‘Ugly and dangerous’: Ex-GOP strategist lays out what happens to MAGA after Trump dies

Rick Wilson, political strategist and co-founder of the anti-Trump group The Lincoln Project, described the harsh reality for MAGA after President Donald Trump dies.

In a Substack essay published Tuesday, Wilson identified how "what happens next will be ugly and dangerous" as Trump ages and ultimately meets his demise.

"We don’t spend enough time on how much chaos and blood comes after that tap in the Generallismo’s shoulder, on the inevitable collapse of systems built around a single man entail," he wrote.

The end is inescapable for Trump. And the question of who comes next has yet to be answered.

"The leader dies, weakens, is defeated politically or militarily, or even loses a step, and the entire structure that pretended to be a unified movement reveals itself as what it really was all along: a feeding frenzy for sycophants who think they were born to inherit the throne. The pressure cooker of autocratic systems rewards fealty, loyalty, public and private obeisance," Wilson wrote.

"If you want to understand what is coming for MAGA as Donald Trump ages and declines, you start there," the former Republican strategist wrote.

While MAGA loyalists have an eye on the future, it might not bode well for Trump's most faithful followers. One main issue has persisted.

"Not with his tweets, not with daily outrages and excesses, but with the iron law of personality cults: succession is their unsolved problem," he explained.

What will come next for MAGA is still unknown.

"Autocrats are very good at seizing power and holding it. They are very bad at leaving it behind without blowing something up on the way out," Wilson wrote. "Political scientists have long argued that personality cult regimes are especially fragile at succession because the leader spends his life eliminating rivals rather than training successors."