'MAGA collapse' is here as Trump’s embarrassments mount: historian

On Friday, a leading historian asserted that “MAGA collapse” is here, as current and historical trends make it clear that a major political change is underway. This is according to Boston College history professor Heather Cox Richardson, who explained how President Donald Trump’s “crumbling” presidency mirrors presidential downfalls from the past.

“I really want to talk about the fact that the MAGA movement is crumbling, that Donald Trump is crumbling, and that the Republican Party – centered now as it is around Donald Trump – is falling apart,” said Richardson. According to Richardson, there is plenty of evidence, like the president’s string of court losses, and his behavior at the United Nations General Assembly, where it was made clear that other nations “aren't even trying to pretend that they're getting along with Trump now. They see him for the fool he is.”

Trump’s decline became even more obvious during his meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. Amidst a number of embarrassments and protocol errors, notes Richardson, “Xi once again talked to Trump about the Thucydides Trap. Trump thinks they're besties, and the reference to the Thucydides Trap shows how much better read Xi is than Trump. It is ultimately a reference to the conflict between a rising nation and a collapsing nation, and every time Xi says that, he is literally saying to Trump's face, ‘The United States is falling apart.’ And Trump is like, ‘We're friends.’ And Xi is saying China is a rising nation, so you do what you want, but you guys are senile and old, and you're falling apart. So literally, people from other countries aren't even trying to pretend like Trump is worth paying attention to.”

Richardson went on to explain how it is not only apparent that Trump is “weakening on the international stage, but you can also see the weakening on the domestic stage.” Trump’s war with Iran has "driven prices through the roof," and now the U.S. is beginning to see the diesel price crisis hit. This has the White House in “panic” mode and talking about declaring a diesel embargo, which experts and oil companies warn would only make things worse. What’s more, says Richardson, “Trump's approval rating is at a new profound low” while polls show “the Democrats really surging.”

But a new and “very clear” sign of Trump’s trouble, asserts Richardson, is in “the number of former MAGA spokespeople suddenly trying to launder themselves into a more mainstream Republican party. That's a true sign that they think the world is changing.” According to Richardson, “You saw the same thing, by the way, before the last election in Hungary, when Viktor Orban's people all of a sudden started supporting the other party because they knew things were going really badly for him.”

In Richardson’s estimation, “This moment to me feels very much like the midterm elections of 1930, which is right after the Great Crash of ‘29, which happened in October of ‘29.” The following midterms saw huge gains for the Democratic Party, then Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected in the next presidential race, and the country rebuilt from the Great Depression and saw major change from there.

“Watch around you and you can see the sheer panic of MAGA,” says Richardson. She sees evidence of its downfall in everything from “the craziness that Trump posts,” to his plunging poll numbers, to the fact that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is publicly making fun of him. As she notes, even “rural Americans are sliding away from him and at least saying they're not going to vote going forward.” With all this in mind, she concludes, “We are in collapse territory that looks somewhat like the collapse of Herbert Hoover after the Great Crash of ‘29.”