We know MAGA is doomed — and Trump doesn't care

Liberal commentators have spent the last ten years serving up all-too-feel-good comfort food, much-needed pablum to the undernourished, assurances that the American body politic is on the cusp of excising the infection that oozes all things MAGA. The end always sounds near. It has never got around to happening.

But that doesn't alter the fact that MAGA is now, finally, unquestionably, unraveling before our eyes. It is starting to die.

Save the full-throated victory pitch. The sun is setting only partly because MAGA was always transactional, was never tied to a redeeming principle, and never sought to build anything lasting. MAGA is crumbling, in part, due to its mystifying success. It prevailed in its only real aim. Ultimately, MAGA only sought to break sh--, to tear it all down: the government, social progress, cohesion ... progressive hope. On that score, it has been shockingly successful. But now, at last, it has nowhere left to go.

None of them want this to end. Nor will they give up willingly. But so much is happening at once that MAGA is failing from the inside out, its most strident supporters at each other's throats, factions fighting over purity, who best represents "America First."

None of it can survive a crumbling economy.

Nothing was ever more inevitable than Republicans taking a blowtorch to markets, prices, and wages. If there is one thing the world has learned over the years, it is that Republicans use power to rob the poor and middle class. Ironically, Donald Trump, the MAGA Caesar, is never more a traditional Republican than when he's first through the door in the bank heist. He hasn't even tried to hide it, surrounding himself with billionaires from the first hour of his second inauguration.

The inevitable implosion was always going to hurt him, but in his hubris and "f--- you" attitude, he has never wasted a minute worrying about his white, blue-collar base. It's going to bite him, but it's doubtful he's even aware. He has taken them for granted for so long, why would it ever occur that he could go too far?

But that only works in a stable economy. The rules are about to be rewritten. This was as foreseeable as gravity.

The GOP has always assumed the adults will pick up after them. The average blue-collar Republican voter has always been willing to trade economic stability for what they see as precious social stability, the chance to spit on and mock those considered lesser: people of color, immigrants, LGBTQ+. When Trump came on the scene, such folks yearned to be “great” again, to be openly racist, misogynistic and anti-semitic. They were willing to go along with damn near anything, so long as that promise was fulfilled.

It hurts to say they won here, too. Go on X, read the threads about being proud to be white, openly calling others animals, being proud of your “genes,” as if that meant anything.

Progress cannot be forever halted — there's always the “arc of the universe” thing. But man, MAGA has managed to slash the tires. They don't care. They've never planned for the next stop down the road. They are in the here and now.

But it's all about to collapse.

Of course, there's Jeffrey Epstein too. Of course, we knew that Trump was as entwined as could be. We had video. We had Access Hollywood. E. Jean Carroll. But MAGA surely didn't, or wouldn't, and it's taken seeing their guy squirm for close to a year for it to dawn that they might have a problem. Most of MAGA still cannot admit it, but Trump's Epstein links are real and they know it.

Maybe all things Epstein could be pushed aside for a time — in a strong economy. But, again, they don't have that now.

There are other dynamics at play, the most relevant on display in the civil war now unfolding, as a generation of young MAGA men seek the powerful dopamine hit to which they think they're entitled. For them, only the noxious Nick Fuentes and his neo-Nazi friends have anything left to offer. The most deplorable deplorables are young and reckless, unable to comprehend the explosives they're handling. Maybe they don't care.

Trump surely doesn't. Those MAGA men still love him. For him, that's all that matters. But for many, the open embrace of Nazism is finally a bridge too far. The detonation is starting, giving off those slight pops one hears in buildings about to fall.

MAGA cannot withstand the confluence of these waves: not with a troubled economy, not with Trump embracing billionaires and sucking money from the treasury.

As for Trump, it's tough to tell whether he really cares anymore. Largely shielded from being held to account, he has at least tripled his wealth. He likes being president but doesn't like doing what presidents must do. He is old. He has to face the whole 2028 thing, a lame duck, others the center of attention. One wonders if a "medical setback" and retirement might be close.

The MAGA endgame is here. It is ugly and will get uglier. They are splitting over whether there is anything left to want. But it is hard to get excited about victory. For the rest of us, there is more work to do, none of it joyful. But crawling into a fetal position would be worse.

Just because this process has started and can't be stopped doesn't mean MAGA can't make things even worse on the way out, and that means all effort should go to ensuring the end of this noxious movement happens as fast and as devastatingly as possible.

The real work begins now. Everyone always counted on the adults to clean up. The sun is setting on MAGA.

• Jason Miciak is past associate editor of Occupy Democrats, author, political commentator, American attorney, and single dad. He can be reached at @JasonMiciak, on Bluesky at Jason Miciak, and at jasonmiciak@gmail.com.