An attendee wearing a MAGA hat looks on, as U.S. President Donald Trump attends a roundtable focused on tax cuts in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., April 16, 2026.
While President Donald Trump’s 2024 electoral victory was once viewed as “a definitive cultural shift, proof that his aggressive, domineering style of rightwing populism had found permanent purchase in US politics,” writes Guardian political columnist Moira Donegan, “less than 18 months later, that thesis has collapsed.” Today, the MAGA movement is “teetering” on collapse because even they don’t like how Trump’s second term has turned out.
As evidence of this, Donegan points to Trump’s recent McDonald’s-based publicity stunt, in which he had his delivery brought by 58-year-old Sharon Simmons. While Trump attempted to rile up some culture war talk by asking her, “Do you think men should play in women’s sports?” Simmons’ reply was simple: “I really don’t have an opinion on that. I’m here about ‘no tax on tips’.” She went on to explain that she’d begun driving for DoorDash to pay for her husband’s cancer treatment.
“It was a small but revealing moment,” writes Donegan. “In the aftermath of the 2024 election, many political commentators blamed the Democrats’ loss on the party’s supposedly excessive embrace of the social movements of the 2010s. The party had focused too much on culture-war issues, these pundits said, and not enough on economics.” Now Trump, she notes, is doing the exact same thing: ignoring economic concerns in favor of harping on the same old culture war talking points, only from a far-right perspective.
This has even some of Trump’s most diehard supporters bailing on him. His approval rating is at a historic low, even among working-class voters and non-college educated white voters which once provided his most bedrock support base.
As Donegan notes, while MAGA has seen “their cultural values felt in pervasive and sadistic ways,” such as the brutal tactics employed by ICE, they’ve also watched the cost of living skyrocket. All the while, Trump and his officials have continued to espouse the idea that “their side has already won.” It’s hard to convince anyone that winning looks like $4+ for a gallon of gas.
Now even some of Trump’s most high-profile, seemingly loyalist supporters are abandoning him over the bad economy, Jeffrey Epstein cover-up and war in Iran, with figures like Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Alex Jones jumping ship.
And “the ordinary, workaday voters who swung for Trump in 2024,” writes Donegan, “are wondering what, exactly, they signed up for.”