Trump Base 5 maga
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estb 1 25
see trump cult 2 deAR LEADER SEE QANON
doge hurts red states alabama top 2 jObs
SEE GRIEVANCE swim pool filled RACISM
SEE DEI ~
SEE PSYCHOLOGY
SEE PSEUDO-POPULISM
SEE CONSPIRACY SOC MED ALGO HYPE FEAR
see bite ass maga base 8 25
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fractures on epstein?H1B VISAS FUENTES, IRAN WAR GAS
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AN 11 26 POST BLU TSU
It has been almost a week since the blue tsunami flooded the United States and MAGA has finally decided that the 2026 midterms were rigged.
Over the weekend, President Donald Trump's allies began sprinkling denialist conspiracy theories across social media. On Monday morning, Trump picked up on it and joined in, claiming that there was no possible way that the elections were accurate since the polls showed him to be beloved.
"Does anybody really believe that this 'Election' was honest. How could the Polls be so wrong??? Some early voting 'dumps' were so large that it was impossible to win, no matter how many people went to vote," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "It’s all about the machines, which are far more important than the voter! President DJT"
This would mean that two elections Trump oversaw were allegedly "rigged."
The Bulwark's Sam Stein and Will Sommer chatted for "MAGA Monday" about the conspiracy theories that "have been a little slow to get off the ground."
Trump is ranting about the polls, but Stein said that the only thing wrong with the polls is that they severely undercounted the Democratic vote. Even if they weren't undercounting, however, there still would have been a huge blue wave.
Trump citing "the machines," Sommer said, appears to go back to the idea that electronic voting machines are far "more important than voters."
"That's music to Mike Lindell's ears," Sommer said. He noted that Lindell is giving a "national address" at 7 p.m. EST, claiming the election was stolen.
"Jesus Christ, man, I can't believe we're doing this s—— again," Stein grumbled.
They pointed out that some Republicans were trying to take a victory lap over the fact that Republicans didn't throw a fit and claim the election was "rigged." Former Trump press secretary Sean Spicer wrote on X, "Tuesday was not a good night for Republicans. It’s been 4 days and no protests, riots and vandalism."
Stephen Richer, the former Republican Maricopa County Recorder, replied, "Congrats on not doing J6 this time! Really impressive!"
It was two days after that post that Trump claimed the election was rigged.
"It's like the lowest bar. You cleared it, Sean. Congrats," Stein said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "Except now, apparently, Trump's not accepting."
Sommer quickly pointed out that it isn't January yet. The Jan. 6 attack happened after over a month of Trump's claims that the election was stolen from him.
"So, like, the arc has not finished," he added. "You know, you can't say we didn't do January 6th until they're sworn in."
The swearing-in date is Jan. 3.
So, there is an uptick in claims of voter fraud and Sommer said that it's just now "getting going."
Stein thinks the delay in claiming fraud came from MAGA fans being "lost" since Trump didn't make such claims for a week.
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During the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan and liberal House Speaker Tip O'Neill (D-Massachusetts) famously had strong policy battles yet maintained a warm, cordial relationship. And on the U.S. Supreme Court, arch-conservative Justice Antonin Scalia and liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had a mutual respect despite their major differences on legal philosophy. Yet during the Donald Trump era, political fractures are so bitter that families are literally being torn apart. And according to the UK-based i Paper, this trend is only "accelerating."
"In a recent survey," journalist Andrew Buncombe reports in the i Paper, "psychologists at the University of California, Irvine, found a third of Americans had 'lost relationships with friends, family, romantic partners and co-workers over political differences.' Among the respondents, 62 per cent had had fallouts — 40 per cent of them with a family member. The researchers believe the trend is accelerating."
Buncombe cites specific examples of families being torn apart by their differences on politics, which, the reporter notes, go beyond views on President Trump himself.
Braver Angels is a group that is dedicated to fighting the results of extreme partisanship, which, according to their communications director, Wilk Wilkinson, is a full-blown crisis in the United States.
Wilkinson told the i Paper that while Americans have had intense political disagreements in the past, the "visibility of the toxic division and polarization" is much worse than before.
According to Wilkinson, "The way it's piped into the eyes and ears of everyday Americans on any given day is certainly higher. We have more access to more media outlets and social media feeds and 24-hour news cycles and things like that."
Wilkinson said, "People who try to pin this on Trump or any other single singular figure within our political apparatus are doing a disservice to the bigger problem."
Buncombe reports, "Braver Angels advises local communities and schools to 'become beacons of civil discourse where students can express their perspectives freely and fully while actively listening to others.' Asked if Trump has made divisions worse, he says he has been a factor but not the only one. 'People who try to pin this on Trump or any other single singular figure within our political apparatus are doing a disservice to the bigger problem,' he warns. 'And that's the "us versus them" tribalism and toxic polarization, and the fact we've reached a point where we no longer see political opponents as wrong, we see them as stupid or evil."
Another group that's confronting the United States' bitter political divisions and its effects on families is the Kansas City-based American Square. Another is QAnon Casualties.
Explaining Square's, spokesperson Ryan Bernsten told i Paper, "People are going to come and hear something they agree with or something they don't. They might also hear perspectives from someone they've never heard from before, and a subject matter expert who knows more about something than they do."
A paralegal interviewed by i Paper said that she is almost to the point of not speaking to her MAGA mother because of their political disagreements.
The paralegal said, "It's kind of like grief in the sense that there are stages. I'll cycle between radical acceptance to anger to heartbreak. It's also a bit embarrassing … I don't want people to judge me for the heinous stuff my mom and some other family members believe in. Groups like QAnonCasualties have helped a ton. No one really gets it unless they live it."
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an 9 26
A disturbing trend is 'accelerating' — but experts warn it's not just Trump
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AN 8 26
In the UK, the MAGA movement has been allying itself with the far-right/populist Reform Party — which is vehemently disdainful of Britain's Conservative Party in much the same way that MAGA disdains traditional conservatives in the United States. Former White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre examines this MAGA/Reform alliance in an article for the UK-based i Paper, arguing that it is a dire "warning" on far-right movement's ability to exploit widespread "frustration" and discontent.
Liberal Jean-Pierre, who served in the Biden administration after Jen Psaki (now an MS NOW host) left her White House press secretary position, explains, "Since leaving the White House in 2025 with Donald Trump returning to power, I have spent the past two years listening to people who feel politically unanchored.
Voters in the United States and the United Kingdom are turning to movements that promise simple answers to complicated problems because they no longer believe the major parties see what they see or feel what they feel. The appeal of Reform, Restore and fringe MAGA figures grows out of that frustration, and the links between Nigel Farage and American political voices show how these narratives travel across borders and feed the same fears."
Although Jean-Pierre, in her i Paper article, is highly critical of MAGA and Reform, she emphasizes that the "frustration" that they are trying to use to their advantage is quite real.
"After more than 15 years working in U.S. politics, including service to two presidents and most recently as White House press secretary," Jean-Pierre warns, "I have watched how quickly trust erodes when institutions fall behind the pressures people face. I sat in senior-level briefings where immigration, border security and crime were not abstractions but daily operational challenges."
Far-right MAGA Republican and "War Room" host Steve Bannon often describes himself as a "Leninist" — not because he favors communism, but because he embraces Soviet Union leader Vladimir Lenin's view that it is necessary to destroy in order to create. Jean-Pierre notes Bannon's alliance with Farage, describing "disruption rather than governance" as a key goal of MAGA and its UK counterparts.
"Movements like Reform UK and Rupert Lowe's breakaway party, Restore Britain, have stepped into that space with messages that feel direct and uncomplicated," Jean-Pierre observes. "They speak to voters who believe the country has lost control of its borders and who worry that national identity is slipping away. In the U.S., fringe MAGA voices push a similar story. They argue that institutions have failed and that only disruption can restore order. These groups do not operate in isolation. They borrow from one another, repeat one another and amplify one another…. The major parties do not need better slogans. They need to rebuild trust by addressing the underlying issues that have pushed voters away."
Jean-Pierre continues, "They need to modernize immigration systems, strengthen border management and speak honestly about crime and public safety. They need to reconnect with the realities people face and show they understand the pressures shaping daily life. If they do not, the political landscape on both sides of the Atlantic will continue to shift toward movements that thrive on fear rather than on solutions. And voters will continue to look for answers in places the major parties never expected."
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an 8 26
In spite of President Donald Trump's insistence that he still knows what MAGA wants, a new piece from The i Paper argued that he is now facing an "insurgency" from the movement he created as he continues to sow divisions.
"With just over two months to go before voters are set to seal his fate in America’s midterm elections, President Donald Trump is once again bucking tradition: instead of uniting his party around him and leading from the front, he has spent days stoking divisions among Republicans that could advance the day when the GOP splits asunder," reporter Simon Marks wrote in the Tuesday piece,
He later added, "last Friday night, the President fired the latest, dramatic salvo in his efforts to retain the leadership of a movement that shows every sign of fracturing beneath him. Amid collapsing trade talks with Canada, fresh revelations of the damage Iran has done to America’s military infrastructure, and several days of primary contest losses for a host of Trump-backed Republican candidates, the President turned his social media blowtorch on 'traitors' around him."
Marks further argued that "Ground Zero" for the MAGA pushback against Trump could be traced back to Wyoming, "America's reddest state," earlier this year, when "five [GOP] lawmakers broke ranks and condemned the President for a social media post in which he compared himself to Jesus." More recently, his endorsed candidate for governor in Wyoming "went down to a crushing defeat" against another Republican candidate "who pledged to lower the temperature of extremist debate in the state."
Marks also highlighted the Florida House race in which "antisemitic influencer Dan Bilzerian" sought to unseat incumbent Rep. Randy Fine, calling him a "Jewish supremacist" and attacking Trump as "nothing but a tool for Israeli hegemony." While Bilzerian did not win the primary, Marks argued that his ability to secure 19 percent of the final vote offered "a fresh indication that Trump and his approved candidates are vulnerable to accusations that the President has betrayed MAGA and sold the movement out."
Elsewhere, three spurned former Trump supporters — Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie and Tucker Carlson — shared a photo of a meeting together, amid rumors that they might be plotting the creation of a new political party to take on Trump and his remaining GOP elite backers. Trump himself was dismissive of this idea, lambasting the group as a bunch of "losers."
"Trump now finds himself confronting a paradox. In many ways, MAGA’s greatest strength since he announced his presidential candidacy in 2015 has been the movement’s ability to portray Republicans as a single insurgency seeking to overthrow an elitist radical-left establishment and the so-called 'deep state,'" Marks concluded. "But today, Trump’s control of MAGA is threatened by a fresh insurgency vowing to overturn the very Republican elite that he now leads. Containing those threats will be no small matter, as Carlson, Massie, Greene and others build support for their version of Trump’s handmade political universe.
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an 8 26
Trump’s $500/month Social Security cuts will go nuclear in Alabama: report
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AN 826
The New Republic's Virginia Heffernan has followed the MAGA breakup closely over the past year as President Donald Trump's broken promises has left the movement feeling "betrayed."
While speaking to Greg Sargent for his "Daily Blast" podcast, the two discussed the recent warning issued by former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-Ga.), who abandoned the president over the Jeffrey Epstein files. In a TikTok video, Greene warned that the era of MAGA success is done.
"The coalition came in. You want to know why ‘26 and ‘28 is going to be different? Because Donald Trump broke his big, big campaign promise of no more foreign wars, and actually has got us embroiled in a war with Iran, a war that should not be happening, and he’s not backing off of it. And it will probably get worse. So, that has the affordability crisis. That’s why people can’t afford gasoline. That’s why people’s bills keep going up. Food prices are still going up. Beef is at all-time high. It’s ridiculous. You know what you should have done? You should have stuck to your campaign promises, and you should have delivered for the people that put you in office, not the ones writing you the big fat checks," said Greene.
It comes after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confessed to the press, "I don't really understand" the spike in oil prices.
Sargent called Greene a kind of "oracle" when it comes to predicting that this would happen when she left Congress.
"When Marjorie Taylor Greene says the coalition is falling apart, all these voters feel betrayed by you, Mr. President, she isn’t just making a prediction. She’s essentially saying to these voters, you know, you shouldn’t show up for this guy because he f—— you, right? That’s what she’s really saying. And it’s true. She’s right about it," said Sargent.
Trump is quoted as saying he doesn’t care about his old voters. And she and lots of people took that very personally," she said.
Now, they argued, Trump is repeating the kind of foreign-policy overreach he once blasted. It comes as he's issuing threats of economic punishment against countries that trade with Iran. It's not something easily enforced and is designed largely to create the appearance of action while lacking a clear strategy for ending the conflict, they said.
Now MAGA is stuck in a messaging crisis where even Fox News personalities like Sean Hannity are avoiding most discussions about the war. The two think it's likely because audiences don't want to hear pro-war rhetoric. So, pro-Trump media is falling back on the same message that Trump is being unfairly persecuted.
Meanwhile, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) was finally forced to say that the affordability crisis isn't a "hoax," as Trump claimed. On Thursday, Johnson acknowledged that the war has pushed gas prices higher. It has finally become a problem impossible for Republicans to ignore.
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an 8 26
What is the difference between President Donald Trump's supporters and traditional Republicans?
Why does the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement revolve around the worship of a single personality — to the point where they'll back him even after he breaks key promises like keeping America out of forever wars, bringing down prices and not personally profiting from his office — while pre-Trump conservatives were united by consistent policy beliefs?
How is it that Trump convinces them of blatantly untrue things, such as that he won the 2020 presidential election? How can he get them to ignore his obvious and serious flaws, including his long history of being a sore loser (long predating the 2020 election), his close friendship with the late child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and the at least two dozen women who have accused him of sexual misconduct, one of whom he was found liable in a court of law for sexually abusing?
In short: How did Trump transform one of America's two major political parties into what can best be described as a cult?
To answer this question I spoke with Dr. Steven Hassan, cult expert and author of "Combating Cult Mind Control" and "The Cult of Trump." When he was a young man, Hassan was recruited into the Unification Church of the United States, colloquially known as the Moonies because they were led by a conservative religious leader named Sun Myung Moon. He eventually left Moon’s cult and became an acclaimed mental health counselor, making him an expert on cults both through personal experience and intellectual study.
In the following interview — which has been lightly edited for clarity, context and length — I speak with Hassan about why Trump’s movement is a cult while other conservative movements are not and how people can be persuaded to leave the Trump cult. We also addressed a number of other subjects, from how the self-proclaimed freethinker Joe Rogan only booked Hassan when his anti-cult ideas didn’t criticize Trump to how one of my favorite comedians may have been too harsh in his assessment of Trump supporters.
ROZSA: I want to start with a recent interview I did with Dr. Stefan Lewandowsky. He is a cognitive scientist at the University of Bristol who has written extensively about the psychology behind President Trump's political movement. He had an observation that I'm curious if you agree or disagree with. I asked why so many Trump supporters enjoy "owning the libs," and he attributed it to what he called the dark triad of personality: psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism. Do you share that analysis?
HASSAN: That's interesting. That's a very well-used model, the dark triad. I personally like malignant narcissism, which was the concept [German social psychologist and psychoanalyst] Erich Fromm came up with analyzing [Nazi leader Adolf] Hitler. And I did that in chapter three of "The Cult of Trump," comparing Trump with [Peoples Temple founder and Jonestown mass murder] Jim Jones, Moon, and [L. Ron] Hubbard of Scientology. And I'll also add, Matthew, that there's a new article I just read that uses a dark tetrad, adding sadism to Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism. A researcher up in Canada wrote about nihilism, which is a whole subcategory of Trump supporters — the [Tesla CEO] Elon Musks and the [Palantir co-founder] Thiels and the people with a whole, you know, 'go to outer space' agenda.
ROZSA: I think that's interesting. I'm more interested, though, in the ordinary people who support Trump, because as I see it, they are voting against their economic self-interest — because he deflects attention from how he is raising their prices and instead redirecting it toward vilifying various groups. I'm curious how you explain the psychology behind people who fall for that.
HASSAN: We are social beings, and we're emotional beings primarily. So a key point in my BITE [Behavior, Information, Thought and Emotional] model of authoritarian control is information control. I emphasize how these destructive groups, like the Trump movement, are lying all the time. And part of the appeal is really about using emotionally leading rhetoric to scare people, to create "the other," to demonize. I'll quote Eric Hoffer's 1951 book, "The True Believer." He said, "The strength of a mass movement is proportionate to the vividness and tangibility of its devil." We know that, evolutionarily, we're going to overreact to anything that's a perceived danger or threat to us. So "owning the libs" means that they are a danger, and he's going to save people from them.
A lot of his messaging was, "I'm doing this for you." So he was getting people to identify and create a pseudo-identity as "Trumpers" to follow him. And then there are millions of Americans in these religious cults called the New Apostolic Reformation, where they're actually following a man or woman who claims to be a prophet or an apostle. And those are the ones telling followers that God is using Trump as a King Cyrus figure — yes, he's a sinner, but God is using him to go after Satan. So I think people who try to simplify this using social psychology, if they don't understand that we're really in World War III right now with Russia and China and other bad actors trying to take down the United States — this has been a fifty-year project, not something that just came in with Trump. That's what I wrote that book about.
ROZSA: I think that's a great observation. Now I'd like to ask you: what separates the Trump movement from a normal political movement? Eric Hoffer's book, which I love, talks about "true believers" — anyone who is an idealist. And very often, although they are passionate about their political or religious views, they don't literally become cultish. What separates simply being an ideologue from being a cultist, and why do Trump supporters fall into the cult category?
HASSAN: For me, I have an "influence continuum" graphic — I'm sure you've seen it before. Ethical influence to unethical influence. You can take a look at it again on my freedomofmind.com website, under "Learn." I talk about cults being spread across the entire continuum. 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.
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.
ROZSA: I think that's a valid point in terms of how these cult-like environments are formed. I want to go back to your observation about Joe Rogan, because in my experience — not only researching him, but talking to people who follow his program — they seem to view him as anti-establishment, even though he is friends with the president and with several billionaires, has the world's number-one podcast and repeatedly espouses views on economic issues that serve the wealthy at the expense of the poor. They don't seem to see any of that. I'm curious how.
HASSAN: Because it takes a certain degree of training and perspective not to just emotionally, habitually listen to somebody. Again, it's about packaging. And you, for instance, were able to look at it from a perspective that recognizes he's promoting a lot of things that Trump wants him to promote. Of course, he had Trump on the podcast during the last election cycle. By the way, I was on Joe Rogan in 2015, and he loved me, and he invited me back. But when "The Cult of Trump" came out, he didn't want me on again.
ROZSA: [sarcastically] But I thought Joe Rogan was a truth-speaker who was willing to just ask questions! Apparently, when the questions criticized Trump, he suddenly stopped being the man who speaks truth to power.
HASSAN: Well, yeah — that's what I want the followers of Joe Rogan to know. When I tell Trump supporters that Joe Rogan had me on and loved me, and give them the link, they're shocked and surprised. But that's why I go on shows like that. I was also on Megyn Kelly's show at one point, because she wanted me on. She didn't want me to mention "The Cult of Trump," so that got edited out. But she had me on as a cult expert and platformed me. It was interesting.
ROZSA: So is there any way to deprogram these people? Is there any way for people who are in the cult to get out of the cult?
HASSAN: A thousand percent. I don't care for the term "deprogram," because it evokes a computer-mind image, and it evokes notions from the '70s when people were being abducted. I like to phrase it more as helping people to reality-test and start thinking for themselves. I did a TEDx talk on how to know whether you yourself have been brainwashed. But I wrote a whole book called "Freedom of Mind" on how to talk to people in cults.
It starts with the assumption that it's a dissociative disorder — brainwashing — where, for example, "Steve Hassan" the real person is replaced by a "Steve Hassan the Moonie" identity that got created and installed in someone's head. When you're talking to a cult member, never attack the leader, the doctrine, or the policies head-on — especially with facts or logic — because it will empower the cult identity to defend itself and shut down, and it will make the cult member perceive you as the enemy.
What works best is a warm, respectful, curious, questioning approach: "Help me step into your shoes," or "I'm really curious what you think about this or that."
Referencing other cults that the person knows — Trump supporters will listen to conversations about Chinese communist brainwashing, and they'll be open to learning about Lifton's model [for helping people reform their ways of thinking]. Many of them who got into Trump through the QAnon psyop are open to hearing about traffickers and pimps, and how they recruit, groom and indoctrinate people to become sex slaves or labor slaves. So what I'm trying to convey is that an indirect approach is the most effective way to help people in the cult of Trump start reality-testing.
And warmth — I'm telling everybody: reach out to your family, friends and coworkers who are Trump supporters. If you've cut them off, say, "How are you? I miss you. I want you back in my life." And don't argue politics at first. Just reestablish warmth and safety, because a lot of people are having doubts now. A lot of people are accessible. It's human-to-human contact — not so much on social media — that's going to help people exit.
ROZSA: I had an interview with the comedian Sam Brown in 2020, shortly before Trump was defeated by Joe Biden in that election. Brown predicted: “The sad thing is that this isn’t going to die. Even if Trump loses, these people that are still like, ‘No, it was cool having a dumb guy president’ are still going to be out there. ‘He’s a dumb piece of s*** like me!'” Do you agree with that analysis?
HASSAN: No, I don't think it's helpful to call followers of Trump dumb. I really don't. I think a lot of people [who support Trump] are very intelligent — I know people who are MDs, lawyers, and others who are supporters of Trump. But they were single-issue voters — whether they supported Israel blindly, or were anti-gay blindly. But as I mentioned before, Matthew, there are millions of people in these [New Apostolic Reformation] cults, with apostles and prophets who perform mind control on them, and they're following their prophet or apostle — not Trump. But they are doing what the apostle or prophet tells them to do. I don't think it's a matter of being dumb.
ROZSA: Trump has said that he prefers less-educated voters.
HASSAN: Well, he's said a lot of things. And yes, I'd say — ignorance makes it much easier to manipulate information with people who don't understand social psychology or malignant narcissism.
ROZSA: If I may quickly interject — people also resent those who are successful in intellectual fields, like climate scientists, vaccine scientists and professors who study race and gender theory. I think a lot of that is anti-intellectualism.
HASSAN: Yeah, I buy that, but I also wrote in "The Cult of Trump" about fourth-generation psychological warfare, which is aimed at demoralizing populations. That was a concept from our military intelligence used on other countries, and it's been used on us. The theme with fourth-generation warfare is to attack experts, attack science, and attack democratic institutions and faith in democratic institutions. There's been an all-out assault on anyone who's an expert. It's part of a psychological warfare campaign where you want to confuse the population, overwhelm them, disorient them, distract them, so they can carry out their nasty deeds to dismantle democracy.
ROZSA: All right, and my final question: is there anything else important about this subject you'd like to say that I haven't given you the chance to say so far?
HASSAN: I think we should be messaging things that resonate with everybody, like a return to law and order as a platform for candidates. I think we should be encouraging twenty- to thirty-year-olds to get active, to register people that age who haven't been registered, to get them motivated that their vote matters. A lot of what Trump has been saying is meant to dissuade people from thinking their vote matters, because he's going to have his way no matter what. But we want an overwhelming vote count in every single state. We want to get more people active as citizens, because this is a long-term fight we're in right now, and we need to cultivate active resistance, at least through 2028. So even with the threats of declaring elections fraudulent or whatever, we need to mobilize people to care, to come out, to register anyone they meet who may not be registered and to persuade them of the importance of voting.
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mma
June 26, 2026, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
STEVE BANNON (HOST): Now, Johnson goes up there, and we're advocates of this housing bill. It's an important bill, but it's not a must pass by any measure. They're going to use it as a messaging bill.
...
Help me out here. They're shipping the president the bill today?
CLETA MITCHELL (GUEST): Well, I don't know what day, but what I read last night is that the speaker told the press that they would be sending the housing bill to the president. Once they do that, it is — he has ten days to sign it. And if he doesn't — or veto it. And if he doesn't veto it and does nothing, it becomes a law without his signature.
What my message is, is that he has to veto that bill. He caught everybody by surprise and made the MAGA base — I basically burst into tears when I saw that he had cancelled the bill signing for that housing bill, that was supposed to take place at noon on Wednesday. And he just cancelled it. I had sent some things around and —
BANNON: That was amazing. That was amazing.
MITCHELL: And it was wonderful, wonderful.
BANNON: Wonderful.
MITCHELL: And he needs to stick to it. I'm asking everybody within the sound of my voice to call the White House today — 202-456-1111 — talk to a live operator and say: Mr. President, please veto that bill until the SAVE America Act is put on your desk.
...
BANNON: We're big proponents of some of the elements of this housing bill. It's not perfect, but we're a big believer in that it can have great things, but it's not a game changer.
MITCHELL: No.
BANNON: Whoever's telling the president that's going to motivate the base to go out there is just — they're dead wrong. They don't know the base, and they're not spending time with them.
//
06/25/26 8:03 PM EDT
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AN 5 26
President Donald Trump was the first reality TV star to become president, but when it comes to tabloid entertainment entering the White House, he may not be the last — at least according to one expert.
After discussing how former President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden recently appeared on Candace Owens' podcast to discuss the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, America’s relationship with Israel and the Charlie Kirk assassination, The Bulwark’s Sarah Longwell, an expert on tracking voting patterns, argued that Owens may soon run for president in her Monday post.
To illustrate her point, she quoted a number of voters, such as a Biden-to-Trump North Carolina voter named Mycal who said “I think Candace Owens is great. I would vote for her in a minute.”
Another Biden-to-Trump North Carolina voter, Daniela, wrote that “if we would’ve swapped out Candace for Kamala, they would’ve had this in the bag.”
Similarly a Trump-voting Gen Z woman, Kim from Virginia, adopted the popular far right mantra of claiming persecution for their beliefs.
“ I’m sure I’ll catch a lot of flack for this one, but I am a Candace Owens fan,” Kim told Longwell. “I think she’s a very smart lady. I would be interested to see her give it a shot for sure.”
Meanwhile Nancy from Minnesota said that “ I think Candace Owens would be an awesome president, and if she were to run, I think it would take a lot for me to not vote for her. I would love to see someone like Candace in office.”
Longwell noted that Owens has said that she'll run for president, possibly with Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) as her running mate. Yet it is unclear if she is simply trolling or being sincere, although Longwell pointed out that regardless of her intentions, the mere plausibility of her candidacy is instructive.
“It’s become clear in these groups that she is trading some of her mainline MAGA listeners—the kind who supported Trump for his stance on low taxes and traditional gender roles—for the more generally conspiracy-brained,” Longwell wrote. “Anecdotally, there are multiple people in my office whose apolitical family members and friends tune in to Owens for her reality TV takes, and get exposed to her whack-job political analysis in the process. But one person’s whack-job is another person’s fearless truth-teller.”
She added, “The conclusion to draw from my hundreds of focus groups with Trump voters in recent years, is this: Owens has moved from a hero of the ‘MAGA establishment’ to an avatar for a more sprawling and more exotically crazy coalition. Trump’s 2024 victory was largely built on wedding establishment MAGA types who wanted tax cuts, judicial appointments, and mass deportations with the conspiracy theorists who defy neat political categories. That was the reason he allied with RFK Jr. and the MAHA movement. Owens at one point seemed like one of the few figures who could maintain that marriage. And maybe she can. While there are signs that establishment MAGA fans are moving on from her, if she ever chooses to run for office, the exigencies of an election may very well bring them home again.”
After praising Owens for being articulate, savvy in building her base and capable of demonstrating independence from “MAGA proper,” Longwell concluded that Owens’ popularity shows America may one day have Trumpism without Trump.
“We might just end up trading the MAGA movement as it’s currently constituted for an even more deranged and conspiracy-addled one,” Longwell wrote.
Longwell is not the first to note Owens’ rising star power. Salon’s Sophia Tesfaye wrote in March that Owens has capitalized on the assassination of Charlie Kirk to spread conspiracy theories about his widow, Erika Kirk.
"With Kirk's assassination at a Turning Point USA event in Utah last September, the MAGA movement faced a genuine tragedy," Tesfaye wrote. "His widow, Erika Kirk, stepped in to lead the organization. But within weeks, before the grief had even begun to settle, Owens began publicly questioning the circumstances of Kirk's killing and spinning conspiracy theories on her podcast…. What started as insinuation soon metastasized into a serialized spectacle: 'Bride of Charlie,' a multi-episode YouTube series targeting Erika Kirk personally…. In the series, which is still ongoing, Owens hints that Kirk's murder was an inside job, suggests foreign agents may have been involved and implies that Erika Kirk has 'ulterior motives' in leading TPUSA."
Tesfaye added that although "the conservative establishment has, belatedly, tried to fight back against Owens' accusations” against one of their movement’s leaders, they "have largely failed to land a blow.” She added that “the real reason right-wing media cannot stop Candace Owens is that they built her. And, more importantly, they built the engine that fuels her: the machinery of conspiratorial media, which is immune to the tools that might once have contained it.”
Tesfaye concluded, “For decades, conservative media has thrived on a business model that monetizes outrage and distrust. The more outrageous the claim, the greater the engagement. The more distrust sowed toward institutions — universities, media, elections, public health, the FBI — the more loyal the audience becomes."
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AN 5 26
I keep hearing that one of America’s biggest problems is we’re “divided and polarized.” For example, New York Timescolumnist David French: “We’ve known for a long time that America is deeply polarized, and we’ve known the problem is only getting worse.”
This is bull----. The problem is notthat we’re divided and polarized.
The problem is that a significant portion of America is buying Trump’s violent, hateful, lawless crap. Some of those buying it are white supremacists. Others are conservative fundamentalist Christians. Others are xenophobic nationalists.
I feel compassion for those who’ve been seduced into supporting Trump after being brutalized and mistreated for years by employers, big corporations, Wall Street, and America’s oligarchs. As I warned 32 years ago, widening inequalities of wealth, income, and opportunity would eventually persuade some on the losing side to support a demagogue.
But an explanation for why some of Trump’s followers have bought into his neofascism isn’t a justification for them to do so. And it’s certainly no reason for us to put aside our differences and compromise with them.
As you undoubtedly know, Trump has created a violent police state inside America. He is conducting an illegal war abroad. He has usurped the powers of Congress and defied court orders. He is taking bribes. He’s criminally prosecuting his enemies and pardoning his criminal supporters (he has even set up a slush fund to compensate them). He has gotten his Justice Department to immunize him and his family from any future tax audits. He is silencing critics. He is fomenting racism and bigotry.
None of us should fall for the false equivalency between this, and opposition to it. The contest today is notbetween “right” and “left,” as the two sides have traditionally been understood in America. It’s not even between “Republicans” and “Democrats,” as we’ve defined the two major parties over most of the past century.
No, the contest today is between democracy and authoritarianism. It’s between tolerance and bigotry. Between a multiracial, secular, inclusive society and one that believes in white Christian nationalism. Between the rule of law and neofascism.
The two sides in this contest do not merit equal weight. If we are going to have a decent society, the nation must come down on the former side.
As long as Trump has followers who support his bigotry, racism, corruption, and violence, the nation will remain divided and polarized. That is necessary and proper.
We shouldn’t “reach out, or “meet halfway,” or “find middle ground,” or “split the difference,” or any other of today’s hackneyed expressions for putting aside what divides us and agreeing.
Generations of Americans fought and died for the ideals of democracy, freedom, social justice, the rule of law, and equal opportunity. We have never fully achieved them, but they remain our ideals. Tomorrow we celebrate Memorial Day to honor those ideals and the memories of those who died for them.
There cannot be, must not be, any compromise with neofascism.
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AN 5 26 HAAKE XLNT ANALYSIS
Whenever a new poll comes out showing Trump’s abysmal ratings, public reactions follow a pattern. Public comments don’t question Trump’s disapproval rating. Rather, millions of people question the flip side: how does 38% of the nation still support such an obvious charlatan? Are supporters delusional? Suicidal?
Specifically, does MAGA not know that 15 million Americans, mostly their own, have now lost health insurance because of him? Can they not read the Walmart price tags they hold in their own hands? Do they not know he’s weakening the NATO alliance their granddads fought for, or that he single-handedly empowered one of the most dangerous regimes in the world?
The answer is ‘No, no, and no.’ Nearly 40% of the country—38%, to be exact— can’t connect the dots on who’s making their lives harder. We don’t need another study to figure out why, because it couldn’t be more obvious: As of May 12, 2026, 38% of the nation still supports Trump because 38% of the nation watches Fox News, purveyors of pure Trump propaganda. And compared to other consumers, Fox News viewers do not diversify their sources.
:{:{After the 2020 election, the Pew Research Center did a deep dive to learn what Americans heard, perceived and knew about it.
Researchers found, for example, that 63% of Fox News viewers had given Trump an “excellent” rating on Covid. Trump suggested injecting bleach into unspecified orifices while over 1 million Americans died, yet Fox viewers thought he did an excellent job??}:}:
More accurately it was a con job, perpetrated by Fox News.
Fox News propaganda
Coming into the present news cycle, the Pope-Trump conflict illustrates the con in real time. Pope Leo XIV criticized Trump’s war with Iran by condemning leaders who manipulate religion for military gain. Trump, manifestly devoid of impulse control, immediately shot back on Truth Social that the Pope was “weak on crime” and “terrible for Foreign Policy” as if he were a political adversary. In follow up Fox News Digital interviews, Trump doubled down and refused to apologize as Fox hosts clapped like seals.
:{While most media outlets questioned Trump’s sanity for attacking the spiritual leader of 1.4 billion people, Fox dissembled with headlines like, “60 Minutes accused of using left-leaning Cardinals to bait Trump into feud with Vatican” and “{Pope Leo says remarks about world being ‘ravaged by a }_}_{}__{{handful of tyrants’ were not aimed at Trump}. When Trump dispatched Marco Rubio to patch things up with the Pope
last week, most media {reported that it didn’t work}, but Fox called it a big success and applauded {what a great job Rubio did.}}:
Fox News even tried to accuse other media networks of intentionally ‘baiting’ a response from Trump. They invited Elise Stefanik onto the network to tell Pope Leo XIV to “stay out of politics,” while other guests labelled the Pope’s foreign policy views ‘wrong’ and ‘liberal.’ Sean Hannity questioned whether the Pope fully understood the Iran conflict, and several other Fox commentators questioned whether the Pontiff had “read the Bible” about geocomplexities in Iran. To be clear, not one Fox host questioned whether Trump had “read the map” before he delivered the Strait of Hormuz to the mullahs.
The First Amendment protects political speech but it does not protect fraud
The Pope example alone illustrates how MAGA is being lied to on a daily basis, but it’s just one example. Fox News serves up daily falsehoods about climate change, immigrants, public education, NATO, black crime, ICE, and the war in Iran to craft a pro-Trump narrative, assuming their lies are legally protected by the First Amendment as “political speech.”
:{:{Enough damage is now evident to challenge that legal
assumption.}:}:
In 2010, Supreme Court republicans fast-tracked America’s slide into oligarchy when they ruled in Citizens United that corporate political donations were a form of free speech. Citizens United further clarified that, under the First Amendment, political speech warrants the “highest level of protection against government regulation” following the New York Times Co. v. Sullivan’s restatement, and an earlier ruling that any regulations on political speech must withstand the highest level of strict scrutiny.
But while First Amendment protection for political speech is old news, there’s another long-toothed maxim: The First Amendment does not protect fraud. In 2012, under United States v. Alvarez,the Court confirmed that fraud is a ‘narrowly limited class of speech’ not entitled to First Amendment protection. In Alvarez, the Court struck down the Stolen Valor Act, a law that made lying about military medals a crime, because no one gained a ‘material advantage’ from the lie. Unless someone is profiting from their false speech, the court ruled, there’s no actionable fraud—they’re simply lying. But false speech connected to economic gain on one side and economic harm on the other is fraud, legally unprotected under the First Amendment.
:{Under this definition, Fox News is engaged in classic consumer fraud. Fox admitted in the Dominion case that they lied to their
viewers for profit, and paid out nearly $1 billion in settlement as a result. But their lies didn’t stop after that case, they continue to sell 24/7 Trump propaganda as ‘news.’ They are perpetrating the same fraud, one that hooks viewers, profiting Fox and their corporate backers, while materially harming victims by convincing them to vote against their own economic interests.}:
Under Supreme Court precedent, Fox News isn’t engaging in protected political speech. It’s engaging in commercial fraud. And the victims aren’t just Fox viewers, even though studies show they are harmed the most: the entire nation is enduring political violence, because 38% of the country is being lied to.
Albert Einstein once said, “A people that were to honor falsehood…would be unable, indeed, to subsist for very long.” Is mere national survival a sufficient justification to return to requiring accuracy in the news? Is it legally sufficient to pass strict scrutiny? If it is not, after a Democrat-run Congress returns to the Fairness Doctrine, this high court will have elevated partisan interests to the point of national suicide.
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'He’s fighting for us': MAGA voters hold fast as Trump pillages their bank accounts - Alternet.org
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AN 5 26
The depths of conservative men's subservience to President Donald Trump reached a new low this week, after the release of what The Bulwark called the "absurd" and "absolutely wild" results of a survey exposing their strange stance on his physical strength.
On Friday, Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell released a new video where she, alongside writer Catherine Rampell, reacted to an unorthodox new poll from YouGov. In it, the survey asked respondents if they believed that an 8-year-old boy, a typical American man and, finally, themselves, could physically defeat Trump in a fight.
As Rampell explained, the poll originated from an odd exchange Trump had with a young boy during an Oval Office event touting the return of the old Presidential Fitness Exam standards, in which he asked the boy if he believed he could take him in a fight.
"So it was Trump who threw down the gauntlet to begin with," Rampell said. "And YouGov was, let's see what America thinks."
And "what America thinks," it turns out, breaks down in a "funny" fashion along gender and partisan lines. According to the poll's findings, respondents who identified as Democratic women were more likely to believe they could take the president than those who identified as Republican men, painting a bizarre picture of the cult-like image of strength conservative men still appear to have of the president.
Breaking it down further, Longwell shared that 66 percent of respondents said that the average American male could beat Trump in a fight, while only 10 percent said that the president would win. Along party lines, 33 percent of Republicans said that they would win, compared to 75 percent of Democrats. Democratic respondents were also notably more down on Trump's odds against an 8-year-old boy, with 54 percent believing that the boy would win, compared to just 6 percent of Republicans.
"This is an interesting psychological experiment about partisan politics," Longwell said. "Because Republicans are like, 'Big daddy Trump could beat me, he could get me, I'm scared of him,' whereas Democrats are like, 'Man, an 8-year-old boy would kick that guy's a——."
Along partisan and gender lines, the survey found that 71 percent of Democratic women, and 84 percent of men, believed that they could beat Trump. By comparison, just 46 percent of Republican men, and 19 percent of women, said that they could beat him. Notably, about 29 percent of GOP men and 26 percent of GOP women said that they were unsure. The number of uncertain Democrats was much lower.
Longwell noted that these results paint a grim picture of the "need" Republican men have to believe that Trump could "dominate" them. Rampell said that it was unclear how much of the results were driven by self-esteem issues, versus the need to believe Trump is physically powerful.
In the spirit of the conversation, Rampell herself added that, while she is notably shorter and lighter than the president, and has no experience with physical fights, she also believed that she could best Trump, given the many obvious signs of his declining physical health.
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RWW
- Virginia Heffernan @ The New Republic: The Ex-MAGA Influencer Who Now Hates All Things MAGA—and Herself Too
Ashley St. Clair used to hang with Erika Kirk. And she bore Romulus, the zillionth child of Elon Musk. She’s now turned her back on MAGA—and wants to tell you all about it.
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AN 3 26 FARM
'Lost all hope': Trump policies are crushing food industry in Republican heartland
Trump-loving farmers threaten 'to quit' as president’s war spikes fertilizer prices
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AN 2 26
Do you believe in ghosts, mind reading and witches? If you do, you’re likely a kid — or maybe a right-wing authoritarian. New research published in The Journal of Social Psychology suggests that individuals who endorse certain right-wing political ideologies are more likely to believe in paranormal phenomena.
“There have long been speculations that esotericism and beliefs in the paranormal are related to right-wing beliefs,” said Alexander Jedinger, a senior researcher at the GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, speaking with PsyPost. “There is much research in history and cultural studies on this topic, and of course, there are a lot of references in popular culture to Nazi esotericism, exemplified in movies such as Indiana Jones and Hellboy. However, there was little quantitative evidence on these kinds of relationships.”
Past studies have hinted at a link between right-wing political views and a susceptibility to supernatural thinking, so Jedinger and his partners explored the relationship by examining specific aspects of right-wing ideology. Researchers singled out the trait recognized as “right-wing authoritarianism,” which describes a “preference for strict obedience to authority, conformity to traditional social norms, and hostility toward people who break those norms.”
They also wanted to see if the way people process information could account for any connection. People generally employ two types of thinking: intuitive thinking, which relies on fast gut feelings, and analytical thinking, which involves slow and deliberate reasoning.
“The scientists designed their study to test if this shared thinking style was the main bridge between political ideology and the paranormal.” reports PsyPost. Researchers recruited a sample of 1,139 adult participants and used an online survey with a scale for measuring participants’ willingness to accept paranormal beliefs, including phenomena like “mind reading, witchcraft, lucky charms, ghosts, and astrology.” After separated traditional religious beliefs from paranormal beliefs, they also measured political views by asking respondents to place themselves on a left-to-right political spectrum.
“Those who scored higher in right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation were more likely to endorse paranormal concepts,” PsyPost reports.
And it turned out that the willingness to believe in real witches isn’t necessarily connected to how prone you are to think “with your gut” over analysis. Kooky beliefs were more common among right-wing authoritarians, regardless of how much they relied on analytical thinking over “gut-thinking.”
“Instead, the results showed that right-wing ideology and cognitive styles independently contributed to paranormal beliefs,” PsyPost reports. “Accounting for analytical and intuitive thinking did not substantially weaken the connection between authoritarian or dominance-oriented views and belief in the supernatural.”
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AN 2 26
New research shows high-IQ men reject conservative politics: report
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AN 2 26
PsyPost reports that a new study published in the journal Advances in Psychology suggests that White people who personally perceive themselves as ranking at the bottom of the racial economic hierarchy or “tied” with Black Americans were the most likely to support President Donald Trump.
Previous research identified a phenomenon known as “last place aversion,” where people fear being at the very bottom of a social hierarchy — and Trump voters apparently feel the sting of smallness more acutely than others, whether or not they are actually at the bottom rung of the ladder.
Surprisingly, researchers found that these attitudes were not driven by actual poverty. The researchers controlled for objective indicators of socioeconomic status, such as income and education levels. They found that belonging to the “last place” profile predicted Trump support and anti-DEI attitudes regardless of how much money or education the participant actually had.
“We … [expected] a subset of non-Hispanic, white Americans who feel ‘last place.’ That said, we expected this profile to be more likely among working class individuals,” Cooley told PsyPost.“However, perceiving oneself to be ‘last place’ was not associated with the lowest objective income nor the lowest objective education among the White Americans in our samples.”
The United States currently exhibits a significant racial wealth gap with economic statistics consistently showing that the average white family holds considerably more wealth than the average Black or Hispanic family. But despite this reality, surveys indicate that many white Americans feel they are “personally falling behind” in terms of status without realistically weighing the resources at their disposal.
“This line of research was motivated by recent political trends among some white Americans, including support for DEI bans, alignment with alt-right ideology, and endorsement of political violence in pursuit of political goals (e.g., January 6th),” said study authors Erin Cooley and Jazmin Brown-Iannuzzi, associate professors of psychology at Colgate University and the University of Virginia, respectively. “Many of these attitudes are not only extreme but also anti-democratic, raising questions about how such views can coexist with identities centered on being ‘most American’ (e.g., white nationalist belief systems).”
The tool researchers used to assess personal status was a box measure called the “Perceived Self-Group Hierarchy.” Participants viewed a diagram representing a status ladder based on money, education, and job prestige, and they were asked to place markers representing themselves, white people, Black people, Asian people, and Hispanic people onto this ladder.
Researchers found a consistent link between this “last place” profile and specific political views.
“White Americans who fit this profile reported the highest levels of support for Donald Trump throughout the campaign season. They also expressed the strongest intention to vote for him. When surveyed the day after the election, this group was the most likely to report having cast their ballot for Trump,” PsyPost reports.
This same group of insecure white people also showed “the strongest opposition to DEI programs, favoring policies that would ban such initiatives in universities.” Additionally, they showed higher alignment with alt-right ideologies, agreeing more frequently with statements such as “White people are generally under attack in the U.S.” and “The government threatens my personal rights.”
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an 2 26
A stark report from one of the main independent European think tanks says there is no going back to any sort of pre-MAGA America, and warns that even after the Trump years, unless drastic action is taken, the “core fascist” political beliefs of the MAGA movement won’t quickly disappear.
“By the 2030s, the vulgarity, corruption, buffoonery, cult-like loyalty to Donald Trump and gratuitous cruelty of this regime may fade into history,” writes Lincoln Mitchell for the Institute for International and Strategic Affairs (IRIS). “As these most visible aspects of MAGA disappear many will choose to believe that the country has been reunified, but the core fascist political beliefs of the MAGA movement are unlikely to fade away so quickly.”
“As the Trump regime continues to sink into fascism and corruption, it is increasingly evident that the US will be forever changed by this era,” he continues. “If the US emerges from the Trump years as a functioning and cohesive, just in the legal sense, country, something that cannot be easily assumed, it will look very different than it did before Trump announced his candidacy in June of 2015 and almost immediately became the dominant figure in American political life.”
Mitchell, a political analyst, essayist, and lecturer at Columbia University, points to other times of crisis in American history, such as the Civil War or the 1960s and 1970s, and warns against those who “say that if we survived that, we can survive this.”
“That view cannot be ignored, but if we take it seriously, we must push back on the idea that the US simply survived those crises,” he writes. “The social movements that led to greater racial equality and expansions of rights for women, people of color, LGBT people and others-and the backlashes to all those movements that soon followed-still drive much of our political life and political conflicts.”
He says that even if, post-Trump, “the MAGA fervor cools a little,” it will be possible for Americans to reform the political system just enough to say to themselves that the fascist MAGA threat has passed — but they may be fooling themselves. The issues that spawned the MAGA movement will still be “central to our political life.”
Mitchell says it “should be clear” to all that now, more than a decade after Trump launched the MAGA movement, “there is no going back.”
He suggests that the question Americans need to answer is whether they want to return to “ineffective center-left administrations” or “fascist or fascist adjacent ones.”
Mitchell warns that to defeat MAGA, a few Democratic Party wins at the ballot box will not suffice.
“It will require an earnest rethinking not just of what American democracy can be, but of what the US is. It means accepting that the Constitution is no longer the core document that governs the US, so our political imaginations must not be bound by it.”
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AN 1 26
The core basis of the MAGA movement's ideology has effectively been debunked, according to one journalist who has been covering President Donald Trump's crackdown in Minneapolis.
The Atlantic's Adam Serwer claimed earlier this week that "Minnesota proved MAGA wrong" in the wake of the Trump administration's "Operation Metro Surge" this month. In a Wednesday interview, Serwer told the Bulwark's Tim Miller: ""The right has a social theory that multiracial, multi-faith communities cannot be 'cohesive,' that our chaos is the result of the presence of people who are different from us," and then argued that the anti-immigration argument didn't pass muster, pointing to the diverse nature of Minneapolis and the hyper-local network that people of all backgrounds organized in order to protect their neighbors.
Miller prodded Serwer by playing a clip of Vice President JD Vance's interview with the New York Times' Ross Douthat last year, in which Vance asserted that "those who care about what may be called the common good" discount "how destructive to the common good immigration at the levels and at the pace that we've seen over the last few years."
"I really do think that social solidarity is destroyed when you have too much migration too quickly," said Vance, who is married to the daughter of Indian immigrants. "And so that's not because I hate the migrants or I'm motivated by grievance. That's because I'm trying to preserve something in my own country. Social solidarity is destroyed by migration."
Serwer said while Vance's argument technically "makes sense on paper" and has a "logical progression to it," it was still "wrong."
"We know it's wrong because we can see in Minneapolis, we can see a group of people who, we can see these communities of people who say, 'you are my neighbor whether you were born in Minneapolis or Mogadishu. You are my neighbor and I'm going to protect you. I'm going to walk your kids to the bus stop because I know you can't go outside. I'm going to bring you food if you need to stay at home. I'm going to help you pay your rent. If I see ICE, I'm going to blow my whistle or I'm going to take out my camera and start filming.'"
"It's a little weird to say that when you consider that a substantial amount of the white population in the United States was segregated into ethnic enclaves where people only spoke their original language for much of the late 19th and early 20th century," he contimued. "And it turned out OK. And what we have here is immigrants are actually assimilating much faster than in that period, like much faster, like second, third generation, they only speak English. So it's just not true."
"What is so moving about the sort of neighborism there is that everybody says it doesn't matter who you are, it doesn't matter what gender you are, it doesn't matter what race you are. It doesn't matter what religion you are. You are my neighbor. I will defend you," Serwer added. "And that is a level of commitment to social cohesion that I have yet to see from anybody in the MAGA coalition who all seem to be about stating these things, not so much as a matter of principles they want to see lived in the world, but as a question of brand-building and political identity, which is, I think what JD Vance is doing."
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AN 1 26
Conservative Bulwark Editor Jonathan Last argued there are two groups of President Donald Trump's voters: Those who signed on to deport 20 million immigrants regardless of whether they had committed any crime, and those who signed on with Trump’s plan to remove only immigrants who were criminals.
“Because people are stupid, that first group of voters believed that there were 20 million undocumented immigrants who have committed felonies. This is not possible,” said Last. “The total number of people in jail in America today — this includes federal, state, local, and tribal land prisons — is just under 2 million. The number of undocumented immigrants who have committed serious crimes cannot be 10x the entire prison population of the United States. If it were, then daily life in America would look like Escape from New York.”
“So, some Trump voters were duped owing to their general ignorance and/or innumeracy. But others were not,” added Last. “Others signed up for Trump because of his second promise (the 20 million deportations) and viewed the first promise (about deporting only criminals) as the pap necessary to get the suckers onboard.”
The question Last wants to answer is how many “dupes” voted for Trump vs the avowed racists who simply want Brown people gone. To get his answer, Last reviewed an AP/NORC poll showing consistent 80 percent support for Trump’s immigration policies among Republicans. Then he compared that to a more recent YouGov poll showing 80 percent of Republicans still "approved" of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement even after they shot and killed 37 year-old U.S. citizen Renee Good in footage that reveals no threat to agents.
“It seems pretty clear that, at best, one in five Trump voters were duped. The majority of them are getting exactly what they wanted,” Last said. "Now if Trump were to lose the support of 20 percent of Republican voters — or even 14 percent — it would be meaningful for Republican electoral prospects. Which is nice. The problem is that having 80 percent of Republican voters actively supporting a fascist race war is meaningful for our societal prospects.”
That’s a lot of racists in one party, said Last, but what’s worse is the tally of avowed racists occupying high federal positions, including “Vice President JD Vance, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem," as indicated by a recent Homeland Security post claiming to seek the deportation of "100 million" deportations.
“There are 43 million foreign-born Americans. Most of them are legal immigrants. In order to perform 100 million deportations, DHS would have to round up every immigrant of any status —even naturalized citizens — and then also snatch 57 million American who are citizens by birth and deport them, too,” said Last.
“Want to guess who those other 57 million Americans might be?” Last asked, before sharing a recent U.S. Department of Labor X post ordering Americans “To remember who you are.” Last said this slogan is a dead ringer from Adolf Hitler’s own iconic “One People, One Country, One Leader” post from the 1940s. Couple that with a volley of blonde, blue-eyed propaganda posts from Trump’s Department of Labor, and you’ve got even more insight.
“On the one hand, it feels weird to say that the U.S. government is attempting some low-key ethnic cleansing,” said Last. “On the other hand, the reality is that we have a masked secret police force going door-to-door attempting to kidnap brown people; one government agency publicly daydreaming about deporting 100 million people; and another government agency saying that the ideal worker is a 20-year-old white guy.”
Last said this information mingles horribly with the White House’s obsession with white Americans’ falling fertility rate and it’s constant citation of “Stuff white people like” including false claims that white men who “did extremely well” in high school are not getting invited to college despite white men having a “significant advantage” during the application process.
Read the Bulwark report at this link.
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AN 1 26:
President Donald Trump is quickly losing support from those in his home state of Florida.
Bloomberg opinion columnist Mary Ellen Klas penned a Sunday piece where she revealed that many of the people she knows who are supporters of Trump are privately uncomfortable with his actions in the first year.
The Florida resident described the MAGA voters "queasy" over "brazen corruption" coming out of the second Trump administration.
The invasion of Venezuela is the most recent example. While ousting former President Nicolás Maduro was supported overwhelmingly by both sides of the political aisle, there is still a need for transparency about what the U.S. intends to do there and how much tax payer dollars will be used to fund what Trump wants.
"Yet, they don’t feel right calling out Trump for this or his other transgressions, so they dance around it — often trying to find some equivalent outrage under a Democratic administration," Klas said.
The problem they're finding, she wrote, is that there are no equivalences. While Trump's Cabinet officials have taken a "wrecking-ball" to the U.S. government, she noted GOP lawmakers "have remained virtually dormant." The administration has taken over Congress' power to control budget and spending, appointments to independent agencies and demote the power of other branches of the federal government.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department is trying to prosecute Trump's opponents. All the while, Trump is taking advantage of "self-enriching deals, the firing of Justice Department watchdogs, the sweeping use of the president’s pardon power to free his allies — regardless of the seriousness of their crimes — and the frightening near-abandonment of the rule of law," wrote Klas.
From those she's spoken to, Klas said that many MAGA supporters bought into his 2024 campaign messages. Now, however, Americans are "afraid."
“My parents fled an authoritarian regime and that’s the type of government that instills fear and puts people in jail and punishes them for their viewpoints,” said Marcos Daniel Jiménez, a former US attorney under former President George W. Bush told Klas.
“That’s exactly what this president is doing — maybe not to that level — but the retribution and the attacks by the president and his cronies have caused many people who own businesses and have families to be afraid," Jiménez continued.
In fact, several Cuban Americans told Klas that they see parallels between Trump and former President Fidel Castro. Jiménez was the only one who would go on the record with her. Others were afraid of retaliation from Trump and his allies.
"Those who have experience with life in an authoritarian regime know best what will happen if the Trump administration continues down its current path. But they don’t see it in their self-interest to speak out. Social scientists call this the 'collective action problem,' when individuals acting in their own self-interest contribute to a worse outcome for the entire group," she continued.
In an essay for his students, Associate Professor of Law Dakota Rudesill advised Americans to consider their personal values and refuse to lower their standards.
Rudesill explained to Klaus that often when people see things that conflicts with their values they try to explain it away rather than standing up for what they believe in.
“But if everybody just looks to their immediate self-interest, then we are all just going to consent to transaction, submission, intimidation and threat — which undermines everything we believe in," Rudesill said.
Sometimes, she closed, it only takes one voice.
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AN 1 26
Donald Trump has historically performed well with various voter groups who, for one reason or another, view him as "anti-establishment," but now, according to a new analysis from The Atlantic, he faces a "shrinking coalition" as these voters increasingly see him as "the system" he once seemed to oppose.
Writing for The Atlantic on Monday, journalist Jonathan Chait outlined the numerous "reversals" of his past campaign promises that are now alienating his 2024 coalition. Despite claiming that he would only ramp up deportations of criminals, an idea Chait argued was resonant with Latino communities, his actual policies now see anyone and everyone in that community under fire by ICE. Despite pledging to end costly overseas military conflicts, he has now carried out a contentious strike against Venezuela and has eyes on deploying troops to seize Greenland. Once touting himself as a champion of free speech, Trump has instead "relentlessly cracked down on the speech that he opposes," including against people critical of Israel and of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk after his killing.
These and many other "reversals" outlined by Chait share one particular trait: "alienating anti-system voters because [Trump] now controls the system."
"His appeal lay in his opposition to established power, but now that he has it, he is flexing it gleefully," Chait explained. "He is the warmonger, the censor, the face of the Epstein cover-up. It is hard to remain an outsider while holding the world’s most powerful job."
Trump remained somewhat immune to this phenomenon during his first term, as despite his many betrayals of campaign promises back then, he faced much more pushback from the system designed to keep presidential power in check and suffered numerous high-profile political defeats. Chait argued that this made Trump seem, to these "anti-system" voters, like "an outsider within his own presidency," who "fought the law, and the law won."
"Trump is no longer making this complaint about the established forces working against him, because he has solved this problem," Chait wrote. "His presidency is filled with loyalists. He has largely overcome any reluctance that officials might have had in carrying out his most unethical or illegal demands. He can’t present himself as anti-system, because he has become the system... Trump seems to assume that voters share his own worship of power. His most intense fans may revel in his displays of dominance, but his least attached supporters — the ones who turned him from a loser in 2020 to a winner in 2024 — are recoiling."
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AN 12 25
Donald Trump's MAGA voter base has become "jaded" with his handling of several key issues, with a new analysis from Australia's ABC News predicting that "more fights are brewing" due to these divides.
In his analysis, ABC's Washington, D.C., correspondent Brad Ryan highlighted the Epstein files disclosure scandals as one of the biggest and loudest issue dividing the MAGA base, which has long been in support of a complete release of all government materials pertaining to the notorious sex trafficker. Trump himself pledged to release the files on the 2024 campaign trail, but later did much to block them once he returned to the White House.
Citing a quote from former Trump ally Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ryan's report noted that the MAGA "base is jaded" with Trump, and highlighted six major dividing lines.
Firstly, Trump has seen major pushback from the likes of Greene, Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon over the country's continued support of Israel and its war in Gaza under his leadership, with Greene calling the mass death of Palestinians a "genocide" and Carlson saying the notion that these deaths were unintentional is a "lie." Ryan cited recent polling to suggest that younger Republicans are increasingly against US support of Israel. The Chicago Council of Global Affairs in October found that 27 percent of Gen Z Republicans think the US has given too much aid to Israel, compared to 16 percent of older Republicans who said the same.
MAGA media figures have also recently become bitterly divided over the embrace from some in the movement of Nick Fuentes, an avowed white supremacist with a history of complimentary comments about Adolf Hitler. Carlson recently interviewed Fuentes on his internet show, prompting backlash from the likes of Sen. Ted Cruz and DailyWire's Ben Shapiro, the latter of whom called Fuentes a "super-spreader of vile ideas."
Republicans in Congress have also been resistant and slow to address the impending end of Affordable Care Act subsidies, which will see premiums for marketplace health insurance skyrocket in the new year without intervention. Moderate GOP members of Congress have demanded an extension of the subsidies, worrying that the prices going up could spell disaster for them in the 2026 midterms, while more staunchly conservative members remain opposed.
The fourth issue Ryan highlighted was H1-B visas for skilled foreign workers, which Trump and his allies have sought to curtail during his second term. The late Charlie Kirk called the visas a "scam," and many other MAGA supporters view them as taking jobs away from Americans. Other supporters, however, were outraged at Trump's moves against H1-Bs, with conservative radio host Erick Erickson saying it was the "very first time I have seen so many people who have long been supporters of the president furious with the president."
Speaking of Kirk, Ryan also highlighted the conspiracies surrounding the Turning Point USA founder's death as another wedge driving MAGA apart. Many of these theories have been driven by commentator Candace Owens, who has frequently suggested that Kirk's shooting was orchestrated by the Israeli or French governments, or other figures within Turning Point.
Lastly, Ryan highlighted the cost-of-living crisis in the US, the issue often cited as the biggest on the minds of voters heading into the 2026 midterms. Trump campaigned on lowering everyday prices, but as conditions have worsened or remained the same under his leadership, he has become increasingly dismissive of these concerns, claiming that "affordability" is a "hoax" perpetuated against him by Democrats. Meanwhile, Democrats campaigning largely on addressing the cost of living have seen major electoral victories in the 2025 off-year elections.
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an 12 25
President Donald Trump continues to suffer low approval ratings in poll after poll. An NPR/PBS/Marist poll released in late December, for example, finds his approval at only 36 percent.
Nonetheless, Trump is still popular among his hardcore MAGA base, which views him as someone who isn't afraid to tackle elites on his behalf. But in an in-depth opinion column/essay published on December 23, the New York Times' Thomas B. Edsall lays out some reasons why Trump's policies will hurt his MAGA base more than anyone.
"The Trump Administration (has) adopted policies condemning a sizable group of its core MAGA supporters — miners, firemen, manufacturing workers — to slow deaths from diseases that cut off their ability to breathe," Edsall explains. "President Trump’s attacks on the regulation of toxic chemicals in the air and water, on strong vaccination policies, on rules restricting power plant pollution are part and parcel of what amounts to a killing spree cloaked as deregulation."
Trump's "deregulation policies," Edsall warns, will lead to "rising numbers of preventable deaths in the United States from increased rates of respiratory disease, illnesses of the unvaccinated and elevated exposure to toxic chemicals and lethal pollutants emanating from coal-powered plants."
According to Harvard University economics professor David M. Cutler, Trump's Big, Beautiful Bill Act of 2025 "will lead to less insurance coverage and consequently health losses."
Cutler told Edsall, "The most recent estimates are 10 million uninsured. The (Affordable Care Act) subsidies, if not extended, are projected to reduce insurance coverage by another four million."
Harvard professor Benjamin Sommers, who focuses on health care economics, told Edsall, "The Trump Administration is aggressively rolling back decades of progress in expanding health insurance and improving prevention through vaccination, which will lead to financial strain, barriers to care, and preventable deaths for many Americans."
According to the Times, the Trump Administration's MAHA (Make American Healthy Again) agenda is a "pipe dream" that will only cause major suffering among MAGA voters.
"One thing stands out in Trump's loosening of regulations of toxic chemicals, his anti-vaccination policies and his health care cuts," Edsall laments. "He is inflicting a disproportionate share of the worst kind of harms on the families of the men and women who love him the most: white working-class voters, especially those living in the industrial Midwest and Appalachia."
*Thomas B. Edsall's full column/essay for The New York Times is available at this link (subscription required).
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GREIVance IN A BIGGER SENSE // STORY 1
AN 12 25
In his New York Times column and frequent appearances on MS NOW, journalist David French isn't shy about attacking President Donald Trump from the right. Like other Never Trump conservatives — from attorney George Conway to MS NOW's Nicolle Wallace to The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson — French believes that Trump and the MAGA movement have been terrible for the GOP and terrible for conservatism.
But French examines MAGA's belief system in his December 14 column for the Times. MAGA, according to French, believes that Trump is fighting to save the United States from a "death spiral" — and that combination of anger and "despair" is one of the things that makes MAGA and the "New Right" so dangerous.
"In this telling," French explains, "the 'strong men' of the American past had created a glorious and powerful nation. Our peace and prosperity had spawned a weak and feckless generation that had squandered America's strength and cultural identity, and now, it was time for hard men to arise to reclaim what was lost. This view of America's glorious past is indispensable to understanding MAGA's appeal — and the extremism of MAGA youth. After all, the slogan, 'Make America Great Again' implies the loss of greatness."
French continues, "This sense of loss provides the intellectual and — crucially — emotional foundation of the right's authoritarian turn. It's hard to overstate how much the New Right idealizes America's past. Online spaces are full of memes and images, for example, of families from the 1950s in idyllic settings, often with the caption, 'This is what they took from you.'"
The New Right, French observes, typically "contrasts its vision of a glorious past with a miserable present."
"Now, combine that hyperbole with smartphones and social media, and you've got a recipe for a nonstop sense of alarm," the conservative New York Times columnist warns. "I can open my Twitter feed and see video after video of outrageous conduct, and no amount of telling myself that these are isolated incidents in a nation of over 340 million people can blunt their emotional impact."
*David French's full New York Times column is available at this link (subscription required).
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AN 12 25
After President Donald Trump's bitter diatribe against Somali-Americans — including progressive Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) — he got a vigorous defense from White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. Trump described Somali-Americans living in Minnesota as "garbage," calling for them to be deported "back to where they came from." And Leavitt praised his comments as "amazing" and an "epic moment."
Greg Sargent, host of The New Republic's podcast "The Daily Blast," discussed Leavitt's defense of Trump with former U.S. State Department official Vedant Patel in episode posted on December 8.
Sargent, a former Washington Post columnist, argued that Leavitt "went full cult in giving White House sanction to Trump's ugly bigotry."
Sargent told Patel, "White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt reacted to this with obsequious praise, calling it 'epic.' We thought this was a telling moment. The Trump cult has gotten so out of control that his propagandists now go out of their way to deliberately highlight his most racist and disgusting moments and pump those up into moments of heroism and triumph. Meanwhile, almost no Republicans had anything critical to say about any of this. In fact, JD Vance pounded the table in agreement with Trump on Somalis. How far is this madness going to get?"
Sargent got no argument from Patel, who served in the State Department under former President Joe Biden.
Patel told Sargent, "I want to say that I wish I were surprised, but truly, Greg, I mean, this is a playbook out of the president's first administration. I mean, I think you recall that there was a really poignant moment in which President Trump was saying that he didn't want immigrants from a certain fill-in-the-blanks, swear-word types of countries. This is the exact playbook that we've seen before of dividing this country, targeting sort of immigrant communities. It's despicable."
When Sargent told his guest that the "cultishness is off the charts" with Trump's second administration, Patel responded, "I certainly would say so."
Patel continued, "Let's put the policy aside just for a second. Let's put the Somali piece aside for just a moment. I worked in the press office under President Biden. That is not the way you are supposed to be doing media relations. Let's remember that these are spokespeople that should be working. Yes, they work for a president, but really, ultimately, their job is to try to inform the American public, be good arbiters of truth and good engagers with journalists, help answer questions, help inform coverage and stories and TV packages and things of that nature. It is not to be sycophants and just be partisan hacks with a taxpayer dime."
*Listen to the full podcast at this link or read the transcript here.
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an 12 25
The selective outrage of the MAGA cult is telling, writes Rebellious Magazine's Michelle Duster, who says President Donald Trump's supporters will exhaust themselves while everyone else builds a diverse future.
"Over the last 10 years, those who believe in empathy, equality, social progress and joy have had to endure the chronic whining, rage, fury, insults and complaints from the miserably mad MAGA cult," Duster writes.
And despite Trump's appeasement of this cult with "an unrelenting flurry of exhaustive measures to dismantle and defund institutions, departments and programs that provided opportunities and protection for Black people and other racial minorities," they're still miserable, she says.
"The scorched earth approach that has harmed millions of hard-working people will still not make America White," Duster notes. "The grievances and whining of the MAGA cult led them to elect a Confederate-sympathizing president for a second time."
In shunning those who have different cultures, values views than theirs, Duster says their performative outrage is doing nothing to cover their racism.
"In their insatiable determination to rage about everything, they’re fuming about Bad Bunny, an American citizen from Puerto Rico, performing at the 2026 Super Bowl. All their whining, promises to produce a counter-programming concert, plus a petition with over 100,000 signatures apparently influenced the NFL to schedule a first “pre-Super Bowl concert” featuring Sting, who is White and a British citizen," she writes.
"The selective outrage of the MAGA cult is telling. These same people who are content watching a game where over half of the players are Black (compared to 14 percent of the population) fume about hearing 'Lift Every Voice and Sing”'(the Black national anthem) or a Hispanic man perform the half-time show," she adds.
The undertones are obvious, Duster writes, saying, "the message is that Black and Hispanic people can use their bodies to entertain them in a violent sport, but there is no desire to hear or appreciate the voices or concerns of those same people."
Trump supporters' will exhaust themselves with their hate, she says.
"Instead of embracing the beauty and diversity of the United States and working with their fellow citizens as one people to make the country great for everyone, they choose to stew in hatred," Duster says.
The resilience of those at whom the MAGA hate is aimed, however, goes unnoticed by them.
"They don’t understand that generations of Indigenous, Black, Hispanic and Asian people have lived their entire lives navigating the hate-filled MAGA mad and their ilk," she notes. "The MAGA mad are the ones who seem obsessed with us."
"Rather than up their game to compete on an even playing field, they’d rather spend their time, energy and money on trying to keep everyone else down or out. All that does is make their insecurity even more obvious," she notes.
And MAGA won't rain on anyone's parade but their own, she writes.
"Black and Brown people will enjoy life together in January 2026 — celebrating the political wins of historically underrepresented people including Black women," she writes.
"We will cheer asZohran Mamdaniis sworn in as New York City’s youngest mayor in over 100 years and the first African-born Indian Muslim American. A month later, we will dance along with Bad Bunny as he makes history as the first Latin male artist to perform solo at the Super Bowl halt-time show. And doing so in Spanish will make the MAGA cult extra fester in their bile of hatred," she adds.
Duster says that while MAGA continues to exchange "foul, hate-filled text messages and fantasize about an all-White country," everyone else will be busy doing other things.
They will be building "a diverse, multi-cultural, multi-religious world where people of all genders and abilities love their neighbors as themselves; believe in and work towards a government of, by and for allpeople; and create systems where everyone enjoys a fair chance to compete and succeed," she says.
MAGA, meanwhile, "will exhaust themselves seething on the sidelines and miss all the fun," she concludes.
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AN 12 25
It’s often said that Donald Trump’s power base in the MAGA movement has contributed to the radicalization of the Republican party. Political scientists worry about the implications of this for the future of American democracy itself.
One example of that radicalization was the attack on the US Capitol on January 6 2021 in an attempt to overturn the result. Exacerbating that radicalisation is the movement’s hostility towards much of the mainstream media. This is something that has been amplified by the US president himself, who has famously referred to the media as “the enemy of the American people”.
But how has this radical movement movement emerged from the socially conservative Republican Party? The rise of MAGA has marked an important political shift in America that has many liberal-minded people scratching their heads. Psychology studies can offer insights that can help explain the MAGA movement’s motivations.
1. Fused identity // REES DEADHEADS?
Identity is central to understanding the way MAGA holds together as a group and can also explain many of its motives. Trump has been able to mobilise his base effectively by communicating that shared identity. And it’s this sense of common identity and purpose that has been so important in the development of MAGA as a powerful political movement.
The almost absolute faith in Trump’s leadership has a lot to do with negative resentment of other groups that he singles out for criticism, particularly migrants, liberals and feminists. But it is actually a positive identification with white nationalism that is a stronger indicator of the sort of person who might identify with MAGA.
MAGA supporters unite around a shared perception of threat to their status, often related to issues of race and immigration. But it is also seen to be motivated by the desire to cultivate belonging and group pride as a way to regain lost esteem.
Some researchers also believe that even the act of wearing a MAGA hat is a sign of what is known as “identity fusion” – when boundaries between the self and the group blur. When this occurs, wearing a MAGA hat may be a symbol of who I am rather than just who I voted for.
This is significant since identity fusion is associated with reported willingness to undertake more extreme actions such as hurting people and damaging property to uphold the Trump community and to achieve his aims.
2. Moral self-righteousness
MAGA members also tend to adhere to the idea that one’s own ethnic group is more morally pure than others. MAGA ideology tends to divide America into “good” and “evil” groups, with themselves as good and out-groups, such as the ones mentioned above, cast as evil. This positions “true Americans”, the people who built the nation, patriots who have “had enough”, as part of the former.
Since it frames politics as a struggle over “right values and lifestyles”, such rhetoric heightens the risk of malignant moral superiority. When communicated by a leader, it creates in followers the sense that they have an obligation to act against these “evil” forces which threaten their group.
When this sense of superiority is threatened, it can lead to aggression, such as the assault on the US Capitol .
3. The right to dominate other groups
Aggressiveness in political groups such as MAGA is also connected to what is known as “social dominance orientation”. This relates to belief in a hierarchy – the idea that one social group has the right to dominate other groups.
Research shows people who believe in hierarchy are more likely to disregard basic democratic principles. They see society as a “competitive jungle” where groups struggle for power and dominance.
As a result, they view groups that differ from them as inferior. This justifies any actions that maintain their in-group status.
This holds true even if – as in the case of MAGA-followers – it means a belief in violence in response to unwelcome social and cultural changes. Polling has found that MAGA supporters are also far more likely to believe that there will be a civil war in the US and that violence in order to advance the movement’s political objectives would be justified.
4. Aggressive followership
There’s a scientific debate about what draws people to authoritarian leaders. Some scholars emphasise the tendency to want to submit to authority, high levels of aggression when sanctioned and adherence to conventional values such as traditional views on religion and sexuality. Others focus more on a preference for conformity over personal autonomy.
But they agree on one point: authoritarian followers submit to leaders who stress the superiority of their social group and who they consider to be capable of handling the threats they see as coming from other groups.
Research on the MAGA movement from 2016 shows that Trump supporters were more likely than other supporters of other Republican party candidates to score high on one facet of authoritarianism: the willingness to resort to aggression towards people seen to go against social norms if encouraged by someone they’ve accepted as an authority figure. But they don’t appear to score as highly on two other facets: submission to established authorities and an adherence to conventional values.
This suggests that authoritarianism among the MAGA movement has evolved into a more distinct profile, characterized primarily by a prejudiced aggressiveness towards other social groups.
History tells us that radical political movements tend to pop up when the societal context is perceived as threatening. In this process, some people have personal dispositions that make them more prone to follow authoritarian leaders. So it’s important to take both personality and context into account when trying to understand movements such as MAGA.
Magnus Linden, Associate Professor of Psychology, Lund University; Claire Campbell, Lecturer in Social Psychology, Ulster University, and Fredrik Björklund, Professor of psychology, *Lund University
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an 11 25
In Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right, political theorist Laura K. Field explains how "under [President Donald] Trump, post-liberal intellectuals have abandoned tradition for radicalism and scholarship for vulgarity," according to a review in The Atlantic.
"For the past decade or more, the intellectual energy in American politics has been on the right," writes George Packer.
"The MAGA ideologues who provide America’s new ruling elite with any claim to having a world view should be understood as offspring of a shared parentage, not unlike the Lovestoneites, Trotskyites, and Shachtmanites of 1930s and ’40s communism," he continues.
"More reactionary than conservative, their political ancestry is in the underground of the American right — Strom Thurmond, Joseph McCarthy, Patrick Buchanan — rather than the forward-looking Reaganite libertarians who dominated the Republican Party for four decades," he adds.
MAGA's modern hero, Packer says, aren't philosophers or even a Nazi theorist of authoritarianism.
"They share a revulsion toward liberalism and pluralism, which, they believe, have corroded the moral and spiritual fiber of America by accommodating false ideologies and harmful groups. Their modern hero is Viktor Orbán," he writes, of the authoritarian Hungarian president.
Field's book explains how this affects American democracy today.
"The American experiment in egalitarian, multiethnic democracy fills these intellectuals with anxiety, if not loathing," Packer writes.
"As Field notes, they often express undisguised hostility toward women, sexual minorities, the 'woke Marxists' of the left, and the cultural elites of the 'soulless managerial class,'" he explains.
The mood of MAGA intellectuals, Packer notes, is "overwhelmingly negative."
“The movement is, in many respects, untethered from the ordinary decency and common sense that characterize America at its idealistic best, and from the pluralistic reality of the country as it exists today," Fields says.
Packer says that Field's "background perfectly positions her to deliver this lively, devastating taxonomy and critique of MAGA’s ideologues."
"She was originally trained in Straussian scholarship — a reading of classical political thought that criticizes the modern turn away from the sources of moral authority toward liberalism and, in Strauss’s view, nihilism," he explains.
Packer notes that "anti-liberal intellectuals made a Faustian bet that this coarse real-estate developer and reality-TV star would be the vehicle for realizing the Good, the Beautiful, and the True."
"Trump was the strongman brought to bring liberalism to heel,” Field writes.
Packer says that "in attaching themselves to MAGA, they did less to influence the new regime than Trump did to corrupt them."
"The MAGA right has filled a vacuum created by popular disenchantment with globalization, neoliberal economics, mass immigration, political corruption, technological power and democracy itself," Packer adds.
There's one thing Field doesn't have the ability to explain in her book, Packer writes.
"A question that Field touches on but never analyzes in depth is why liberal minds haven’t produced an equally potent answer" to the MAGA right.
"Liberals are in the necessary but untenable position of having to defend democracy from right-wing assault in an age of broad discontent," Packer explains.
"They need their own theorists and influencers, their own institutes and manifestos, to undertake the historic task of not only reversing America’s self-destruction, but showing the next generation why liberal democracy offers the best chance for a good life," he concludes.
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:REALLY GOOD ANALYSIS
AN 10 25
A grim-faced President Donald J. Trump looks out at the reader, under the headline “LAW AND ORDER.” Graffiti pictured in the corner of the White House Facebook post reads “Death to ICE.” Beneath that, a photo of protesters, choking on tear gas. And underneath it all, a smaller headline: “President Trump Deploys 2,000 National Guard After ICE Agents Attacked, No Mercy for Lawless Riots and Looters.”
The official communication from the White House appeared on Facebook in June 2025, after Trump sent in troops to quell protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Los Angeles. Visually, it is melodramatic, almost campy, resembling a TV promotion.
The post is not an outlier.
In the Trump administration, White House social media posts often blur the lines between politics and entertainment, and between reality and illusion.
The White House has released AI images of Trump as the Pope, as Superman and as a Star Wars Jedi, ready to do battle with “Radical Left Lunatics” who would bring “Murderers, Drug Lords … & well-known MS-13 Gang Members” into the country.
Most recently, on the weekend of the No Kings protests, both Trump and the White House released a video of the president wearing a crown and piloting a fighter jet, from which he dispenses feces onto a crowd of protesters below.
Underpinning it all is a calculated political strategy: an appeal to Trump’s political base – largely white, working-class, rural or small-town, evangelical and culturally conservative.
As scholars who study communication in politics and the media, we believe the White House’s rhetoric and style is part of a broader global change often found in countries experiencing increased polarization and democratic backsliding.
White House style
In the past, national leaders generally favored a professional tone, whether on social or traditional media. Their language was neutral and polished, laced with political jargon.
While populist political communication has become more common along with the proliferation of social media, the communication norms are further altered in Trump White House social media posts.
They are partisan, theatrical and exaggerated. Their tone is almost circuslike. The process of governing is portrayed as a reality TV show, in which political roles are performed with little regard for real-world consequences. Vivid color schemes and stylized imagery convert political messaging into visual spectacle. The language is colloquial, down-to-earth.
Just as other influencers in a variety of domains might create an emotional bond by tailoring social media messages, content, products and services to the needs and likes of individual customers, the White House tailors its content to the beliefs, language and worldview of Trump’s political base.
In doing so, the White House echoes a broad, growing trend in political communication, portraying Trump as “a champion of the people” and using direct and informal communication that appeals to fear and resentment.
Trump White House social media makes no effort to promote social unity or constructive dialogue, or reduce polarization – and often heightens it. Undocumented immigrants, for example, are often portrayed as inherently evil. White House social media amplifies dramatic, emotionally charged content.
In one video, Trump recites a poem about a kind woman who takes in a snake, a stand-in for an immigrant who in reality is a dangerous serpent. “Instead of saying thanks, that snake gave her a vicious bite,” Trump recites.
Talking to the base
While some scholars have called the White House social media style “amateurish,” that hasn’t resulted in change.
The lack of response to negative feedback is partially explained by the strategic goal of these communications: to appeal to the frustrations of Trump’s deeply disaffected political base, which seems to revel in the White House social media style.
Scholars identify a large number of these voters as “the precariat,” a group whose once-stable, union-protected jobs have been outsourced or replaced with low-wage, insecure service work. These workers, many former Democrats, can no longer count on a regular paycheck, benefits or work they can identify with.
As a result, they are more likely to support political candidates whom they believe will respond to their economic instability.
In addition, many of these voters blame a breakdown in what they perceive as the racial pecking order for a loss of social status, especially when compared with more highly educated workers. Many of these workers distrust the media and other elite institutions they feel have failed them. Research shows that they are highly receptive to messages that confirm their grievances and that many regard Trump as their champion.
Trump and the White House social media play to this audience.
On social media, the president is free to violate norms that anger his critics but have little effect on his supporters, who view the current political system as flawed. One example: A White House Valentine’s Day communication that said “Roses are red, violets are blue, come here illegally, and we’ll deport you.”
In addition, Trump and the White House social media use the president’s status as a celebrity, coupled with comedy and spectacle, to immunize the administration from fallout, even among some of its critics.
Trump’s exaggerated gestures, over-the-top language, his lampooning of opponents and his use of caricature to ridicule whole categories of people – including Democrats, the disabled, Muslims, Mexicans and women – is read by his political base as a playful and entertaining take down of political correctness. It may form a sturdy pillar of his support.
But prioritizing entertainment over facts has long-term significance.
Trump’s communication strategies are already setting a global precedent, encouraging other politicians to adopt similar theatrical and polarizing tactics that distort or deny facts.
These methods may energize some audiences but risk alienating others. Informed political engagement is reduced, and democratic backsliding is increasingly a reality.
Although the communication style of the White House is playful and irreverent, it has a serious goal: the diffusion of ideological messages whose intent is to create a sense of strength and righteousness among its supporters.
In simple terms, this is propaganda designed to persuade citizens that the government is strong, its enemies evil and that fellow citizens – “real Americans” – think the same way.
Scholars observe that the White House projection of the often comical images of authority echoes the visual style of authoritarian governments. Both seek to be seen as in control of the social and political order and thereby to discourage dissent.
The chief difference between the two is that in a deeply polarized democracy such as the U.S., citizens interpret these displays of authority in sharply different ways: They build opposition among Trump opponents but support among supporters.
The rising intolerance that results erodes social cohesion, undermines support for democratic norms and weakens trust in institutions. And that opens the door to democratic backsliding.
Andrew Rojecki, Professor of Communication, University of Illinois Chicago and Tanja Aitamurto, Associate Professor of Communication, *University of Illinois Chicago
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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an 10 25
Now eight and one-half months into his second presidency, Donald Trump is being inundated with polls that show him with weak approval ratings — including 38 percent (Leger), 40 percent (YouGov and Pew Researcher Center) and 41 percent (Marist College).
Trump and his allies continue to insist that he has a "mandate" for his far-right policies. But the 2024 election was close, and Trump won the popular vote by only 1.5 percent in 2024.
In a conversation published in Q&A format on October 4, three New York Times opinion columnists — Never Trump conservative David French and liberals Michelle Goldberg and Jamelle Bouie — observe that many of Trump's policies are wildly unpopular even though more U.S. voters than not chose to put him back in the White House.
Goldberg told French and Bouie, "Look, we have a president who is completely lawless. We are in a free fall toward authoritarianism. You have a Democratic Party electorate that is absolutely furious at their leaders. I mean, I cannot overstate the amount of anger there is toward (Democratic Senate Minority Leader) Chuck Schumer in particular."
Bouie lamented that many Americans who voted for Trump in 2024 didn't fully realize what all they were singing up for.
"If you don't want this consequence, don't vote for Republicans," Bouie told French and Goldberg. "I think part of what's broken in American politics is the feedback mechanism. The choices voters make don't reliably result in feedback that helps them understand or contextualize those choices. So, for example, a Republican voter receiving Medicaid may not necessarily see it as the same Medicaid that a Black voter in New York receives. They may perceive those as two different things."
French argued that the "classical Republican Party" no longer exists.
The Never Trumper told Goldberg and Bouie, "The Republican Party is becoming much more working class, while educated voters are moving more toward the Democrats. So, in fact, Medicaid cuts now impact more Republicans than they used to. Is there a scenario where Republicans are not really reading their own room? As their base becomes more working class, is playing games with health care subsidies, or with Medicaid cuts — or financing tax cuts partly through Medicaid cuts — just not going to be a successful strategy anymore?"
*Read the full New York Times conversation at this link (subscription required).
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AN 9 25
In the 2024 election, the fact that Donald Trump's hardcore MAGA base aggressively supported him came as no surprise. But it was independents and swing voters who ultimately got Trump past the finish line and gave him a narrow victory in a close election.
Trump won the popular vote for the first time in 2024, defeating Democratic nominee Kamala Harris by roughly 1.5 percent — and the economy, according to polls, played a key role in that victory. Although the United States enjoyed record-low unemployment during Joe Biden's presidency, frustration over inflation worked to Trump's advantage.
But The New York Times' Jamelle Bouie, in his September 17 column, argues that Trump sold U.S. voters a "fantasy" that is now unravelling.
READ MORE: 'I'm the one asking the questions': CNN host cuts off Ted Cruz after he shouts over her
Trump, according to Bouie, told 2024 voters that "that there were no trade-offs" with the economy — and that Americans "could have their cake and eat it, too" when, "in reality," it "was a binary choice."
"The essence of President Trump's pitch to the American people last year was simple: They could have it both ways," Bouie explains. "They could have a powerful, revitalized economy and 'mass deportations now.' They could build new factories and take manufacturing jobs back from foreign competitors as well as expel every person who, in their view, didn't belong in the United States. They could live in a 'golden age' of plenty — and seal it away from others outside the country with a closed, hardened border."
One "binary choice," according to Bouie, was that "Americans could have a strong, growing economy, which requires immigration to bring in new people and fill demand for labor, or they could finance a deportation force and close the border to everyone but a small, select few."
"Millions of Americans embraced the fantasy," Bouie laments. "Now, about eight months into Trump's second term, the reality of the situation is inescapable. As promised, Trump launched a campaign of mass deportation. Our cities are crawling with masked federal agents, snatching anyone who looks 'illegal' to them — a bit of racial profiling that has, for now, been sanctioned by the Supreme Court. The jobs, however, haven't arrived."
READ MORE: 'Undisputed idiot king': Former NBC journalist calls Eric Trump 'the epitome of stupidity'
The New York Times columnist continues, "There are fewer manufacturing jobs than there were in 2024, thanks in part to the president's tariffs and, well, his immigration policies…. To embrace nativism in a global, connected economic world is to sacrifice prosperity for the sake of exclusion, just as the main effect of racial segregation in the American South was to leave the region impoverished and underdeveloped."
READ MORE: 'Didn't work for you': CNN analyst confronts Trump's favorite pundit on political violence
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AN 8 25
I used to think the backbone of America ran right down the middle -- from the Dakotas to Texas. Sadly, if recent events have taught me anything, it’s that red states are spineless. The obsequious manner in which conservative voters capitulate to an untelegenic mountebank is either cultism, cowardice, or a combination of the two. It’s certainly not the backbone that built our great nation.
It's important to bear in mind these are the same gullible saps who thought the arrival of a Dollar General in their communities would save Main Street rather than eviscerate the local economy entirely. They're notorious for supporting flimflammers who delight in hoodwinking them.
These are likewise the same degenerates who think the prospect of a cage fight on the White House lawn is a fitting means by which to commemorate the semiquincentennial of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
The irony doesn't escape the intellectual mind. Juvenal’s “bread and circuses” idiom is obscenely fitting.
I recently happened upon a comment written by a Gravy Seal residing in a Kansas town made famous by right-wing terrorist Timothy McVeigh. The self-proclaimed Christian Nationalist applauded Trump’s “crackdown,” saying “if Martial law is what it takes, so be it.”
“The communist demotards are lying,” he wrote. “I’m glad Trump is gettin rid of the homeless. I’m tired of seein all these stolen Walmart carts all over town.”
For a Christian, the gentleman evidently suffers a lack of altruism.
Of course, when it comes to the question of where exactly transients are being relocated, nobody seems to know, and few “Christians” appear to care.
As for the eradication of the unhoused in the Sunflower State?
The individual could just as well wish in one hand and spit in the other. Though Junction City is a stone’s throw from a military base, Trump’s “crackdown” isn’t likely to occur in ruby-red Kansas.
That doesn’t negate the fact that 15 of the 25 cities with the highest violent crime rates in the U.S. are in red states. As usual, Trump is going after the low hanging fruit to gammon his gullible base.
Though conservatives allege that blue states are havens for inequity, communism, and violence, without the funds paid into the federal revenue by blue states, America’s red states would be crippled.
Referring to the left as communists seems mordacious considering anti-intellectualism is a communist tactic. A vacuous society occupied with gladiator-inspired sports and made-for-television spectacles is more easily controlled. Last time I checked, it wasn’t the Democrats banning books or threatening universities. Perhaps if school systems in red states didn’t consistently fall dead last in national rankings, their voters wouldn't be so inept.
I’m reminded of the adage, “Republican voters will usher in fascism to avoid socialism because they don’t know the definition of either term.”
-- The North Dakota roughneck who decries socialism while his “tradwife” stays home with their children, reaping the benefits of socialist programs like SNAP and WIC.
-- The South Dakota boomer who delights in “owning the libs,” but happily cashes her social security check, a program that incorporates elements of democratic socialism.
-- The Nebraska corn farmer who laments socialists but eagerly accepts a subsidy check, which is literally a form of socialism.
-- The Kansas Christian Nationalist who opposes abortion but supports the death penalty, eradication of the homeless, and the inhumane treatment of migrants.
-- The Oklahoma Superintendent who insists on the presence of a Holy Bible in every classroom while being caught with lewd imagery on a computer screen.
-- The Texas cattle rancher who loathes “the illegals,” but snivels about having his brown-skinned, all-cash, under-the-table workforce taken away.
Their benightedness is only surpassed by their hypocrisy and their pathetic spinelessness.
Donald Trump isn’t draining any swamp. He’s the embodiment of D.C. corruption. His every move is being dictated by K Street. The irony is that most of the chumps who believe he is “draining the swamp” won’t understand that reference and sure as hell won’t look it up – that’s precisely what K Street is counting on. Having said that, if you’re genuinely interested in learning more about “the swamp” rather than merely parroting a campaign slogan, brothers Brody and Luke Mullins have written a phenomenal book entitled “The Wolves of K Street” that was recently released by Simon & Schuster.
The MAGA movement haplessly takes fraudster bait and consistently fails its own litmus test. Just look at who they anointed as “Dear Leader.” There’s a reason he “loves the poorly educated.”
J. Basil Dannebohm is a writer, speaker, consultant, former Kansas legislator and intelligencer. His website is www.dannebohm.com. Mr. Dannebohm is a member of the Virginia Press Association and the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. He writes from the Washington DC metro in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
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an 8 25
In the southernmost town in Maryland, residents who backed President Donald Trump in the 2024 election are now grappling with the consequences of his administration’s decision to cancel a major FEMA flood‑relief program.
NBC Washington published a report Thursday spotlighting former businesses now claimed by flooding.
Mayor Darlene Taylor pointed to vacant storefronts while speaking with NBC. “That was Subway and it used to have to close all the time because of floods or even high tides,” she said, nodding to a windowless shell of a building.
READ MORE:'Wild': Outrage as GOP governors facilitate controversial Trump move 'for a photo op'
She added: “There’s nothing in Crisfield that’s not touched by our flooding issue.”
The report noted that Taylor leads a shrinking seaside town battling relentless flooding from the Chesapeake Bay and other climate‑related threats.
Last year, FEMA awarded a $36 million grant through its Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program to flood‑proof Crisfield. But in April, the Trump administration abruptly terminated the BRIC program — canceling applications from 2020‑2023 and halting future awards.
Due to this development, Taylor and other townspeople are forced to scramble for alternatives — to “get it back.”
Records show a majority of voters in the town supported Trump in 2024, per the report.
“In an article that someone sent to me, it says, ‘Crisfield: Maryland’s Trumpiest city,” Taylor told NBC.
Taylor’s efforts to secure federal flood relief began early in her tenure — she took office in 2022 amid mounting concern from residents about rising water levels. With Crisfield only a few feet above sea level, flooding has hollowed out the local economy and left residents increasingly vulnerable.
When asked how voters felt about the canceled funding, despite their ideological leanings, Taylor noted, “People are tied to their philosophies and ideologies. So, they may see rationales in one way or another, but for me, I believe that that should play in our favor.”
Francis Martinez Myers, a member of of the Greater Crisfield Action Coalition, told NBC: “I feel like the government, the administration turned their back on the community."
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AN 8 25
PsyPost reports a new psychological study has found that people who claim favorable views of President Donald Trump also tend to score higher on measures of callousness, manipulation, and other malevolent traits—and lower on empathy and compassion.
“Our findings suggest a link between malevolent personality and conservative political ideology, which in our study included positive view of Trump, and that persons with malevolent personality dispositions view political figures with malevolent traits favorably,” said study author Craig Neumann, a Regents Professor of Psychology at the University of North Texas. “Further, people who view malevolent political figures favorably also report less empathy for others and enjoy the suffering of others.”
The paper, which was several years in the making, “was designed to address why some people might view favorably a political figure with a history of business failures, bankruptcies, misogynistic statements caught on video, use of charity money for a self-portrait, etc,” said Neuman.
READ MORE: Tipping point: Analysts say Trump 'panicked' as he 'keeps a death grip on the government'
PsyPost said researchers conducted two large surveys with a total of more than 9,000 U.S. participants. The first sample consisted of 1,000 men recruited online, about one-third of whom were racial or ethnic minorities. The second sample included 8,047 men and women who completed personality questionnaires on a public psychology website. Participants in both samples completed a range of validated questionnaires measuring political attitudes, personality traits, and empathy, researchers say.
In “Sample 1”, researchers measured social dominance orientation (the belief that some groups should dominate others), right-wing authoritarianism (support for conformity, obedience, and traditional norms), and psychopathic traits. In “Sample 2,” researchers say they added measures of broader malevolent traits (psychopathy, Machiavellianism, narcissism) and benevolent traits (humanism, faith in humanity and respect for others).
The findings “consistently showed people who identified as politically conservative—and especially those who rated Trump’s presidency highly—were more likely to score higher on measures of authoritarianism, social dominance, and malevolent personality traits,” reports PsyPost.
In the first sample of men, all three predictors — social dominance, authoritarianism, and psychopathic tendencies — predicted conservative ideology and favorable views of Trump, but only for white participants.
READ MORE: The only strategy that will destroy Trumpism — once and for all
The report also revealed that while both men and women showed similar patterns, the associations were stronger for men
Read the full PsyPost report at this link.
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no lnx
'The cognitive dissonance is frightening': Inside the manipulation of Trump's supporters
John Stoehr June 29, 2025
As I was editing the following interview with Charles Gaba, founder of ACAsignups.com, I was reminded of something Will Stancil told me during my chat with him. Will said, “I think people are used to living in a relatively stable era and have come to believe that stability is normal."
Will was talking about the dominant interpretation of political history among liberals. For most of us, the battles of the past settled the biggest arguments, and from those settlements arose a period of relative peace and stability that nearly all of us take for granted.
Will said: “Liberals have trained themselves to see the world through this very particular end-of-history lens, where the ‘stuff that matters’ is inevitably wonky policy questions, the day-to-day of taxes and government, who gets subsidies, what healthcare policy looks like.
“But it’s ridiculous. History isn’t over, the future will contain events as dramatic and horrible as the events of the past, and this stuff is just what it looks like: an assault on the foundations of our government, with all the terrifying and weighty implications that it seems to have.”
Complicating this is the concept of American exceptionalism, which is to say, the idea that America is the exception to the rule of the world. In most of the nations in global history, might has made right. The law was never applied equally, or universally. It has usually been just another tool of political elites to maintain their preferred status quo.
But liberals don’t want to believe that about America, even when they acknowledge that the country often falls short of its stated ideals. We tell ourselves that whatever tyranny we face is a temporary setback to the inevitability of America's soul being revealed once and for all.
Because of this faith, most liberals, but not only liberals, can’t imagine a future in which the government is trying to hurt them. We say that that only happens in times like the early 20th century, in places like Soviet Russia or Maoist China. There are no gulags here, we say. The government can’t possibly seek to inflict mass suffering and death.
We have to change this mindset. America is just like any other country. It’s not that special. We can love it, flaws and all, even when it’s not the exception to the rule of the world. The battles of the past century have not settled the biggest arguments. Social instability arising from insane public policies will almost certainly become the new norm. And the government can, as it seems to be doing now, try to kill the sickest 5 percent of the population to create conditions for controlling the rest.
In the dark disturbing interview with healthcare policy expert Charles Gaba that follows, the specter of social Darwinism lurks in the background. The unstated belief behind every policy decided by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr is “the survival of the fittest,” in which the strong should rule and the weak should die.
“Everything [Kennedy], the Trump administration and congressional Republicans are doing seems to be intended to ensure that sick people simply die off, which presumably would make those who survive healthier on average, thus achieving his ‘MAHA’ goal,” Charles said.
Robert F Kennedy Jr wants to change the way children are given vaccines. First, is there a problem with the status quo? What are they looking for that we don't know about, if anything?
To the best of my knowledge there aren't any issues with the status quo beyond some states being far too lenient on vaccination requirements (religious objections, etc). My view is that the sole exceptions should be people who have legitimate medical conditions, which make them unable to take a particular vaccine.
The argument seems to be that children are being over-vaccinated as a way of padding drug companies pockets with unnecessary vaccinations. The claim seems to be that children are extremely unlikely to die from or to be seriously harmed by covid, for instance, and therefore, it's unnecessary to vaccinate them – except that even if true, they can still be carriers who infect higher-risk adults, and so on.
It seems like this is what happens when conspiracy theory finds traction in public health policy. Is that right and why?
Absolutely. The most recent anti-vax movement (sparked by [British fraudster] Andrew Wakefield and popularized by celebrities like Jenny McCarthy) started out as more of a left-leaning thing via "granola mom" types (I believe Marin County, California, is considered the "birthplace" of that resurgence) in the late 1990ss and early 2000s.
I think – and again, I'm not an expert on this – it began gaining major traction among Republicans during the 2016 GOP primary when Donald Trump told a vague anti-vax story about a supposedly non-autistic child who "became" autistic after getting vaccinated.
And of course this thinking went into overdrive among MAGA Republicans during the covid pandemic, even though it was the administration of their own lord & savior, Donald Trump that helped develop the very mRNA vaccines they were protesting against.
Since then it's gotten so far out of control that Republican lawmakers in several deep-red states – including Iowa, Montana and Idaho – have actually introduced legislation that would ban mRNA vaccines!
The cognitive dissonance is frightening.
So conspiracy theories are being used to rationalize political outcomes? If so, one of the outcomes is death. Getting rid of people is a rightwing goal, historically. We can say that reasonably, no?
Vaccine specialist and science communicator Edward Nirenberg put it best this morning: "If I were HHS secretary and my goal were to kill as many children as possible, it would be difficult to distinguish the actions I would take from those that Kennedy has taken."
In this particular instance he was referring to yesterday's announcement that RFK Jr is withdrawing US funding from the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), but he could be talking about any number of other policy changes RFK Jr has made already.
I don't know if it's a "rightwing" goal generally, but it sure as hell seems to be the goal of the Trump administration and MAGA Republicans.
When RFK Jr rolled out his "Make America Healthy Again" campaign, the assumption was that he intended to make existing Americans healthy. Instead, everything he, the Trump administration and congressional Republicans are doing seems to be intended to ensure that sick people simply die off, which presumably would make those who survive healthier on average, thus achieving his "MAHA" goal.
Call it Operation Nietzsche, I suppose.
I've written several explainers about the goals of the Affordable Care Act and how health insurance risk pools work, which involve this concept: Generally speaking, around 5 percent of a given large population tends to eat up around 50 percent of all medical spending.
Kennedy’s and the administration’s "logic," therefore, seems to be that if you simply killed off the sickest 5 percent of the population, healthcare costs for the remaining 95 percent would be cut in half.
This is obviously immoral and appalling, but it also seems to be the driving force behind many of their decisions.
It sounds like social Darwinism has been restored in popularity. I mean, even MAGAs, who will themselves be killed by such policies, will nevertheless support them if they also kill people who are "undeserving." It's like a suicide cult that few can see.
This is a trend that folks like Jonathan Metzl (one of his books is literally titled Dying of Whiteness) have been talking about for years, and which I analyzed extensively during the covid pandemic.
I found a direct and steep correlation between Trump support and covid death rates as well as a direct inverse correlation between Trump support and vaccination rates at the county level.
Lyndon Johnson famously put it best:
"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.”
Another goal of rightwing politics is social control. Kennedy came close to saying that when he said this week his goal is everyone wearing "wearables" in four years. How is this even debatable?
The irony goes through the roof. One of the biggest and most absurd conspiracy theories among the MAGA anti-vax crowd regarding covid vaccines was that they supposedly included tiny "microchips" that would "magnetize" you, and allow Bill Gates to track your every move etc. (Of course, the fact that everyone carrying smartphones around these days pretty much allows various companies to do exactly that already was apparently lost on them).
Yet many of the same crowd gush over Elon Musk's companies, including Neuralink, which literally implants microchips into the human brain, and Tesla, which can literally track the location of their cars (so can most other carmakers to some extent these days).
And now you have RFK Jr pushing for "everyone" to wear small devices on their bodies that allow private companies and/or potentially the federal government to track not only your every move but your most private medical and health data via biometrics, etc.
Meanwhile, Republicans in some states like Virginia have introduced bills to track women’s menstrual cycles, something which Vice President JD Vance was a proponent of as recently as 2023.
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an 4 25
'Sold out the US': MAGA rages against Amazon after report it would display Trump tariff cost
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AN 4 25
After nearly 100 days into President Donald Trump's second term, New Republic editor Michael Tomasky is wondering who were the "gullible" people buying the lies before November.
“How many times did Trump say he’d end [the Ukraine] war on the first day of his presidency?" Tomasky asks. "It had to have been hundreds. I saw a lot of those clips on cable news over the weekend …. He did not mean it figuratively. You know, in the way people will say, ‘I’ll change that from day one,’ and you know they don’t literally mean day one, but they do mean fast. But that isn’t what Trump said. He meant it literally. He used the phrase“ in 24 hours” many, many times. So, I ask you: Who really believed that?”
Tomasky said the same question can be made of Trump’s “truly unbelievable” claims with tariffs. Tariff is “the most beautiful word in the dictionary,” Trump said, boasting that they would "fix everything."
ALSO READ:'Totally unacceptable': GOP congressman breaks ranks to publicly demand Trump fire Hegseth
“Well … it’s not as if there weren’t hundreds of economists and others pointing out how much smoke he was blowing,” Tomasky writes. “Experts predicted exactly what has unfolded: that he’d start a trade war, which would roil the markets and result in higher prices, and that the rest of the world would stop trusting us. Who’s looking more right today, Trump or the experts?”
“Again: Who on earth believed his nonsense?” writes Tomasky, adding that Trump is the "biggest liar in the history of American politics," who “will say anything to anyone at any time with utterly no thought of consequences or ever being held accountable. When the moment of accountability comes, he just tells another lie. … When he was just a sleazy real estate grifter, this was merely annoying. But now that he’s the president, and he has an army of propagandists behind him insisting that he is American history’s great truth-teller, it’s sick and it’s dangerous.”
The New Republic writer had no hard answer to explain the motivation of voters who bought the “ridiculous and obvious lies …" that he’d bring peace to Ukraine in one day, [or] that his tariffs would produce economic nirvana.
“Anyone who couldn’t see that was either brainwashed by right-wing media and social media or—well, or what? It’s hard to say. Maybe those people’s instinct is to hate liberals. Maybe they believed all that ‘he’s a businessman’ crap. Maybe they just didn’t want a woman in the White House,” Tomasky said. “Whatever the case, they’re poor judges of character, and we—and this is a ‘we’ that includes them—are about to pay a high price for their bamboozlement.
ALSO READ:'He must resign in disgrace': Hegseth on the ropes after second war plans chat exposed
Read the full post at The New Republic at this link.
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AN 4 25
Rolling Stone writer Fortesa Latifi says Redditors are mouning what looks like the permanent loss of family members as Trump 2.0 drowns the national argument in lies and conspiracy.
The subreddit r/**QAnonCasualties subreddit crawls with alienated family members saying “Dad has gone full nazi,” or “Mom finally contacted me after my late stage cancer diagnosis to screech … about black people.” There are also plenty of entries in the line of “Mom said she’s removing herself from my life.”
The QAnon conspiracy claims the U.S. is run by a cabal of “Satanic, pedophilic Democrats who can only be stopped by President Donald Trump.” Originally treated as fringe, the movement gained credibility as more and more Republican politicians began winning elections on QAnon claims. Now that President Donald Trump has fully embraced the movement, r/QAnonCasualties sub redditors are growing “pessimistic and exhausted.”
READ MORE:John Roberts owns this nightmare — and he has no one to blame but himself
“Five years ago, if your family was deep into the Q lore, you could say, ‘Hey, look at all of the people out in the world saying that this is bogus,’” said Dr. Jennifer Whitmer, a sociology professor at California State University Stanislaus, who studies conspiracy theories. “But now, with those beliefs being mainstreamed, they gain more legitimacy and it’s harder to challenge them. Those fringe beliefs have become legitimized through sources of power.”
With Trump taking office and elevating Q-sympathizers like Kash Patel to head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, posters are developing a “fatalist bent” that their family will never again be normal.
“There’s no winning,” said r/QAnonCasualties sub member Jill. “You could show them anything you want — facts and everything — and they won’t believe you.” A subreddit moderator named "Dan" also pointed out that for some, it's difficult to accept the finality of the loss.
“Maybe the first time something crazy happens, it shakes you to the core. The next time, you’re more able to handle it," Dan said. "The difficult reality for me to really accept was that it was impossible to change someone’s mind about things.”
READ MORE:'I might just be done': Idaho woman says new Trump policy would kill her business
The most family members can do, said Whitmer is try to draw victims away from the cult by “finding ways to occupy” their attention.
“Spend time with your family or get them involved in something else. It might not necessarily change their mind, but [could] distract them,” Whitmer said. “That seems to be the most effective thing we saw, the thing that actually leads to changes in beliefs.”
She added, however, that cult-consumed victims can lash out in painful ways and that when pushing to reconnect you should take care to “protect yourself,” even if that means taking space away from the relationship.
{Read the full Rolling Stone article here (subscription required).}:
READ MORE:(Opinion) American billionaires plan for a world without us in it
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4 25
The Trump administration has found itself embroiled in a number of scandals, which critics say are affecting governance as well as the United States' relations with its key allies.
But CNN's Stephen Collinson wrote in an article published on Wednesday that even the chaos currently at display will not stop some supporters of President Donald Trump for backing him. Collinson argued that his supporters don't judge the president's performance by a traditional yardstick.
He said despite America’s reputation abroad being impacted by Trump’s dismantling of USAID, his stance on the Russia-Ukraine crisis and abandonment of Africa, Trump and his supporters are not concerned about their allies. "He’d rather be feared than liked," Collinson wrote.
"By conventional measures, Donald Trump’s second presidency is already descending into disarray amid a legal morass, self-inflicted errors, and a vast gap between its massive ambition and its capacity to enact that vision," said Collinson, who covers the White House for CNN.
ALSO READ:Incompetence and chaos as Trump 2.0 crashes and burns
"Yet Trump’s tens of millions of supporters didn’t send a conventional president back to the White House – and don’t judge their hero’s performance by traditional yardsticks."
The writer noted that several crises on multiple fronts indicate a potentially failed administration, but this chaos means he is succeeding. "But as Trump attempts to destroy governing structures at home and abroad, chaos is itself a marker of success," Collinson wrote.
"A sense of disorder is mounting," Collinson added, pointing to the "backbiting and organizational chaos at the Pentagon" following the controversy surrounding Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who shared sensitive information about military strikes in Yemen on two Signal chats.
"Trump’s belief in almost absolute presidential power horrifies his critics. But millions of Americans voted for this. He made no secret on the campaign trail of his intention to weaponize presidential power and the Justice Department to pursue his enemies," the reporter said.
ALSO READ:'Need for chaos' powers Trump voters support for destroying government: psychologists
Collinson added that Trump enjoys this confrontation.
"But the White House loves the fight. It’s failed to prove Abrego Garcia is a terrorist and a gang member. But White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stoked the fire again on Tuesday. 'We were always right. The president was always on the right side of this issue to deport this illegal criminal from our community.' When Trump said last week that he’d like to deport US citizen criminals to El Salvador, he knew his audience," the article notes.
"And on this immigration issue, he has some genuine results to show for his efforts. Border crossings are down significantly compared with the days of the Biden administration."
This contentious presidency, argues Collinson, may appear to be a significant failure to one half of the nation, but the other half sees it as a remarkable success.
ALSO READ: Alarm sounded as 4,100 factory workers laid off amid Trump policy chaos
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an 4 25
These MAGA voters are willing to 'suffer' — if Trump is 'hurting' others even more: analysis
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an 4 25
Critics of President Donald Trump often describe the MAGA movement as a "cult," arguing that Trump supporters behave like cult members when they express their relentless devotion to him and explode in anger at even subtle criticism.
But Salon's Amanda Marcotte takes the MAGA/cult analogy a step further in an article published on April 10, comparing the GOP of 2025 to a suicide cult in which Republicans avoid criticism of Trump no matter how bad his "idiocy" becomes.
"History's most famous cults are known primarily for their final suicidal acts: the mass poisoning at Jonestown, the self-immolation of the Branch Davidians, the self-asphyxiations of Heaven's Gate," Marcotte explains. "We know these things happen, but it's still a mystery to most of us how cult members get to this point. Why didn't they hit the eject button sooner, as their leader descended further into his incoherent megalomania? Why did they stick by him, even as it became increasingly clear he was putting the whole community on a pathway to self-destruction? Why didn't more people voice doubts or even confront the cult leader before things got this bad?"
READ MORE:'Compete mess': Trump slammed as Wall St. CEO says policies will 'probably' cause recession
Marcotte continues, "We're getting a compelling illustration on the national stage of how a cult leader can induce his followers to stick by him, even as he loses his mind and his behavior becomes too erratic and dangerous to defend. Almost every Republican on Capitol Hill knows that Donald Trump's tariff plan is political suicide, but few are willing to admit that Dear Leader fully intends to see this idiocy to the very end. Instead, most resemble the residents of Jonestown, many who hoped Jim Jones was testing their faith with all this poison-Kool-Aid talk, which allowed them to play along until it was too late to save themselves."
Some right-wing conservatives and libertarians aren't shy about offering scathing condemnation of Trump's policies, from tariffs to his obsession with the U.S. acquiring Greenland. But those on the right who bash Trump frequently are likely to be MSNBC or CNN pundits or writers for The Bulwark — and they have long since been banished from Fox News, Fox Business and the Republican National Committee (RNC).
Nonetheless, Marcotte notes that there is a caveat with Trump's "Jim Jones fantasies": Some of his supporters are expressing their frustration with tariffs, including GOP Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and John Kennedy of Louisiana — albeit in a "passive" way. And Republicans in Congress, according to Marcotte, have a "collective action problem" when it comes to Trump policies that trouble them.
"Few are willing to be the one seen questioning the infinite wisdom of Dear Leader, lest they draw his ire and be singled out for punishment," Marcotte observes. "Instead, they resort to passive language, in hopes they can convey their concerns without daring to question whether the MAGA prophet is not the wisest man who ever lived…. What ties all this together is a fear of criticizing Trump directly, and instead hoping that all this gentle hand-holding and blame-shifting will give their leader the space he needs to stop the madness."
READ MORE:Donald Trump has an addiction: WSJ
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AN 4 25
NO LNX
Trump voters are pretending like they were duped. Don't believe it.
(Reuters)
John Stoehr April 06, 2025
The Dow dropped 1,700 points on opening this Friday morning. Thursday, it closed after falling to its worst level since the covid era. JP Morgan Chase said it was raising the odds of a recession to 60 percent.
This is all in reaction to the decision this week by the president to put an average 22 percent tax on all imports. He called it “Liberation Day.”
As I’m watching this unfold, I can’t help thinking about something that may seem unrelated to trade, economics and the harms coming our way, but in fact is central to it all. I’m talking about resentment.
Resentment is usually associated with the right. Time and again, over the last ten years, we were told that the people who voted for Donald Trump are deeply resentful about the state of the nation: about immigrants pouring over the border, about men competing in women’s sports, about the “radical woke agenda.” The list goes on and on.
It was on the strength of this resentment that voters in this country chose for president a convicted felon and failed businessman who promised to hurt everyone in the name of making America great again.
And what I want to say this:
If you thought that was resentment, just wait.
Only five months ago, the head economist for Moody’s said the economy under Joe Biden was the best he’d seen. Mark Zandi said “this is among the best performing economies in my 35-plus years as an economist.”
“Economic growth is rip-roaring, with real GDP up 3 percent over the past year. Unemployment is low, at near 4 percent, consistent with full employment.
“Inflation is fast closing in on the Fed’s 2 percent target.
“Grocery prices, rents and gas prices are flat to down over the past more than a year. Households’ financial obligations are light, and set to get lighter with the Fed cutting rates.
“House prices have never been higher, and most homeowners have more equity in their homes than ever.
“Corporate profits are robust, and the stock market is hitting a record high on a seemingly daily basis.
And now?
On March 30, before this week’s tariff news, Zandi said:
“I’m raising my odds that a recession will begin sometime this year to 40 percent, up from 15 percent at the start of the year. Last week’s economic data were disconcerting, including the slide in consumer confidence, punk consumer spending, and persistently high inflation. The intensifying trade war and DOGE cuts are behind all this and with last week’s announcement of big tariff increases on vehicle imports and the coming reciprocal tariffs, things are sure to get worse.”
How much worse?
The Financial Times: “one of the greatest acts of self-harm in American economic history. [Tariffs’ will wreak untold damage on households, businesses and financial markets around the world, upending a global economic order that America benefited from and helped create.”
The Economist: “The most profound, harmful & unnecessary economic error in the modern era. Almost everything he said — on history, economics and the technicalities of trade — was utterly deluded.”
This is where we are, but never forget: this was a choice.
It was made by people who were so resentful about something something, for now it doesn’t matter what, that they didn’t notice they’re wages were growing, their expenses were falling and they had more power in the workplace than they’d had in their whole lives.
Everything Trump claims to be doing – bringing jobs back home, supporting domestic industries, revitalizing infrastructure and investing in the future — Biden actually did. Most everyone prospered, including all those resentful people. As the former president was fond of saying, Trump talks a good game, but never built a damn thing.
But that wasn’t enough because seeing other people doing well, that is, Black and brown people doing well, hurt their feelings, like something was being taken away from them, which added to the resentment they felt about a government trying to serve everyone and not just them.
The harms coming won’t be an accident. Their cause will be easy to understand. Vice President Kamala Harris saw them. She tried to warn us. Most people didn’t listen. And because these harms were a choice, it’s entirely reasonable for those who didn’t make that choice, but who are now living with the consequences, to be resentful of those who did, especially if they didn’t understand the choice they were making.
They believed an ignorant and stupid story about ignorant and stupid Americans who were resentful of being looked down on for the fact of their ignorance and stupidity. And I’m telling you, if they keep talking about that, they’re going to learn the real meaning of resentment.
Perhaps fear of being held accountable explains why we are now seeing a slew of Trump voters who are whipping up stories about how they had absolutely no idea what he was going to do, they are victims of circumstance, totally innocent, and how they are so disappointed, not so much for themselves but for the country they claim to love.
An anonymous writer at www.betrayedbytrump.com is a case in point. “I didn’t sign up for this. I wanted reform, not cruelty. Strength, not delusion. I’ve been a lifelong Republican, and I know I’m not the only one starting to feel this way. We need to seriously ask ourselves: is this what we voted for, or just what we’ve been sold? It is hard to not feel conned. And I’m angrier than I’ve been in as long as I can remember.”
Oh, you're angry, huh?
Imagine the anger of those who didn’t choose this but are now living with it – the jobs gone, the savings gone, the future prospects gone.
Imagine the anger of those who voted in your interest in the hope of saving democracy, and protecting you from your worst self, and then hearing you moan and groan about how you’ve been done wrong.
Imagine the anger of those who tried to tell you, to reason with you, as if you were a child who doesn’t understand a goddamn thing but who might snap out of it and finally act like a responsible grown up.
Just imagine.
The worst part is there are still some Democrats who are willing to tell the rest of us that we shouldn’t look down on the ignorant and stupid, because looking down on them only makes them feel more resentful, which pushes them further and further into the arms of Trump.
Worst of all is hearing some Democrats choosing not to hold them accountable for their terrible choices in the hope they might one day vote for a Democrat, so that there’s never any downside to being ignorant and stupid, and there’s never any upside to growing up.
Resentment is usually associated with the right. If there were any justice, that would change. Trump voters would be ashamed and take responsibility for their actions. They never will, of course, meaning no one will ever take seriously the lasting resentment the rest of us feel.
NOW READ: Trump voters got exactly what they wanted — so why are people complaining?
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In the 2024, voters who helped put Donald Trump back in the White House ranged from hardcore MAGA Republicans to swing voters and independents — some of them 2020 Joe Biden voters — who blamed the Biden Administration for inflation. The economy was a major concern of Biden-to-Trump voters, and the term "buyer's remorse" is being used in connection with swing voters and independents who now regret voting for Trump and are worried about steep new tariffs or possible cuts to Social Security.
But diehard MAGA voters have no regrets about voting for Trump. In a conversation published by the New York Times' opinion section on March 21, four conservative columnists — David Brooks, David French, Bret Stephens and Ross Douthat — lay out some reasons why those voters continue to be diehard Trump supporters.
The writers aren't promoting Trump's policies during the conversation — French, in fact, is very much a Never Trump conservative — but rather, are explaining the president's unending appeal to his hardcore MAGA base.
READ MORE:Trump official urging Fox viewers to buy Tesla stock decried as 'abuse of power'
Brooks cited **:{"brokenism" as a key reason for their support. The columnist describes "brokenism" as "the idea that everything is broken and we just need to burn it all down."}:
Brooks told his Times colleagues, "Personally, I think some things are broken and some things are OK, but most of my Trump-supporting friends are brokenists. They get this from media consumption."
French, who is a scathing critic of Trump but also has major complaints about the left, interjected, "In addition to the brokenism that David talks about, there's a strong undercurrent of raw animosity in our politics. Republicans and Democrats have very negative views of each other, and many Republicans, sadly, want their opponents to suffer. They're actually happy to see people lose their jobs or to see nonprofits lose funding if those people are perceived as part of the 'deep state' or RINOs. So, yes, Republicans want a disruptive president, but who's being disrupted really matters — and if it's the government or institutions that many Republicans believe are hostile to them, then Republicans are just fine with the pain."
French added, "Many Republicans dislike foreign aid. Or loathe elite universities. Or hate big liberal law firms. Students and professors at elite universities have a long track record of targeting the free speech rights of their conservative colleagues, and Republicans are rationalizing their own constitutional violations as fighting fire with fire."
READ MORE:'Clear and present danger': Experts alarmed at 'insanity' of Musk getting secret war plans
According to Brooks, diehard MAGA voters enjoy seeing him target institutions they feel excluded from.
Brooks told French, Douthat and Stephens, "I'd offer up one more word for consideration: 'exclusion.' Progressives really have spent the last few decades excluding conservative and working-class voices from a lot of institutions. Trump has gone after these institutions big time — the universities, the Department of Education, the State Department. Of course, the MAGA crowd feels justified revenge."
Douthat alluded to the fact that Trump's strongest support continues to be within the MAGA movement.
Douthat told his colleagues, "First, I would stress that Trump is not terribly popular, and undoubtedly will become less so if the stock market trends down and recession fears mount. He has a commanding position within his party, but even at his apotheosis, his approval ratings barely got over 50 percent. Second, Americans lived through the first Trump term, when sky-is-falling rhetoric was commonplace, but the average American did not experience a crisis until COVID hit."
READ MORE:Sabotaging Social Security: Behind the leaked memo to cut agency staff and critical services
*Read the full New York Times article at this link (subscription required).
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Some voters who supported Donald Trump in the 2024 election are now expressing buyer's remorse, including government workers who were abruptly laid off because of the mass downsizing of the federal workforce being carried out by the Trump Administration with the help of the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Others are upset because they are now realizing that Trump's steep new tariffs on Canada, Mexico and other countries will hurt them financially — or because they are troubled by Musk's anti-Social Security comments.
Such voters are likely to be independents or swing voters who favored Trump in 2024 because they blamed then-President Joe Biden for inflation — even if they voted for Biden in 2020. And now, they are deciding that Trump is hurting, not helping, them economically.
But Salon's Amanda Marcotte describes a different type of 2024 Trump voter in an article published on March 21: those whose "devotion to the MAGA cult" remains strong despite the ways in which Trump is making their lives worse.
READ MORE:Sabotaging Social Security: Behind the leaked memo to cut agency staff and critical services
Marcotte points to Wisconsin resident Bradley Bartell as a prime example. Although his Peruvian wife, Camila Muñoz, is in danger of being deported back to Peru, he doesn't regret voting for Trump in 2024.
"Losing your wife to own the liberals: Sounds like a parody of a Donald Trump voter, but it's turning out to be the story of Bradley Bartell, a Wisconsin man whose wife, Camila Muñoz, is being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement," Marcotte explains. "Muñoz is a Peruvian immigrant who overstayed a visa, after being trapped in the country during the pandemic. She met Bartell while working illegally in the U.S., but because she married an American and is working on a green card, the couple thought it was safe to go on their honeymoon in Puerto Rico. Now, she is sitting in a Louisiana detention center, having been arrested at the airport."
Marcotte continues, "Initially, much of the reaction to this story was framed in terms of 'regret,' with some outlets claiming Bartell is 'questioning' his vote. It's an understandable error…. I took to Bluesky and warned people that there was no evidence that Bartell had learned a lesson, gently predicting he would stand by Trump. On Wednesday, (March 19), that prediction came true, with Bartell telling Newsweek, 'I don't regret the vote,' even as he asked people to donate to GoFundMe to raise cash for Muñoz's bond."
Bartell, Marcotte notes, "twisted himself in knots to argue that this wasn't Trump's fault."
READ MORE:'Red flag': Alarm as judges face threats of violence after ruling against Trump
"None of this is to single Bartell out," Marcotte argues. "On the contrary, the reason it was so easy to predict how he would react is that this is typical of most Trump voters, whose devotion to the MAGA cult reliably outstrips what should be more pressing concerns, such as the safety of their families. We saw this during the pandemic, as Republican voters — unable to admit liberals could be right about anything, including the germ theory of disease — refused to take precautions and even rejected the vaccines that Trump himself had authorized research funding for. The result was also predictable: death rates from COVID-19 among Republicans swiftly outpaced those of Democratic voters."
Marcotte draws a parallel between the "MAGA cult" and Scientologists. And she makes a distinction between MAGA diehards and "low-information" swing voters who favored Biden in 2020 and Trump in 2024.
"The term 'Trump derangement syndrome,' applied to anyone who criticizes Trump, functions like 'suppressive persons,' the Scientologist phrase for outsiders," Marcotte writes. "It doesn't just warn members against listening to reason, but contains a threat: this is how you'll be labeled if you leave the fold…. Think of these folks like people who get audited by a Scientologist once, on a lark, but are weirded out by the process and never go back. Not everyone who encounters a cult is sucked into it forever. The key is focusing on those who never put more than a toe across the threshold, instead of those who walked all the way in and shut the door behind them."
READ MORE:'Clear and present danger': Experts alarmed at 'insanity' of Musk getting secret war plans
*Amanda Marcotte's full article for Salon is available at this link.*
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VETS Va ATTACKED; SOC SEC MEDICARE
MMA
March 6, 2025, edition of MSNBC's *Deadline: White House
NICOLLE WALLACE (HOST): I mean, Angelo, I wanna come back to something that you have really put in the front of my mind, and that's narrative dominance. And I think it is clear after November's election that Donald Trump always had and maintained and, probably did today, maintains narrative dominance. I think the speech was about dominance, right?
And I think that you can want that to change. You can hate that that is, but the narrative dominance will only change when the credibility is restored on the part of all the people that were right about all of this stuff. And I wonder if you can sort of speak about -- I mean, it seems like lived experience and the pain that people are going to feel because of what Trump is doing that's deeply unpopular helps restore credibility of the folks were that were warning.
I mean, the most unsurprised people are the pro-democracy coalition, the people that were on the front lines and many of the Democratic politicians who were saying this is exactly what he's going to do. The surprised people are the Trump-voting federal workers, the Trump-voting farmers, the Trump-voting small business owners for whom the tariffs, the firings, and the cuts are devastating.
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): Yeah. I mean and even to your point about the most surprised people -- and I said the last time I was here, and it remains true. If you really want to hear the truth about how people are feeling right now, you have to listen to the callers and to right-wing talk radio because it's only gotten more intense in the last few days because they are calling into the show that they typically listen to and have been for years. And they are saying I'm a listener and yet I've now been affected by this thing. And I didn't think it was going to happen to me.
And they are appealing to people like Sean Hannity and Mark Levin and these other prominent right-wing talkers to sort of go to someone in the Trump orbit and say to them, "Wait. You made a mistake. It actually is hurting me. I didn't -- I wasn't supposed to lose my job. This grant wasn't supposed to get affected. This rule that is affecting my local community was not supposed to happen. You just need to explain to them." And then, of course, they won't do it. And that's, to me, really significant because we are only at the very, very early stages of the types of actions that they're going to continue to take, and we're already seeing the consequences of it.
The other part that's really interesting about the narrative side of it is that one thing that -- you know they offset this right-wing echo chamber, but it's not one monolith. It's not just Fox News anymore. Fox News is a laggard. They used to be the vanguard. They used to be like the assignment editor for the rest of the right-wing media. Fox News and Rush Limbaugh were the centers of gravity. And if they talked about it, it would reverberate through that echo chamber.
That's not really the case anymore. It's a real loose coalition of sort of like right-wing edge lords, frustrated manosphere people, the traditional right-wing media. There's massive disparity. And that echo chamber sort of has been functioning because Trump has been at the center of it and the vibes have been so good, but it's a real loose coalition.
And one place where you see a big separation is around Social Security. In the more traditional right-wing media, there's a lot of, "Woah. Don't break Social Security. Careful. Be careful. That's going to get us backlash."
But in the younger parts of the right-wing media, they're excited for this because 50% of young people didn't expect to get Social Security in the first place, so they don't care if it breaks. And so that's the part that's really interesting is that putting aside anything that the Democrats do and the rest of the media, there is real vulnerabilities already within the right-wing space, both that they're beginning to internalize the truth, as we're seeing with the right-wing talkers and their ability to maintain an echo, is already starting to show some fracture points.
So what does that mean in the grand scheme of things and to your point about restoring credibility? That's the target. That's where both the rest of the meeting -- and I'm so grateful for Alex's reporting on this -- that to elevate those stories, in a way that helps really connect the dots between the harms that are being experienced right now and the actions and the policies that the administration are taking, either because they're reckless as John has said or because they're intentional and deliberate because they're just cruel and callous and because they're trying to reshape our culture. That is going to help restore the credibility. Don't tell people that you have to be credible. Show them that.
They'll get there.
WALLACE: And the point of the credibility is that that is sort of the doorway through which you walk to regain narrative dominance. And then once it is built on the true real lived experiences of people, again -- Democrats, Republicans, farmers, teachers, workers, Social Security recipients -- then it is unshakable.
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Played for suckers: Kansas farmer blasts Trump voters in scathing editorial
an 2 25
'I feel so stupid': These 'horrified' Trump voters are having serious buyer’s remorse
'Act of God': Trump-supporting farmers reel from funding cuts
an 1 25
After Democratic nominee Kamala Harris narrowly lost the United States' 2024 presidential election to Donald Trump, many pundits argued that Trump did a better job appealing to Americans' "economic anxiety." The U.S. enjoyed record-low unemployment rates under former President Joe Biden, but Trump hammered Biden and Harris relentlessly on inflation — and it worked.
On Election Night 2024, Trump won the popular vote by roughly 1.5 percent (according to the Cook Political Report).
However, in an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on January 30, Alan Elrod (CEO of the think tank the Pulaski Institution) emphasizes that Trump's victories in 2016 and 2024 go beyond appealing to voters' "economic anxiety." Trump, according to Elrod, resonates with his "base" because of his ability to exploit "status anxiety."
READ MORE: DC insider has a special message for federal workers
Elrod explains, "Every Trump-supporting boat parade and each positive jobs report or new Dow record set during the hated Biden Administration served as a reminder that the 'economic anxiety' thesis leaves too much out of its analytic viewfinder — namely, the real motive roots of Trump's appeal, especially to those who actually live quite high on the hog…. More useful for understanding what motivates Trump's base would be a relative measure — one that could conceivably affect people in a variety of economic circumstances. The best starting point, as some observers have been arguing for years, is status anxiety.
The Pulaski Institution CEO continues, "That's because while 'status' comprises a number of signs of economic success — homes, jobs, bank accounts — it goes beyond them to include important intangibles. As Alain de Botton put it in a 2008 book on the subject, status also has to do with 'a sense of being cared for and thought valuable.' And that kind of judgment is one we can only arrive at through comparison with others."
The "status anxiety" that Elrod describes is applicable to Americans who feel underappreciated — even if they are doing well.
"This is the perfect pathology for citizens of a democracy: If merit, not rank, determines social value and achievement, as is meant to be the case in our country, then your average person will be confronted every day with the question of why they haven't experienced greater success — a toxic recipe for self-righteousness, shame, anxiety, and self-consciousness," Elrod observes. "Especially when, thanks to our deranged media environment, the apparent success of others — including those we consider undeserving — is constantly in view…. Trump is the master of grievance and animus precisely because he himself is an exposed nerve of status anxiety."
READ MORE:['Live with that shame': Jan. 6 rioter pardoned by Trump gets 17-year state prison sentence
Elrod continues, "No one articulates this sense of injury quite like him because perhaps no one is as covetous, spiteful, and achingly needy as he is. His unprecedented political debut and continuing success has not freed him from his decades-old grievances. If anything, his elevation has made him into the ultimate sore winner."
READ MORE:[GOP lawmakers staying silent as Trump 'runs roughshod over Congress'
*Alan Elrod's full article for The Bulwark is available at this link.
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During the United States' 2024 presidential race, Donald Trump hammered President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris mercilessly on the economy — especially inflation, which he blamed the Biden Administration for. And his messaging worked: Trump, who won the popular vote by roughly 1.5 percent (according to the Cook Political Report), returned to the White House for a second term on Monday, January 20, 2025.
Rich Logis — the former Republican and ex-Trump supporter who founded the group Leaving MAGA — examines that economic angst in an think piece published by Salon on January 26. And he argues that many Trump supporters suffer from "an all-enveloping misunderstanding of American capitalism."
"One delusional mythology about American capitalism that has been instilled in We the People is that we somehow have a guaranteed right to prosperity," Logis writes. "This imaginary right has been deployed by politicians who are afraid of educating their constituents about how our model of commerce actually works…. With due respect to the many Americans who voted for Donald Trump, their overwhelming sense of entitlement dwarfs that of the hard-working immigrants who cut their grass, scrub pots and pans in the restaurants they frequent, and care for their kids and elderly loved ones."
READ MORE: Anger as Trump set 'to make every American pay even more' with Colombia retaliation
Logis adds, "Too many Americans have come to believe they are owed financial comfort and material abundance, not to mention eggs and gasoline at predictable prices…. Welcome to capitalism, a system whose proponents always cite unequal outcomes as a reason for extolling it."
Logis argues that "many millions" of Americans "are better off" because of former President Joe Biden's administration, which "oversaw the recovery of millions of jobs lost during the COVID pandemic and the creation of millions more."
The former MAGA Republican recalls that back in 2016, Trump's "populist campaign resonated with" him. But he has since rejected the MAGA movement.
"Welcome to the 'laws' of supply and demand, which all of us must navigate on a daily basis," Logis emphasizes. "If you don't know or don't remember these details, ask yourself why you don't. If you're a Trump voter, then ask yourself whether you might have voted differently in November had you been aware…. What do Trump voters, and especially true believers in the MAGA community, of which I was once a full member, think capitalism is?"
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RWW
01/22/2025
by
The day before the inauguration, Trump cultists gathered in DC to pray that "our beloved Donald Trump" will assume a fathership position" and "be a role model for the children and the kids in our nation."
ANGEL ARMY GABRIELLE BRUNO
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alternet-
Trump's poorest supporters are in for a rude awakening
John Stoehr January 19, 2025
Since the election, you have probably heard a lot about FAFO (“f--- around and find out”). It’s the idea that voting is a choice and voters must face the consequences of their choices. If you are, say, a poor person, you shouldn’t have voted for Donald Trump or any Republican, because in the end, they’re going to betray you. But if you did, well, f--- around and find out.
Low-income voters did indeed vote for Trump.
According to the Post, “50 percent of voters from families with an income of less than $50,000 a year cast their ballots for Trump, according to [exit polls], compared with 48 percent for Vice President Kamala Harris. Four years ago, President Joe Biden carried those voters by 11 percentage points; Hillary Clinton won them by 12 points in 2016 and former president Barack Obama by 22 points in 2012.”
They’re anxious now, the Postsaid.
Some believed his promise to put them first, but the Republicans around him keep talking about cutting spending and slashing services.
“Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy – whom Trump has chosen to lead a new nongovernmental advisory panel, the ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ – have said they want to trim $2 trillion from the government’s annual budget, a cut that some experts say could be accomplished only by slashing entitlement programs,” the Post said.
ALSO READ: We're watching the largest and most dangerous 'cult' in American history
The Post continued: “Trump’s pick for White House budget director was a key architect of Project 2025, a plan drawn up by conservatives to guide his second term that calls for steep cuts to programs such as food stamps. And GOP leaders in Congress and Trump advisers are considering significant changes to Medicaid … and other federal aid.”
Low-income supporters want him to honor his promise.
The Post report isn’t alone. Since the election, I have seen many stories about Trump voters who are now concerned about what Trump is going to do – sick people who fear the repeal of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare); Latinos who fear their families being deported; and now poor people who survive on food stamps but fear them being cut.
These stories never fail to get the attention of the FAFO crowd, which is to say, of liberals and Democrats who are still smarting from defeat.
They take some comfort in the idea that Trump voters will feel the consequences of their actions. The more literate among them might even cite HL Mencken: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
But the FAFO crowd is giving Donald Trump too much credit.
They assume that the Trump administration’s policies and programs will affect everyone equally. They do not assume, as they should, that Trump will reward his friends and punish his enemies. If he ends up in the process looking like a hypocrite, or committing a crime, so be it.
The incoming administration is going to be fantastically corrupt. It’s going to take a large, serious and sustained counteroffensive to fight against it. But we might end up underestimating the enormity of the project by continuing to focus on FAFO, as if Trump would not spare supporters from facing consequences if doing so suited his interests.
He will try if it does.
Even if that means breaking the law.
Take immigration. Trump vowed to deport millions of “illegal” workers. If successful, he’d decimate the labor supply and hurt the big farming states like Nebraska and Kansas that cannot function without “illegal” workers to pick their crops. Knowing that they voted for him anyway, by huge margins, the FAFO crowd is expecting them to find out.
They probably won’t. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will almost certainly focus on “illegal” immigrants in states like New York and California, especially in cities like New York City and Los Angeles, because they voted against Trump. Meanwhile, “illegal” immigrants in Nebraska and Kansas will be overlooked, because it’s convenient to.
Take tariffs, too. Trump vowed to impose across-the-board levies on imported goods from China and elsewhere. The impact could, in effect, be as much as a 20 percent sales tax on everything from sneakers to video games. Knowing that poor people voted for Trump, because prices are too high, the FAFO crowd is expecting them to find out.
Again, they probably won’t. First, Trump’s tariffs will be unequal. They will depend on who’s willing to bribe him and for how much. Those who won’t or can’t will face a levy. Those who can and will won’t.
And if tariffs make things more expensive for Trump voters, and they will, because they’re inflationary, there’s nothing saying Trump can’t “offer” them a “tax rebate” to offset the increase. That such a thing would be illegal and unconstitutional and impossible to implement is beside the point. The point is that Trump will be fantastically corrupt.
Same thing with entitlement programs – Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and the rest. The FAFO crowd is expecting Trump supporters to suffer the consequences of their choices. If they didn’t want cuts to food stamps, for instance, they shouldn’t have voted for a Republican.
But they do want cuts, not for them but those who don’t “deserve” them, which is to say, people who are not like them. This is clear when you read the Post report carefully, especially quotes from the “longtime Democrat” who “struggled over whether to vote for Trump.” She “kept coming back to the conclusion that Trump would put Americans like her first and improve her economic prospects” (my italics).
“We helped get you in office; please take care of us,” she told the Post.
“Please don’t cut the things that help the most vulnerable.”
You’re not vulnerable if you’re not one of them.
Trump won’t help, because he never put you first.
NOW READ: It's time for liberals to abandon MSNBC's 'sweet little lies'
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