Conservative reports MAGA is turning on 'loser' Trump

President Donald Trump is losing many once-staunch members of his right-wing base because they view him as “a lame duck and a loser,” according to a conservative commentator.

“Mike Cernovich is not just one of the original MAGA influencers, he’s arguably a paradigm case—the ever-active operative/influencer who just won’t stop coming up with crazy new ideas,” wrote The Bulwark’s Will Sommer on Monday. Describing Cernovich’s evolution from a manosphere influencer in the early 2010s to a pro-Trump conspiracy theorist in 2016, Sommer pointed out that Cernovich in November described Trump’s D.C. “as a city consumed by corruption, with Trump appointees filling their pockets with impunity.” He added that Cernovich himself commented, “During recent visit in DC, the talk of everyone was how overt the corruption was. It’s at levels you read about in history books. In nearly every department. Lots of, ‘Do people just think Democrats will never win and they’ll all get away with this?’” On March 25 he tweeted about big trades that seem to coincide with major Trump administration news, “It was a scandal when Hunter Biden did less than this. New MAGA does not care.”

Sommer noted that Cernovich is not only upset with corruption.

“Whatever effects the ayahuasca may have had on his mind, Cernovich’s case is interesting to me because it signifies a generational fissure breaking out within MAGA,” Sommer observed. “A massive, multi-front fight over Israel, antisemitism, and the assassination conspiracy theories surrounding Charlie Kirk has been driving much of the discontent on the right. But there is also a class of original Trumpers like Cernovich who appear to be pivoting away from the president. They are convinced that he has fallen short on his promises and have been around D.C. enough to see how unethical and corrupt the administration is acting. They also increasingly look at Trump, embattled by the Jeffrey Epstein case and the Iran war, as a lame duck and a loser.”

Cernovich is not alone among Trumpers who are turning on Trump. Earlier in March, right-wing podcaster Joe Rogan said “America is great. Make America greater? I’m down. But Make America Great Again, and then it becomes a movement of a bunch of dorks. A lot of them are these really weird, f------ uninteresting, unintelligent people who have got something that they cling to.”

Shortly after Trump invaded Iran, Rogan described the war as “crazy” and the president’s supporters as having been “betrayed,” adding, “He ran on no more wars: End these stupid, senseless wars. And then we have one that we can’t even really clearly define why we did it.”

On Monday The Bulwark’s managing editor Sam Stein told MS NOW that Trump is “losing control” of his own movement.

“I think the risk for Trump here is twofold,” Stein told MS NOW host Katy Tur referring to both Rogan and another right-wing podcaster who has recently turned on Trump, Andrew Schulz.

“These are the podcasts that were gateways to a whole slice of the electorate that was just politically curious — not politically active — but they did get involved in 2024, and they got involved largely on behalf of Donald Trump,” Stein said. “Andrew Schulz, Rogan, and others activated them. But the other risk is that they're now potentially turning Donald Trump into a cultural punchline — that he's an idiot, that his supporters are dorks, that he's been fooled into doing all this stuff, and that he is a failure.”

He added, “Donald Trump, for better or for worse, has had an incredible ability to shape perceptions of himself and the cultural relevance that he has. And to a degree, he loses that control when these people turn on him — when his own supporters turn on him. That hasn't really happened in the entirety of his political career.”