'Downright nasty' MAGA supporters are turning on each other as Trump flails: conservative

According to conservative Matt Lewis, Donald Trump's collapse among Republicans who would now like him to go away and no longer be the face of the party, has set off a civil war among some of his most ardent followers who are now jockeying to take over the MAGA movement.

With Trump's plummeting to earth after his 2020 election loss and the failure of the majority of his hand-picked candidates failing to win in the 2022 midterms elections, Lewis wrote that his "minions' have the "knives out" for each other as things fall apart.

In his column for the Daily Beast, Lewis wrote that after Herschel Walker's bid for a U.S. Senate seat flatlined, "The knives were already out, but this could get downright nasty," among Trump supporters.

"Some of these people want to replace Trump as the GOP standard-bearer. Others just want to supplant him as the Twitter troll-in-chief. It hardly matters," he wrote. "The ex-president is also fighting a two-front war against people who no longer fear him. For example, right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos has claimed he set up the notorious Mar-a-Lago dinner with Kanye and white supremacist Nick Fuentes 'to make Trump’s life miserable.'"

As Lewis noted, not only is Trump becoming a target, his MAGA supporters are going after each other due to a "power vacuum."

"After seizing power, a strongman often (ruthlessly) imposes order and peace at home. For most of the last few years, Trump has been a unifying force in the GOP and, more broadly, on the right (not counting the small percentage of Republicans who became Never Trumpers and were purged)," he wrote before asking, "But what happens when a strongman starts to appear vulnerable? Chaos ensues. People rise up and/or the power vacuum is filled by local warlords."

Case in point, the growing rift between Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Marjorie Talor Greene (R-GA) as they try to elevate their respective positions in the party.

"Consider the split between bosom buddies Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene over whether to support Kevin McCarthy for Speaker of the House. 'Whatever Kevin has promised Marjorie Taylor Greene,' Gaetz said in November, 'I guarantee you this: at the first opportunity, he will zap her faster than you can say Jewish space laser," Lewis reported.

"I’m not saying there wasn’t any right-on-right drama during the Trump years; there was. But what we are seeing now is the result of a nascent power vacuum where players are competing for turf," he explained. "And it’s a sure sign that Trump’s shining star is losing its luster. Think of it this way: If you’re into drama and weird shit, you don’t need Trump any more. There is a younger and (in some cases) weirder crop of right-wingers who are way more interesting than some old guy holed up in a Florida mansion."

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