FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump looks on, on the day he announces a deal with Pfizer to sell drugs at lower prices, in the Oval office of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., September 30, 2025. REUTERS/Ken Cedeno/File Photo
MAGA has a problem in that it can't expand its base, and a closer look at Charlie Kirk's memorial and the Christian evangelical music played there reveals why.
Salon's Amanda Marcotte outlines how President Donald Trump's moment to memorialize Kirk, the slain MAGA influencer, was considered an opportunity among his followers to test out its slow creep into fascism. But the "white evangelical culture" on display may have backfired on drawing more support for MAGA.
"The emphasis on worship music at Kirk’s memorial is symbolic of the larger problem that faces the MAGA movement in its attempt to expand the fascist project beyond Trump himself," Marcotte writes.
Beyond the pyrotechnics surrounding Erika Kirk when she took the stage, plus the speeches from Stephen Miller, JD Vance and Pete Hegseth, the staunchly "revival" style memorial did not appeal to everyone or even mobilize more people to follow MAGA.
"Most supporters are firmly ensconced in the world of white evangelicalism, which is famously alienating to most everyone outside it," Marcotte writes. "That fact is a primary reason why their numbers keep declining despite decades of aggressive proselytizing. The rest of the loyal MAGA base tends to adhere to one cultist belief or another, be it QAnon — which has a lot of evangelical overlap — the incel world or whatever artificial intelligence-driven faith is taking hold of Silicon Valley."
Kirk's death and the subsequent reaction among MAGA was compared to Horst Wessel, a 23-year-old member of the Nazi Party's paramilitary wing who was assassinated in 1930 by members of the Communist Party and hailed as a "martyr" in Nazi propaganda.
As the last few weeks following Kirk's killing and memorial have passed, it appears that "a bunch of musicians playing B-rate adult contemporary tunes in a football stadium" did not translate to increased support for MAGA.
"Perhaps his brutal murder was never going to win over a majority of Americans to MAGA," Marcotte writes. "But if there was a chance for that, Trump and other MAGA leaders blew it by so strongly associating Kirk’s legacy with a very specific brand of white evangelicalism — a faith with which only 23% of Americans align themselves."