Gaza, Lebanon, Iran: How Wars Shattered MAGA Coalition
Many of those constituents will never come out for MAGA, never come out for Trump ever again.
The 2024 US election featured a notable shift in Trump’s coalition-building: unprecedented outreach to Muslim Americans, Orthodox Christians, and diaspora populations from the Middle East, including Greek Americans. These groups represented an opportunity to broaden Trump’s base beyond its traditional evangelical core. Yet the subsequent wars in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran-which have continued with only intermittent ceasefires since June 2025-have shattered that coalition in ways that may be irreversible.
Christine Arakelian speaks from direct knowledge of these dynamics, noting that many in these constituencies feel they were “used like a tool.” Trump made specific calls to prominent religious authorities before the November election, promises of a more inclusive foreign policy, and assurances about ending forever wars. None of this materialized. Instead, the administration doubled down on conflicts that directly harm the communities it had courted.
The consequences are tangible. Muslim American voters in Michigan, a swing state Trump needed, voted for him based on his peace messaging and promises of religious minority inclusion. They will not return. Greek Americans, Orthodox Christian populations, and Middle Eastern diaspora communities report similar disillusionment. The sentiment is aptly summarized by a common aphorism: “Fooled me once, shame on you. Fooled me twice, shame on me.”
What makes this fracture particularly damaging is that the Republican Party, as currently constituted, faces structural difficulty in rebuilding this trust. Arakelian flatly states she does not believe these communities will return to supporting the GOP in the foreseeable future. The broken trust is not a negotiable difference but a profound betrayal of explicit campaign commitments. This has immediate implications for swing-state mathematics and demographic coalition strength, but also longer-term implications for whether any major US political party can claim credible support from American religious minorities on foreign policy.
Transcript
Christine Arakelian: The MAGA coalition is fractured. And in fact, Some groups within the MAGA coalition may never come back. One of the things that MAGA made a point of doing during the most recent presidential election is reaching out to Muslim Americans, reaching out to the Orthodox, reaching out to effectively religious minorities in the Middle East and their diaspora populations. I would even put the Greeks within this bucket, okay? Many of those constituents will never come out for MAGA, never come out for Trump ever again. And I can't tell you who said this, but Trump made some calls to some pretty prominent religious authorities prior to the November presidential election. The general feeling is they were used like a tool. And that cuts across the board. The Muslim populations in Michigan who voted for Trump, they're not voting for him again. So that coalition is fractured because what Trump promised was not just basically that he was going to end forever wars. That was one component of it.