Trump's MAGA backers fool themselves to save pride: right-wing research

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during an event at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 23, 2026. (REUTERS)

President Donald Trump has behaved so erratically and flip-flopped on important issues like war and affordability so often that experts often wonder why millions of Americans continue to support him regardless.

Now Sarah Longwell, a political consultant at the conservative website The Bulwark, shed light on that by exploring why millions of Trump supporters continued to back him even after he attempted a coup after losing the 2020 presidential election.

After explaining how an alternate right-wing media ecosystem existed for roughly two decades before Trump became president, and based on the presumption that there is a pervasive liberal media bias, Longwell described how she tried to explore the influence of this ecosystem in her own research.

"At first, Trump voters—even ones who’d supported him twice—were genuinely shaken," Longwell wrote. "I did a couple of focus groups six days after January 6, 2021, in the aftermath of Trump supporters violently storming the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which Trump told them had been rigged."

"One group was with women who voted for Trump in both 2016 and 2020, and another was with women who’d voted for Trump in 2016 and then switched to Biden. In the two-time-Trump-voter group, Jamie from Pennsylvania said she was 'appalled' and 'shocked' by what she saw," Longwell wrote. “I realized, but yet I didn’t, if that makes any sense, that there are people out there that could do that.”

Longwell proceeded to quote various survey subjects.

"Audra from Arizona said, 'I think the reason he should be impeached is really just so that he can’t run ever again,'" Longwell reported. "Trump was impeached the next day. The Trump-to-Biden group was similarly harsh. Like Tina from Pennsylvania: 'The windows were being cracked, people were being killed, I don’t understand how this happened like this. And if he’s behind it, they really should impeach him, get rid of it and that’s it.' For a brief moment, reality was undeniable, and people’s opinions of Trump became soft and changeable."

But from there, Longwell had bad news.

"Then the Republican Triangle of Doom kicked in—the toxic and symbiotic relationship between Republican voters, elected officials, and the right-wing infotainment media," Longwell wrote. "The voters who were horrified got bombarded with whitewashing spin almost instantly."

She described how everyone from conservative influencers to former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) sold out the truth about Trump's insurrection in order to validate the biases of Trump supporters.

"Now, some Trump voters understood what happened and never came back," Longwell observed. "But the majority of them had spent four years defending Trump—online, at the dinner table, at work. They’d lost friendships over him. So when right-wing media offered them an alternative explanation, they took it. And then their opinions started to harden. Like cement."

She added, "Six months later, the narrative had completely shifted. I did focus groups in July, and Republicans had flipped completely from where they’d been on January 12. Annette, a 2020 Trump voter from Arizona, told me it was '100 percent orchestrated from Antifa.' Robert, a two-time Trump voter from Alaska, said, 'It’s been shown that they purposely let those people in the building.' He added that January 6th was 'all set up by the Democrat Party to make those people look bad.'"

Longwell concluded, "Without trusted messengers to help them make sense of what’s happening, voters are vulnerable to whoever gets there first with a compelling story. In our communications environment, public opinion can harden in days or even hours. If you don’t know where or how to talk to people, then you are going to miss every one of those persuasion opportunities."

Speaking to AlterNet in August, Dr. Steven Hassan — cult expert and author of "Combating Cult Mind Control" and "The Cult of Trump" — also argued, as did Longwell, that Trump supporters choose a biased information ecosystem to validate their cult-like support for the president.

"I talk about cults being spread across the entire continuum," Hassan told AlterNet. "There are a lot of cultish groups, but they give informed consent and encourage people to follow their conscience — they don't tell people what they can and can't read, et cetera — all the way to authoritarianism. And I see the people following Trump as largely being mind-controlled through information: through their social media posts, whether on Facebook, Telegram or WhatsApp, or through Fox News."

Hassan added, "So, going back to your initial question about how people are voting against their self-interest — it really comes down to what information sources they're relying on and who their network is that they identify with. So if they really love Joe Rogan, they're going to follow a lot of his views. And consequently, when he turns against Trump, Trump loses a lot of followers. What I'm trying to convey is that we're living in an age of digital manipulation that's never been seen before, with people's personal data being used to silo information — to drive them further left if they're already progressive-leaning, or further right if they're already Republican or conservative-leaning. And it's quite strategic in its use of algorithms. So it's not simply about looking at personality type, Matthew — the disposition of a person who becomes a Trump follower — but the social and information environment people are being subjected to."

In August, Hassan even described why so many Trump supporters receive the specific plastic surgery practice known as "Mar-a-Lago face" in order to show their loyalty to the aforementioned cult.

"My work is to really try to illuminate the mind and how undue influence can be exerted and the whole idea of cults all along the continuum from ethical tight-knit groups where there's freedom to think and question and leave without fear or harassment," Dr. Hassan argued at the time.

"... [W]e were talking about how so many MAGA people are getting plastic surgery, and they all look alike," he said, adding that if an individual is "in a mind control cult, you want to look the right way to fit in [with] that idyllic image of Christian white nationalists."

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