An open letter to MAGA cultists everywhere:

I know the next two sentences will strike you as elitist, but so be it. Anyone who’s shocked by your Sun God’s illegal military thrust into Iran is clearly stupider than a box of rocks. Anyone who actually took him at face value when he promised not to wage foreign wars should be required to take a course in remedial cognition.

You pined for a “peace” prez who’d free us from military entanglements in faraway places you’d be hard pressed to find on a map. You clapped like trained seals whenever He played the dove in his rallies. But since you gargled his swill and deemed it delicious, I have a question for you:

Happy now?

Clearly, some of you are not. Marjorie Taylor Greene says you’re “going to be force fed and gaslighted” by the Trump regime’s “sick f–ing liars.” Andrew Tate, king of the MAGA manosphere, yells on social media, “NOBODY WANTS THIS WAR.” Tucker Carlson says Trump’s decision to bomb Iran is “disgusting and evil.” Natalie Winters, who co-hosts Steve Bannon’s MAGA podcast, says Trump hasn’t explained his attack on Iran: “The messaging, much like the Epstein files, is all over the place.”

So I have to believe, at minimum, you and your fellow cultists are a tad confused by what’s going on. Didn’t your leader announce, just last year, that “Iran’s nuclear facilities have been obliterated,” and that any reports to the contrary were “fake news”? Perhaps right now you’re feeling just a wee bit…dare I suggest it…betrayed?

Nevertheless, having watched you these last 10 years, I assume most of you will un-think such unpleasant thoughts, and that, with all deliberate speed, you will do whatever needs to be done, in the neurons between your ears, to align yourself with the whims of the war lord.

At first that mental exercise may not be easy, given everything he has long said. Like in 2016 when he said that George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq was “a big fat mistake.”

Like at the 2016 Republican convention where he decreed “we must abandon the failed policy of nation-building and regime change.”

Like in 2019 when he blared on social media “GOING INTO THE MIDDLE EAST IS THE WORST DECISION EVER MADE.”

Like in 2024 when he ridiculed “war hawks sitting in a nice building in Washington saying, ‘Oh gee, let’s send troops right into the mouth of the enemy.’”

Like in 2024 when he sent out campaign surrogates to say that “a vote for Donald Trump is a vote to end wars, not start them,” and that “Trump = Peace.”

Heck, we can go all the way back to 2012 and 2013 to resurrect these tweeted beauts: “Obama will some day attack Iran to show how tough he is” and “Now that Obama’s poll numbers are in a tailspin – watch for him to launch a strike in…Iran.”

But I suspect you will find ways to tell yourselves he was really playing a brilliant game of 10-dimensional chess.

You’ll tell yourselves his refusal to consult Congress – to make a public case for war, to identify an imminent threat – is just what any CEO would do when you run government like a business. Besides, he’ll fix Congress in November with his plans for election integrity.

You’ll tell yourselves the timing of his new war, done in cahoots with the manifestly corrupt Israeli leader, had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with his tailspinning poll numbers, or with the revelation key Epstein files detailing FBI interviews with an underage sex assault accuser are mysteriously nowhere to be found.

Your fealty should not be enough, however. Now you must act on your realigned beliefs. Get yourselves to the nearest military recruitment office and sign up for duty. Don’t claim your bone spurs hurt.

Better yet, make it crystal clear you won’t fight with any gays, any women, any wrong-colored people, anyone with a whiff of DEI. This war of choice should be the province of white conservative Christian men, the core of the MAGA corps, and if you indeed fit that profile, you should man up and charge across that ocean with fire and brimstone. Put your bodies on the line for what you rationalize. You bought your god’s BS, you own it, and you should be willing to die for it. And if you win a Purple Heart, mail it to the White House because he’ll want to wear it.

And if you land in Iran and get greeted as liberators, bear one thing in mind. He’ll need manly muscle to build a Trump Teheran hotel. Just don’t expect to get paid.

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Copyright 2026 Dick Polman, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Dick Polman, a veteran national political columnist based in Philadelphia and a Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania, writes the Subject to Change newsletter. Email him at [email protected]