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Those comments immediately triggered alarm among critics and anti-intervention voices because they stopped short of a flat assurance that no draft or ground deployment would happen. The White House’s own Rapid Response account moved quickly to push back, replying to a post claiming Trump might institute a draft by saying: “She didn’t say anything close to this. You just made it up.” That rebuttal did not dispute the wording of Leavitt’s interview so much as reject the interpretation that a draft was actively under consideration, leaving the administration trying to walk a narrow line between projecting flexibility in wartime and calming a domestic audience wary of another major Middle East conflict.
The remarks also exposed a fault line inside Trump’s political coalition. Former Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has often presented herself as fiercely opposed to new foreign wars, seized on Leavitt’s interview and wrote on X: “Karoline Leavitt doesn’t rule out a draft.” She added: “How about the answer is NO DRAFT AND NO BOOTS ON THE GROUND because we campaigned on NO MORE FOREIGN WARS OR REGIME CHANGE!!! Liars every single one of them! Not my son, over my dead body!!!!!” Her intervention showed how quickly the issue had moved beyond a television interview and into a broader argument over whether Trump’s Iran policy is drifting away from the anti-war language that helped define parts of his political appeal.
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