Long Island Trump supporters divided over Iran strikes

A week into the largest U.S. military operation in the Middle East since the 2003 invasion of Iraq, some supporters of President Donald Trump on Long Island say they trust the president and view the attack of Iran as necessary to protect Americans.

Some said the military operations are a fulfillment of Trump’s “America First” agenda, but others were more cautious or even critical, highlighting a divide that emerged among some high-profile and MAGA-aligned pundits this past week who said the attacks violated the president's previously stated opposition to foreign wars.

Opponents of the U.S. and Israeli war on Iran say the attack risks pushing the nation into another open-ended Middle East conflict with vague objectives, mounting U.S. deaths and potentially devastating regional consequences. Critics across the political divide warn that military escalation could trigger a broader conflict involving Iran’s allies, including Russia, threaten global energy markets, and put more American troops in danger while doing little to produce lasting stability. Many also say that diplomacy, sanctions and international pressure are safer and better-tested tools in the volatile region than a protracted military operation.

Newsday interviewed more than a dozen Trump supporters who mostly framed the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran as a way to deter future attacks on Americans and prevent a nuclear-armed Iran. While they supported the initial airstrikes, many expressed concern about a prolonged military presence such as those in Afghanistan and Iraq. On Friday, Trump called for Iran's "unconditional surrender." So far, the conflict has claimed the lives of over 1,200 Iranians, The Associated Press reported.

“I think [Trump] as our leader, he’s going to do what it takes to get the job done,” said Douglas Greene, a 64-year-old retiree, of Bayport. “Our past leaders, all they did was pay out money all the time and it just fueled the fire.”

Greene, a Republican, said he doesn’t believe the war changes Trump’s America First agenda, which in part has meant limiting prolonged and costly foreign wars. 

Trusting Trump

Few places on Long Island are as reliably pro-Trump as the Town of Smithtown, where the president won every election district in 2024 and a Democrat has not won townwide office in more than 20 years.

"I trust Donald Trump, I trust his judgment, and if we had to put boots on the ground, I’m OK with that,” said Guy Caligiuri, owner of Patio Pizza, a St. James joint, who got a Twitter shoutout from Trump in 2020 after he said on Fox News that a customer had threatened to boycott him because of his Trump flag. The restaurant’s decor has since been updated to include a “Gulf of America” flag planted firmly in the gravel at the bottom of an aquarium in the dining room.

Caligiuri said there was a moral case for killing the leadership of a regime that has killed its own citizens during protests that started last year, as well as a national security case in preventing “stockpiling nuclear weapons and maybe killing Americans.”

Customer Bruce Meyer, 69, a retired Long Beach police officer from Head of the Harbor who said he was a political independent but a Trump voter, described a moral calculus of war: the extreme violence of a military attack on Iran would end a lower-level but decades-long campaign that allowed Iranian-backed terrorists to kill hundreds of Americans, he said, while eliminating future risk.  

“Republican or Democrat, the presidents that have been in charge the last few decades all seem to have kicked the can down the road,” Meyer said. “What do you need, another 9/11?”

Debee Rommel, who works at the pizzeria and described herself as a political independent, said the American-Israeli attacks would be welcomed by Iranians “who are actually asking for help from the U.S. to overturn this government.”

Karl Snyder, 78, a retired paper salesman from West Islip who voted for Trump, said the attack was payback for historical wrongs that occurred in the 1980s, including the mistreatment of the bodies of American soldiers killed in a failed hostage rescue attempt and the Iranian-funded suicide bombing of a U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon that killed 241 service members.

He said the American attack was preemptive.

“They say, ‘Kill America’ all the time … I believe them.”

Cautious optimism

National polling in the immediate aftermath of the United States and Israel attacking Iran has revealed a skeptical nation. A Washington Post flash poll on March 1 of 1,003 Americans found about 4 in 10 respondents strongly opposed the strikes while 2 in 10 strongly supported them. The support was largely among Republicans with about 8 in 10 expressing support.

A Fox News poll published March 3 found 50% approve the current military action and 50% disapprove. Republicans in that poll also largely supported the military action, with 84% saying they approve.

Bill Schreiber, 57, of Bayport, described his viewpoint as “cautiously optimistic” while acknowledging Trump’s first campaign promised “no war.”

He also said he was “very concerned” about the service members in harm’s way, noting he was thinking about how many of his friends have children who could serve in the military.

“It’s a chess match,” he said. “Trump’s very shrewd, whether it’s business, whether it’s politics, that’s his nature. He’s a master at some of those strategies. Not to mention the people he has around him.”

Gregg Freedner, 61, of Ronkonkoma, a Republican voter who said he doesn’t necessarily identify as MAGA, said he believed the attack was a long time coming.

“I remember everything Iran has done since 1979, and in my view, I thought every president, from Reagan on, should have knocked them out as a threat,” the retired social studies teacher said.

He said he didn’t believe the fighting would continue much longer, “considering how effective we’ve been killing so many of their leaders so fast.”

“I'm just waiting for when there'll be a cooler head who's going to rise and basically look to call it quits,” he said.

MAGA divide

Few places on Long Island are as supportive of Trump as Ronkonkoma’s America First Warehouse, an event space and recording studio dedicated to the MAGA brand and president.

Stephen Ruth, 53, of Port Jefferson, co-hosted a podcast there until he said he was recently fired for failing to project enough of a pro-Trump viewpoint.

Ruth said in an interview that he did not support the war and felt the U.S. involvement is the result of Israeli pressure to put its interests first. He said Trump promised to end wars and not start new ones.

“This is America first, not Donald Trump first,” he said.

Ruth, who gained notoriety in 2015 for tampering with red-light cameras, resulting in his arrest, said he doesn’t believe Iran posed a threat to the United States.

“The whole thing could drag us right into World War III,” said Ruth, who ran unsuccessfully for public office in 2016 and 2019 as a Libertarian.

He said some Americans have been “hypnotized” by Trump and are willing to put his interests above the country.

“They want their decision to be right. And unfortunately, they're not willing to admit when they're wrong,” he said.

'America First'

Trump was already facing tough new criticism for appearing to depart from his America First agenda after the U.S.-led ouster of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in January, a military airstrike on Iran’s nuclear facilities last June and operations in Yemen and Nigeria. In September, Trump signed an executive order to rename the Defense Department to the Department of War, signaling a greater openness to deploy troops.

Suffolk County GOP chairman Jesse Garcia, who attended Trump’s State of the Union address on Feb. 24 as a guest of Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-Bayport), issued a statement in support of the president shortly after Operation Epic Fury began.

He credited Trump for “decisive leadership” and said the “bold action … embodies President Trump’s Peace Through Strength doctrine and his unwavering America First agenda.”

Garbarino and Rep. Nick LaLota (R-Amityville) have both supported the initial attack against Iran but were less inclined to back potential ground operations that Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have not ruled out.

Six U.S. service members have died in Iranian retaliatory strikes as of Friday.

Hank Sheinkopf, a political consultant, said Long Island has a large population of people with relatives who served in Iraq and Afghanistan who “don’t want to see it repeated.”

“They’ll stand with their president, but they don’t want to see their boys come home dead,” he said. “And that is the great divide and that’s the great fear.”