MAGA-World Is Divided Over Trump’s Foreign-Policy Picks

Some of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees to serve in top national security jobs in his next administration have received a mixed reception among the restraint wing of the Republican Party, who see them as foreign-policy hawks whose views fly in the face of the isolationist currents that have gained ground in the party in recent years.

The president-elect’s selection of Sen. Marco Rubio as secretary of state and Rep. Mike Waltz as national security advisor has been met with concern among the sizable wing of Trump’s supporters who have been frustrated by U.S. military interventions, including in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“The MAGA-world restrainers are reeling,” said Jacob Heilbrunn, the editor of the National Interest. “They’re dumbfounded.”

While Rubio and Waltz have tacked closer to Trump’s foreign-policy worldview in recent years, both are widely seen as mainstream Republican hawks who have long taken a hard line on Russia, China, and Iran.

“I think it’s clear that the reception among the anti-interventionist wing of the Republican Party was not positive this week,” said Curt Mills, the executive director of the American Conservative, who noted that some of their concerns had been allayed by Trump’s nomination of former Reps. Matt Gaetz and Tulsi Gabbard to serve as attorney general and director of national intelligence, respectively; both are ardent advocates of a restrained approach to the use of U.S. military might. 

Assuming each is confirmed by the Senate, Trump’s future cabinet could include staunch Russia hawks sitting alongside Gabbard, who has been accused by prominent Republican lawmakers of echoing Moscow’s talking points on the war in Ukraine.

Rubio, who sits on both the foreign relations and intelligence committees in the Senate, was highly critical of the rapid U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 and last year co-sponsored legislation that would make it more difficult for a U.S. president to unilaterally withdraw from NATO—an idea Trump floated in his first term. 

Conservative comedian Dave Smith described Trump’s selection of Rubio as a “disaster” in a post on X. “Might as well give Liz Cheney the State Department,” he wrote, referring to the former Republican representative whom Trump has called a “radical war hawk.”

Waltz is a retired Green Beret who served as an advisor on defense and counterterrorism to former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and former Vice President Dick Cheney, two key architects of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Waltz has echoed Trump’s calls for NATO members in Europe to bolster their defense spending and in 2023 called for Congress to pass an Authorization for Use of Military Force to enable the U.S. military to pursue drug cartels in Mexico.

In an interview with Fox News, he clarified that this did not necessarily entail U.S. troops being deployed south of the border. “I want to be clear: I’m not talking about U.S. troops. But I’m talking about cyber, drones, intelligence assets, naval assets,” Waltz said.

Sumantra Maitra, the director of research and outreach at the American Ideas Institute, which publishes the American Conservative, said there was a key distinction between the hawkish worldview of Rubio and Waltz and the neoconservatives of the Bush administration who sought to sow the seeds of democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

“These are not traditional neoconservative voices,” said Maitra of Rubio and Waltz. “They are not nation-builders.”

Others noted that a number of Trump’s cabinet picks have shifted their foreign-policy outlooks in recent years. “I do think that several of them have gone through honest reevaluations of their past positions,” said Dan Caldwell, a public policy advisor at the Defense Priorities think tank, singling out Rubio and Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for defense secretary. 

An Army veteran and a Fox News host, Hegseth has described himself as a “recovering neocon,” and his journey from proponent to skeptic of the use of U.S. military force has matched that of his party. 

“I think a lot of us who were very hawkish and believe in American military might and strength were very resistant to how candidate Trump characterized the wars,” Hegseth told the New York Times in 2020. “But if we are honest with ourselves, there is no doubt that we need to radically reorient how we do it. How much money have we invested, how many lives have we invested and has it actually made us safer? Is it still worth it?”

Around the same time that Hegseth’s remarks were published by the Times, he urged Trump to escalate attacks on Iran in an appearance on Fox News, calling for the president to give Tehran a week to return to nuclear negotiations before striking the country’s infrastructure, oil, and nuclear facilities.

“A lot of veterans’ advocates have stood up for him in recent days, persuaded he does take seriously the cost of these wars, especially as he’s gotten older,” said Mills of Hegseth. “But his ideology and ability to manage the largest bureaucracy on earth remain manifestly unclear.”