump will go down in history as a protector of humanity. I hope this is the beginning of his crackdown on Islam in the West.”

Or conservative media outlets such as Fox News, which have gone from praising the “president of peace” to adopting in recent days — while talks continued in Geneva over Iran’s nuclear program — a stance of support, if not outright encouragement, for Trump’s warlike impulses. The Wall Street Journal, another outlet owned by media magnate Rupert Murdoch, for its part published an editorial titled The Ayatollah Is Choosing War.

Kirk was not the only one to raise his voice. The national-populist ideologue Steve Bannon went to the White House in those days to try to persuade Trump, who in the first hours after the new strike was nowhere to be seen, besieged as he is by his ties to the millionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

In truth, both warnings proved exaggerated; the June operation was ultimately filed away by the Pentagon as a military success, though Trump overstated it by claiming it had achieved the “obliteration” of Iran’s nuclear capability. That bombing also marked the end of the so-called “12-day war” with Israel and did not trigger a regional cataclysm or a civil war.

That outcome, combined with the January 3 operation to capture the Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores — which also failed to unleash instability — has emboldened Trump on the international stage. It has also, in recent days — along with the fear of becoming, like MTG, the target of the leader’s wrath — softened criticism from a segment of the America First camp at the prospect of a new strike against Iran.