MAGA delusion is hurling the GOP towards a bloodbath: report

People cheer as U.S. Vice President JD Vance delivers remarks at a MAGA Inc. event in Sterling Heights, Michigan, US., August 31, 2026.

For decades, the towering influence on the Republican Party was President Ronald Reagan. The GOP, however, underwent a huge makeover when President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement become its dominant ideology. MAGA prevailed when Trump won the 2016 and 2024 elections. But according to The New Republic "Trump/MAGA psychology" is now setting Republicans up for an "electoral catastrophe" in November.

New Republic journalists Greg Sargent and Alex Shepard examine the challenges Republicans are facing in a conversation for the publication's podcast, "The Daily Blast."

During the recent GOP Midterms Convention in Dallas, Trump promised to pay voters $5000 each if Republicans hold both branches of Congress in the midterms — a promise that, podcast host Sargent stressed, shows weakness, not strength.

According to Sargent, "Donald Trump's effort to salvage the midterms for the GOP doesn't seem to be going well. His make-believe proposal to send $5000 checks to everyone has been widely panned, and even Republicans are leaking that they think it's an act of desperation. Tellingly, Trump raged wildly at a reporter who asked a simple question: If your policies are succeeding, why pay people to vote Republican? It all highlights a deep contradiction in Trump-MAGA psychology right now: Republicans are all required to pretend Trump has been a stupendous success, yet that very posture is dragging them toward electoral catastrophe."

On the podcast, guest Shephard, a New Republic senior editor, agreed with Sargent's argument that Trump is looking increasingly desperate.

Shephard told Sargent, "I think the question about this entire farce of a midterm convention was: What is Trump going to talk about, since his entire second term is up in flames right now? And what they've done is concocted, you know, I think a plan that's a complete sham in a couple of ways, right? One is just that Trump has said he does not need Congress to send these checks … But I think the other thing about it, to get to the point about losing the culture, is that Trump's rise came from this idea that he was a different type of politician, right?"

Shephard continued, "He was not somebody who would say something just to get elected and then not do it. And of course, he's governed in a completely different way. But to me, this is like the biggest possible version of that exact problem — that this is someone who's just doing shameless electioneering."

Shephard argued that when Trump "generated enthusiasm" in the past, it "to some extent" was "organic."

Shephard told Sargent, "It emerged from him running for president on a message. Whatever you think of that message, that's where it's come from … I mean, I think the other thing with that convention that you saw was, I thought, a really concerted, if somewhat marginal, effort to win over three groups that were instrumental to Trump winning in 2024: Black voters, Latino voters, and young voters … And I think it's just not convincing, right? Because they just don't have the sauce anymore."

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