A Key MAGA Divide to Watch

The hawks vs. the doves.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio (left) and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (right) hail from opposite sides of the Trump administration’s foreign policy divide. (Photo by the White House)

Donald Trump and his allies are fond of the phrase, “Promises made, promises kept.”

And they have a point: whether you like what he’s doing or not, you can’t deny that he’s doing. In less than three months in office, Trump has signed a record 130 executive orders, making progress on a wide array of his policy objectives. Tariffs? Check. Cracking down on border crossings? Check. Leaving the Paris climate deal? Check. Unwinding federal DEI programs? Check. January 6th pardons? Check. The list goes on.

But one of his more ambitious promises remains conspicuously unfulfilled. Asked about the conflict between Russia and Ukraine at a CNN town hall during the 2024 campaign, Trump pledged: “If I’m president, I will have that war settled in one day, 24 hours.”

“I’ll meet with Putin,” he said. “I’ll meet with Zelensky. They both have weaknesses and they both have strengths. And within 24 hours that war will be settled. It will be over. It will be absolutely over.”

88 days later, the war in Ukraine very much continues.

Trump did not promise a similar timeline for the war in Gaza, but he also pledged that he would bring about an end to the Israel/Hamas conflict in his second term.

Since winning re-election, Trump has scored diplomatic victories on each front, with his team playing a key role in negotiating a 42-day ceasefire in Gaza and a 30-day ceasefire on maritime and energy attacks in Russia and Ukraine.

But neither success has led to peace: Israel ended the ceasefire in Gaza last month, and Russia announced plans to resume attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure this morning. (According to Ukraine, Russia had already been violating the agreement on a near-daily basis.)

Now, Trump appears to already be considering giving up on at least one of the negotiations. “If it is not possible to end the war in Ukraine, we need to move on,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this morning in Paris, where he had been conducting talks with European and Ukrainian officials.

Rubio said that the Trump administration would decide “in a matter of days whether or not this is doable in the next few weeks.” He did not make clear what “moving on” would look like, and whether the U.S. would continue aiding Ukraine — or walk away from involvement in the war altogether — if negotiations fell apart.

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Team Trump’s quick turn from negotiating a peace deal in Ukraine to “moving on” — after just a few months of trying — highlights the administration’s divided soul on foreign policy.

The president himself has long been animated by two competing impulses when it comes to world affairs: a desire to show strength, and a desire to strike deals. Oftentimes, it’s hard to do both at once, which is how you end up with the “candidate of peace” (as JD Vance called Trump) who also promises to “bomb the hell” out of his adversaries.

This contradiction was perhaps best shown in Trump’s victory speech this past November, where he said:

You know, we had no wars. Four years, we had no wars. Except we defeated ISIS, we defeated ISIS in record time. But we had no wars. They said, ‘He will start a war.’ I’m not going to start a war. I’m going to stop wars.

We had no wars. Well, except for that one. Which we won in record time, by the way.

Trump’s internal split on foreign policy was poorly reflected in his first administration, which was mainly composed of officials who mirrored his more hawkish side, but is on perfect display in his second, which is made up of a complicated mix of hawks and doves.

With ceasefire talks sputtering in both the Middle East and Ukraine, the splits within the team have begun to bubble into public view.

Lately, Trump has moved his attention from a deal in Gaza to a deal with Iran (itself a reflection of the changes from his first term to his second, having gone from exiting the Iran nuclear deal to now attempting to negotiate a new one).

According to Axios, Vice President Vance has emerged as the “unofficial leader” pushing for an Iran agreement, telling colleagues “that the U.S. should be ready to make compromises in order to make it happen.” He’s reportedly backed by White House special envoy Steve Witkoff (a Trump friend from the real estate world who now plays a key role in all high-profile U.S. negotiations) and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on the inside, as well as MAGA pundit Tucker Carlson on the outside.

A competing camp is made up of Secretary of State Marco Rubio and national security adviser Michael Waltz on the inside, and Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on the outside. Per Axios, they are “extremely skeptical” of an Iran deal; unlike Vance, they think the U.S. should make no compromises, and instead “insist Tehran fully dismantle its nuclear program — and should either strike Iran directly or support an Israeli strike if they don’t.”

Similar factional lines are being drawn in Trump’s negotiations with Russia: Rubio and Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg are pushing Trump to “be more skeptical of Moscow’s desire for peace with Ukraine,” according to the Wall Street Journal, calling for “more caution when dealing with Putin and for a harder line against Moscow’s demands for territorial concessions from Kyiv.”

Meanwhile, Witkoff is reportedly urging Trump to stay the course and take seriously Russian president Vladimir Putin’s claims that he wants peace.

For now, Trump appears to be siding with the doves. According to the Journal, the president has taken Witkoff’s side in the internal debate on Russia. Per the New York Times, Israel recently developed plans to attack Iranian nuclear sites next month. But the plans needed U.S. support, and Trump declined to give it, opting to continue negotiating with Tehran instead.

(For those keeping track, that’s twice that Trump has taken Witkoff’s side against Rubio’s. One wonders how Witkoff felt about Rubio saying this morning that the administration might “move on” from talks with Russia, and what he may have said to Trump about it. One also wonders how long it might be until the “shadow Secretary of State,” as Witkoff has been called, drops the first word from that title.)

But it’s clear that voices from both sides are in Trump’s head, which can sometimes lead to mixed messages from the president, who will veer from calling for Israel to “finish up” its war because it’s “losing a lot of the world” to declaring America’s plans to “take over” Gaza, or from blaming Ukraine for the war to saying that he’s “pissed off” with Russia for dragging its feet in negotiations.

A similar split was also evident from the leaked national security Signal chat, which once again showed Vance as the leader of an anti-interventionist faction within the administration. And the debate has also played out over personnel, with far-right activist Laura Loomer succeeding in pushing out six National Security Council staffers deemed too hawkish, while Politico reported this morning that Rubio has dismissed MAGA favorite Pete Marocco, who had been the official in charge of dismantling USAID.

The move is gonna “bite” Rubio, a Trump ally told Politico, adding of the secretary of state: “He’s really not a MAGA guy, he’s a neocon.” (Neoconservatives are the more hawkish, pro-interventionist wing of the GOP.)

As Trump finds difficulty striking the peace deals that he promised, the next stage of his foreign policy will likely be determined by which of his “team of rivals” is in his ear: those pushing continued negotiations, or those who’d rather pivot to military might.

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More news to know

• NBC: Appeals court rejects Trump request in Kilmar Abrego Garcia case, citing due process concerns

The opinion — penned by a Reagan appointee — is only seven pages, and it’s worth reading. Key passage: “It is, as we have noted, all too possible to see in this case an incipient crisis, but it may present an opportunity as well. We yet cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos. This case presents their unique chance to vindicate that value and to summon the best that is within us while there is still time.”

• Fox: Dem Senator Van Hollen meets, shakes hands with Abrego Garcia; El Salvador says inmate will remain in custody

• WSJ: Trump and Powell on Collision Course Without Easy Escape

• WaPo: U.S. intelligence contradicts Trump’s justification for mass deportations

• AP: US strikes on a Yemeni oil port kill 74 people, Houthis say, in deadliest attack of Trump campaign

• Politico: Trump eyes targeting more tax-exempt groups while denouncing Harvard

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The day ahead

• President Trump will participate in a swearing-in ceremony for Dr. Mehmet Oz as Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

• The House and Senate are on recess.

• The Supreme Court has nothing on its schedule.