U.S. President Donald Trump looks down as he participates in a call with service members of U.S. Army (REUTERS)
Liberal political commentator, journalist and Vox co-founder Ezra Klein says MAGA took a brutal hit last week after the midterms delivered a resounding smack. The Trump economy had already been hammering away for years at the young generation that elevated MAGA and made it look so durable on social media, and Klein told the “Thursday Bulwark Daily” podcast that the blue wave unquestionably rang MAGA’s bell.
But nobody should get their hopes up that the legion that comprises the Make America Great Movement and the president who leads it are down and out — not with President Donald Trump with two more years in office.
And even then, other personalities have inched along behind the trail Trump blazed, and these lieutenants are waiting in the wings to claim the MAGA mantle.
“I just want to say, I don't, I feel like it's over. I mean, there's a big fight ahead. Like, so people should not check out,” said Bulwark podcaster Tim Miller. “I mean, the last two years of Donald Trump's might end up being the most dangerous two years, or he might descend into dementia and just want to go golf and build an arch.”
“Well, even if he does descend into dementia and want to golf and build an arch, that's not what Stephen Miller, his new chief of staff is going to want to do,” cautioned Klein. “I think it's really important to realize Donald Trump is not just a person, he's a staff. And what he did is he just made Stephen Miller officially, functionally the prime minister.”
Miller agreed, and then admitted “Donald Trump could be replaced by something dangerous and powerful.”
“I think that conceivably something from the right could emerge from outside this administration that challenges [Vice President] J.D. Vance effectively,” said Miller, citing personalities like entertainer Tucker Carlson. “There's not really a clear leader yet, but I don't think it's impossible that that happens. It doesn't mean we're out of the danger. That just means that we've turned the chapter.”
Right-wing influencers are definitely catching their breath, with some going quiet while others are lamenting that Republicans have lost young men for a generation.
But even a weakened Republican Party is determined to elevate it’s MAGA elements, with the promotion of far-right firebrand Jim Jordan as new minority leader.
Former MAGA lawmaker Joe Walsh described his “old friend” Jorden as a proponent of the debunked argument that the 2020 election was stolen, that brown and Black immigrants should be kept out of America, that America is a Christian theocracy and that “Democrats are evil.”
Worse, Walsh said Jordan in charge means the GOP will “double down” on MAGA philosophy, regardless of whether or not voters approve of it.
Meanwhile, a battalion of MAGA podcasters and entertainers have been honing their arguments, despite being temporarily humiliated by voter backlash.
And Trump is not finished as a force “wielding power in American life,” said Klein, even if he was “finished as the structuring, organizing, cultural principle of American life.”
