That sound you hear is MAGA cracking — but Trump faces an even bigger challenge

It’s wild how we’re watching Donald Trump losing his grip on MAGA as MAGA leaders, from Ben Shapiro and Erica Kirk to Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon, are tearing themselves apart. They’re riven by outlandish debates like allowing Nazis such as Nick Fuentes into the party, while events like Charlie Kirk’s assassination are enmeshed in divisive, bonkers conspiracies rather than being the predicted rallying moment.

It may seem pretty crazy. But it’s actually making things a lot clearer.

The rebellion against Trump and the leaders in Congress subservient to him over everything from the Epstein files to the extension of Obamacare tax credits underscores that the masses in MAGA are lashing out because they have not gotten what was promised to them. And for most of them, what they didn’t get was their end of the Big Grift: money.

Trump, his family, many GOP leaders, and the billionaires supporting Trump have all been there for the grift, and it’s paying off lavishly as they’re making billions of dollars by commandeering — and often destroying — government. But the deal with the MAGA masses was that they’d be in on the grift too.

Sure, there are substantial pockets of Trump supporters who backed Trump based solely on their twisted one-issue obsessions, like banning abortion, terrorizing transgender people or eradicating immigrants. But the rest of them, many of them likely initially uncomfortable with those hate agendas but willing to rationalize them away, were there as long as they got the one thing they were promised.

It was the promise of a more affordable life that they’d been duped into believing was taken away by minorities and others, as they are paying more and getting less for their money. (Honestly, it isn’t an example of “greed” to want an affordable life. But to accept the promise of it from a bigoted charlatan, knowing that other people will be harmed, is certainly not moral.)

Much of the next few paragraphs has been tread over before, but it’s worth a recap for the sake of this discussion: Millions of Americans experienced a loss of faith in the government over many years, after suffering losses in the earlier part of the century. For many of them, government often was partly or mostly responsible, for many years creating incentives for companies that sent jobs overseas as whole communities in the Midwest decayed. Trump picked up on this in 2016, while people like Bernie Sanders tried to warn Democrats about it.

For many others, it wasn’t government that caused their problems, but their own bad decisions in life — whether about businesses they created, places they moved, jobs they took that weren’t a fit or for other reasons. For others, it was just fate, like facing a terrible illness or losing a loved one. That has, of course, been a constant, both in American life and in the human condition everywhere throughout time. And when a charlatan comes along and tells people that he and he alone can fix it all, many unfortunately will gravitate to the message.

So Trump’s base was built on grievance — and blaming others, like Black people, immigrants, LGBTQ people, women’s equality and others for their problems — and that’s an old story. What’s now becoming more clear to many of these people in the Trump base themselves, however, is that Trump is not fixing things for them even as he’s stripping the rights of all those other people (while further enriching himself and the wealthy).

You can end all the DEI programs, rip out the aid to impoverished foreign countries, declare, as JD Vance did at the Turning Point USA conference last weekend, that “We don’t apologize for being white anymore” — but you’re still left with high prices, rising unemployment, rents that are soaring and mortgages that are out of reach as tariffs surge.

Of course, what Vance really means is we don’t have to apologize for being racist. But what good is that, the MAGA supporters are realizing, when you still can’t pay the rent and buy groceries?

We’re seeing the markets continue to have surges and weather the tariffs. And we’re seeing GDP growing, including in a new report today, even in the face of inflation and rising unemployment. But that’s all because the wealthiest Americans are still spending, keeping the economy afloat. As the great economist Paul Krugman describes it, based in part on the research of other economists, we’re in a ‘K-shaped” economy, in which the wealthy are getting richer, and, for now, propping things up, while everyone else is struggling:

Talk of a “K-shaped economy,” in which incomes and wealth are rising only for those at the top, has become ubiquitous. And rightly so. For high-income Americans who own a lot of stock, the past year has treated them pretty well. But for those who don’t, not so much.

What Krugman further points out, however, is that those who say it’s been like that for a long time are wrong. It’s true that it was this way ten years ago, and that helped usher in Trump. HIs followers were willing to give him the benefit of the doubt to fix it until the pandemic hit and he saw a bleeding of support.

The pandemic, however, did a number on the economy — and our psyches. Joe Biden was able to break from the K-shaped economy, but people didn’t feel it amidst the pandemic-created surge in inflation worldwide because of supply-chain shortages. Couple that with Trump’s Big Lie and his ability to suck back in those people who truly wanted to believe him and give him another shot. He slithered his way back into power — and into destroying what Biden achieved.

More from Krugman:

However, too much of the commentary [about the K-shaped economy] is marred by a sort of lazy cynicism. Too many of these commentaries rely on the casual assumption that it has always been thus. Or at least, that it was as true during the Biden years as it is now. But that’s not true.

David Autor, Arindrajit Dube and Annie McGrew have documented that the Biden era post-pandemic economic recovery was the opposite of what we are experiencing now. In fact, during the Biden recovery wage gains for low-paid workers were much larger than for those further up the income scale. In fact, the pro-low-income worker tilt of wage gains during the Biden recovery was something we haven’t seen since the “Great Compression” of the 1940s. And that narrowing of wage gaps was due to special factors, including wartime wage policy and a rapid expansion of unions.

It’s immensely sad — tragic — that the country was headed in the right direction, away from the growing gap in economic inequality, and now we’re headed in the opposite direction again. It’s also horrific that Trump has assaulted minorities, women and immigrants with a greater force than we have seen, all cynically in the name of supposedly helping others.

But MAGA is realizing that after doing all of that, the economy in 2025 is not getting better for them — and is getting much better for Trump and his wealthy buddies. MAGA and those who drifted toward MAGA in the last election were there for the grift. They truly didn’t care about anyone else or about who got hurt in the process — you can hear it in their voices when they say, “I voted for myself” — now they’re not getting anything, and, in fact, it’s getting worse.

Democrats’ message has been simple: We can make it better for everyone. By focusing on affordability, and promising that the wealthiest will not get away like bandits, Democrats have surged in elections. And they focused on Trump’s destruction of our government — which regulates business and helps millions of hard-working Americans — as well as the brutal attacks on democracy and civil rights.

That has not swayed and will not sway the diehard MAGA cultists, but it’s enough to see many drift away, while others are just depressed about the entire scam of a project, zapping momentum. That’s clear with MAGA politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Elise Stefanik retiring, while the whole movement is melting down, as prominent figures are ripping one another to shreds.

It’s hard to believe it’s all happening in less than a year. But here we are. Now Democrats have to continue to drive it all home.

• Michelangelo Signorile writes The Signorile Report, a free and reader-supported Substack. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism.