.S. President Donald Trump reacts as he speaks to members of the media on board Air Force One en route from Scotland, Britain, to Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S., July 29, 2025. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
Atlantic writer Yair Rosenberg says reports of cultlike MAGAs breakup with President Donald Trump is greatly overstated — but that doesn’t mean a traumatic breakup isn’t underway
“Traditional-media outlets havewarned of a MAGA schism, as have some high-profile right-wing influencers,” said Rosenberg, but that’s not what’s happening. It doesn’t matter that Trump promises to pull U.S. forces out of foreign wars and then inserts the military into Venezuela and Iran, and threatens to plant troops in Mexico, Cuba and in the doorstep of a NATO ally.
“Trumpism is not neo-isolationist or neoconservative, pro-restraint or pro-intervention. It is not pro-worker or pro-billionaire. It is whatever Trump says it is,” said Rosenberg “According to YouGov, two weeks before American forces snatched [Venezuelan President Nicolás] Maduro, Republican support for invading Venezuela stood at 43 percent. Today that number is 74 percent. ‘America First’ and ‘Make America Great Again’ are slogans, not deeply held governing philosophies. They are branding — and Trump is the brand.”
Additionally, Rosenberg said a YouGov/CBS News poll found that 85 percent of Republicans backed the Iranian strikes, including 94 percent of self-described MAGA Republicans, also despite all the shouts of “America First” during Trump’s 2024 campaign.
Rosenberg said MAGA Republican defectors such as the former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) prove the point of Trump’s grip on MAGA.
“As soon as the president turned on her, her political career became untenable and she quickly announced her departure from Congress. Influencers such as Greene, [former Trump advisor Steve] Bannon, and MAGA influencer Tucker] Carlson present themselves as fighting against out-of-touch elites on behalf of the ‘America First’ masses, but again and again, it is they who have been exposed as elites at odds with the movement they claim to represent,” said Rosenberg. “No one has ever spoken for the MAGA coalition other than the man who created it.”
But there are whole sections of the U.S. population that are tearing away from Trump even as his cult clings tight, said Rosenberg.
“It is true that Trump’s overall popularity has been eroding … but that’s not because he’s losing his base. Rather, it’s because he’s bleeding support among a very different demographic that helped elect him — namely, low-propensity swing voters, especially young men, who backed him because of their concerns about the economy or political correctness.”
“The much-larger MAGA movement remains firmly in his corner,” said Rosenberg, no matter what Trump does, no matter how much he changes his mind and sways inconsistently, but Trump is “losing [his] fair-weather friends” as the midterms approach.
Read Rosenberg's Atlantic essay at this link.
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