Is MAGA breaking over Iran? Or are foreign influencers to blame? | Opinion

President Donald Trump's disastrous war in Iran is driving division in his MAGA base, as he bickers with big-name former allies breaking with him.

Is this MAGA schism an authentic rejection for Trump, who campaigned for a decade against American military misadventures abroad but then launched one? Or is this the work of foreign influencers, paying to destabilize Trump's support here at home?

Will Sommer wrote in an interesting April 9 article for The Bulwark about MAGA influencers who seem to relish not just the fight about the war in Iran but also the debate about who is instigating that fight. That centers on an unsubstantiated rumor that the Department of Justice is investigating whether some right-wing personalities are being paid by foreign sources to stir the controversy.

Two things jump out from that article.

First, so much about MAGA is built on a shoddy foundation, so it's not at all surprising that Sommer traced the claim about that investigation back to a short April 8 social media post from an anonymous right-wing account on X.

Second, at least one of the big-name MAGA personalities now shouting out support for the alleged investigation of foreign funders for right-wing content was revealed in 2024 to have received foreign funding – from Russia – to support his right-wing content.

'Will be telling who crashes out'

Back in September 2024, as I wrote about it at the time, the DOJ indicted two executives from the Russian state-run media outfit known as RT, Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, charging them with conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

That criminal case said the RT executives worked with two "foreign nationals" who lived in America and cofounded "U.S. Company-1," which the DOJ called a "covert project" to funnel $10 million into right-wing content production to influence public opinion in this country.

It didn't take much digging to identify "U.S. Company-1" as Tenet Media, established in Nashville in 2022 by a pair of married Canadian right-wing commentators, Lauren Chen and Liam Donovan.

Three MAGA influencers ‒ Benny Johnson, Tim Pool and Dave Rubin ‒ all received funding through Tenet Media, though all three insisted at the time that they had no idea their revenue streams were full of Russian rubles.

Johnson, in a pair of April 8 social media posts, replied "good" to a post about the new alleged DOJ investigation into MAGA division about Iran, adding, "Will be telling who crashes out over this. I welcome it."

Rubin appears to be sticking with MAGA, recently posting social media attacks against former Fox News regulars Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, two MAGA personalities who have drawn Trump's ire for breaking with him on Iran.

Pool on April 9 seemed to break with Trump because the president had attacked Carlson and Kelly.

It's astounding that these three guys were found to be raking in the rubles, whether they knew it or not, and then just claimed to be the victims in that scheme and moved on with their profitable rackets.

A Trump-era trifecta of anti-transparency

Things were apparently far more bumpy for Chen and Donovan. Chen, in a three-page statement posted on social media in September on the first anniversary of the DOJ indictment of the RT executives, danced a curious two-step toward victimhood.

She said Merrick Garland, who was attorney general when the indictment dropped, "painted TENET as a covert Russian propaganda mouthpiece." But she did that after acknowledging the indictment was for "two Russian individuals that worked in conjunction with our company."

Chen and Donovan were not charged with any crimes. She wrote that the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York told her lawyer that the investigation into their company had been closed.

Chen's statement also said the work-based immigration visas she and Donovan used to live in the United States were not renewed. But in December, the Canadian thanked the Trump-run Department of State for helping her and Donovan return to Nashville. And on April 6, the couple was at the White House for the annual Easter Egg Roll event.

All this left me with two obvious questions.

What is the status of the criminal case against the two RT employees? The court docket shows no activity since the indictment was issued.

And was Chen accurate when she said that the investigation into her company had been closed?

I asked the Department of Justice, the FBI and the Southern District of New York for answers.

A spokesperson for the DOJ declined to comment and suggested I contact the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. An FBI spokesperson declined to comment and suggested I contact the DOJ. A spokesperson for the the Southern District of New York declined to comment.

There it was: a perfect Trump-era trifecta of anti-transparency. What a shock from three arms of a federal agency that so often – and so ludicrously – claims to be the "most transparent Department of Justice in history."

Follow USA TODAY columnist Chris Brennan on X: @ByChrisBrennan