MAGA's pandemic obsession with harassing Dr. Anthony Fauci has revealed its dark core, an analyst argued on Monday.
Salon's Amanda Marcotte discussed how, as MAGA fractures, Republicans have been looking for a scapegoat. Trump's approval rating is sinking as the economy and the Iran war fuel frustration among the coalition's loyal followers.
"For normal people, yearning for a time when we were socially isolated and afraid of dying from a highly contagious virus is downright bizarre," Marcotte wrote. "MAGA, though, has a reason to feel nostalgia for a pandemic that killed millions. It was an era when the GOP got to do what they love more than anything: play the victim as loudly as possible before huge audiences that were especially vulnerable to disinformation."
The right seized the pandemic as an opportunity to claim white conservatives were the most oppressed, while refusing the vaccine as many Republicans died, Marcotte argued. But in Trump's second term, and with dissatisfaction among MAGA, that's changed.
"In this environment, it has become increasingly hard for conservatives to play the victim when Trump has unleashed a secret police in the form of Immigration and Customs Enforcement that is rounding up people and sending them to detainment camps," Marcotte wrote. "People aren’t as isolated; they are reconnecting with the real world. MAGA media is fracturing, and their audiences are a small fraction of what they had during the pandemic. Republican in-fighting has grown to the point where podcaster Tucker Carlson, once a loyal Trump ally, is fueling speculation that he’s going to start a third-party."
MAGA has aimed to use the past to try to regroup its base, Marcotte explained.
"By reviving the harassment campaign against Fauci, the GOP has inadvertently revealed the time they long to return to, an era that is remembered by most people as miserable and deadly," Marcotte wrote.
"There’s no more compelling indictment of MAGA than this: The moment they felt most ascendent was when everyone else was in hell," Marcotte added.