Newsweek reports President Donald Trump appears to be losing his cultlike status with MAGA.
“Ten months into his second term, President Donald Trump is being challenged by the very base he prides himself on creating, and he finds himself besieged by an army of issues that could threaten his MAGA support and spell trouble for lawmakers who remain by his side,” writes Newsweek reporter Hugh Cameron.
The president’s standing with the passionate “America First” crowd was already tottering over farmer fury at his plan to import Argentine beef to the detriment of the U.S. cattle industry, before Democratic victories in last week's off-cycle elections disheartened the group. But Trump is now facing not-so friendly fire over his pivots on immigration, the state of the economy and the latest episode of the long-running Epstein saga that is increasingly entangling Trump with a man MAGA had worked for years to tie to Democrats.
“Many of these tensions came to a head in an interview with Laura Ingraham that aired on Monday, during which the Fox News host challenged the president on offering 600,000 visas to Chinese students and his unexpected praise for the H-1B visa program, characterizing these as decidedly anti-MAGA stances,” said Cameron. “Trump's defense — that China is no worse an adversary than France, and that foreign-born workers are needed to account for the U.S.'s lack of talent — seems to have sparked as much backlash as the positions themselves.”
Trump claims there is no rift.
"Don't forget: MAGA was my idea. MAGA was nobody else's idea," he said on The Ingraham Angle. "I know what MAGA wants better than anyone else, and MAGA wants to see our country thrive."
But Peter Loge, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, says “the MAGA base is splitting."
"Donald Trump will never lose his core support, but what it means to be MAGA or a true Republican is now suddenly being debated,” Loge told Newsweek. “We connect the dots to make pictures, and the recent dots include Epstein, the election, the court being very skeptical of Trump's tariff policies, increasing economic insecurity, falling poll numbers. These bits of information, these dots, paint a picture of a presidency in trouble.”
George Washington University political management Professor Todd Belt told Newsweek that members of Trump’s own party are already catching the worse of the split at town hall meetings where Republicans and America First enthusiasts have confronted them for their support of Trump’s policies. Further evidence, he said, lies with MAGA lawmakers and media figures who appear “increasingly comfortable breaking with Trump on key issues.”
Belt said the Epstein issue hits at the most visceral level, however.
“I think MAGA, in terms of the movement, is willing to forgive Donald Trump on a lot of things because they consider him to be the businessman, and he knows what he's doing when he's going back and forth with his tariffs and disruptive sort of behavior," said Belt. "But this is the one where it just really violates the ideology of, you know, deep state cover-ups and being an outsider — all the things that he promised and now seems to be on the other side of."
Political scientist Sheri Berman said Trump’s eagerness to abandon “America First” with $40 billion gifts to Argentina and undercutting beef prices for American farmers is coupling with the horror of Epstein and a sluggish economy to tear Trump down.
"Either one of those things alone is something to manage, but the combination of discontent with the hardcore hard right and fears that these broad affordability issues might be causing people who might waver between voting Republican and Democrat to vote for Democrat," Berman said.
Read the Newsweek report at this link.