Stephen Caraway, 40, was driving home in Ohio on Saturday night when he saw the news that the United States struck three Iranian nuclear sites.
Caraway, a Republican who voted for Donald Trump in 2024, applauded the president on his “decisive leadership.”
“I am really proud of our military and thankful that the operation was a success and everyone is safe,” he told ABC News hours after the attack.
ABC News interviewed more than a half dozen Americans who voted for Trump in the 2024 presidential election after U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear sites on Saturday but before Iran launched missiles at Qatar on Monday, targeting the American Al-Udeid Air Base.
President Donald Trump and Secretrary of State Marco Rubio in the Situation Room, at the White House in Washington, June 21, 2025.
@WhiteHouse/X
Most, like Caraway, indicated support for the U.S. strikes, called Operation Midnight Hammer, and said they trusted Trump to protect and pursue American interests, including preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, while keeping the U.S. out of a prolonged regional conflict.
“I am not concerned about a long-term war, because President Trump will not put up with it,” Caraway explained.
In a Washington Post poll conducted Wednesday, 46% of Trump voters said they would support airstrikes, with 26% opposed and 28% unsure.
Throughout the 2024 campaign, Trump touted that he was “the only president in generations who didn’t start a war” and pointed to the need to avoid engaging in “never-ending wars” — a pledge that some non-interventionist Republican leaders have now accused him of betraying.
While many Republicans have praised Trump’s actions, some prominent lawmakers and conservative figures opposed to military action continued to criticize the strikes on Monday.
“I didn’t sleep better after neocons and warmongers talked this administration into entering a hot war that Israel started,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said in an interview on former Trump strategist Steve Bannon’s “War Room” program Monday.
“MAGA is not for foreign wars. We are not for regime change. We are for America First,” Greene said.
This satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies shows a closer view of craters and ash on a ridge at Fordo enrichment facility in Iran after U.S. strikes, June 22, 2025.
Satellite image 2025 Maxar Technologies
Two voters told ABC News they were disappointed by Trump’s decision to attack.
“Trump broke his promise,” said Sean Savage, 81, from Illinois. “I’m fearful this could turn really big.”
However, Savage still stood by his vote for Trump in 2024. “There was no other choice for me. I like most of what Trump has done, but this is one thing that I do not approve,” he said.
Other Trump voters told ABC News they believed that the airstrikes ordered by Trump did not conflict with his America First agenda.
“I think you can also see it as putting our military interests and our foreign assets and strategic interests first as well,” explained Andre Boccaccio, a 19-year-old from Arizona.
Trump “wants peace, and I think our country has to back him,” said Lauren, a 59-year-old from California who declined to share her last name.
Lauren also told ABC News that Iran’s nuclear program could lead to even greater threats to the U.S. in the future.
“Am I fearful for the future? Well, yes. But I think that if we don’t disarm countries that have the ability to create destructive warfare … it can escalate, and our country and our growth will be in big trouble,” she said.
According to the Wednesday Washington Post poll, 22% of Americans viewed Iran’s nuclear program as an immediate and serious threat, and 48% saw it as a somewhat serious threat.
Elana Pritchard, a 43-year-old Texan, told ABC News she saw the weekend strikes as preventative, not provocative.
“I really do think that he was just throwing a big punch,” she said. “They were trying to preemptively stop what could have been more of an escalating crisis between Iran and Israel, which probably would have dragged the United States into the conflict anyway.”
Nearly everyone contacted by ABC News defended Trump’s decision to proceed without Congress’ approval, rejecting the argument made by several lawmakers that the military action was unconstitutional.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. Dan Caine discusses the mission details of a strike on Iran during a news conference at the Pentagon, June 22, 2025 in Arlington, Virginia.
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
“The process of declaring wars is outdated,” said Ronald Barron, a 46-year-old voter from Georgia, saying that “it’ll be way too late” by the time Congress finished voting.
“There’s a very clear precedent that has been set by commanders-in-chief” who need to “act promptly and swiftly” to protect American safety, said Caraway, the Ohio Republican. “And let’s be honest with one another, Congress doesn’t do anything promptly and swiftly.”
Ultimately, Trump’s supporters in the last election defaulted to trusting the president to do what was best for the country, with many pointing to the fact that he has access to national security intelligence that most Americans are not privy to.
While Boccaccio described the action as “unexpected,” he said he believed “there is a reason behind what we’re doing.”
Before the strikes, Barron, the Georgia voter, told ABC News that the Trump administration had been “horrible on the foreign side” in the early months of the president’s second term, and described Trump’s demands for Iran to surrender last week as “warmongering.”
But in a followup interview after the strikes, he was more optimistic about Trump’s strategy.
“He’s going about it in like a mafioso, “American Gangster”-type way,” he said. “For the last 150 years, they’ve been having company guys that have been toeing the company line … So maybe we try something unconventional, something that’s not even in the books, that might work.”
Freddie, a 65-year-old from Virginia, told ABC News she had mixed feelings about the attack, and whether Trump made the right call to order the strikes.
“I don’t know what the leaders know, and I’m not meant to know what the leaders know, so I can only wait and see,” she said.
Either way, she explained that her view of Trump was shaped more by his domestic agenda rather than the conflict in Iran.
“When the war comes to your soil, you get a little bit more involved in it,” Freddie elaborated. “But that’s halfway around the world. It’s easy for me to say I don’t care about that.”
