Former Vice President Mike Pence's think tank, Advancing American Freedom (AAF) has lately been poaching officials from the conservative Heritage Foundation. However, Tim Miller — a former spokesman for the Republican National Committee — is predicting the fight will not be between Pence and extremist MAGA, but between two MAGA extremes.
AAF is providing a landing pad for former Heritage members in the wake of a mass departure over the role of right-wing influencers promoting antisemitic or racist views and other extremist ideas. Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts kicked off the flight of staffers after releasing a video defending far-right pundit Tucker Carlson’s friendly October interview with Nick Fuentes, an avowed white nationalist who has previously praised Adolf Hitler. Roberts' video sparked controversy inside Heritage, prompting him to later apologize for it.
During a Tuesday MS NOW segment, Miller said the fight will not likely be between Pence’s nonprofit and Fuentes' camp, but between separate groups of MAGA extremists.
“The unifying element that brought everybody in MAGA together was that they wanted Donald Trump to be president. And Donald Trump is, in a lot of ways, sometimes incoherent on policy ... And so, it allowed everybody to sort of fit under one roof. And if they had a disagreement, whatever daddy Trump said they went along with.”
“Now as Trump starts to smell like a lame duck, everybody wants to shape the future of the movement and the way that they see fit. There are obviously a lot of ... traditional conservatives that held their nose and stuck around for Donald Trump. And they want the party to kind of go back to how it used to be, but there are people kind of new to the Republican movement that hate the old Republican Party and want it to be even more populist, more nationalist, and look more like a European far-right nationalist party,” Miller said. “… And so, all of it's like a Game of Thrones situation now, with all of them are fighting for control.”
Miller said “it's interesting” that Pence and his more traditional conservative group is trying to gather support and infrastructure, but he said he’s “skeptical that would work.”
“I think the real fight is what we saw at AmericaFest, which was between a MAGA establishment, like a hybrid of the old Republican Party and the new [party], with some even further right figures that want basically full nationalism, closed borders, no more support of Israel, embracing conspiracy theories. And the fight to me seems to be on that turf.”
Watch the segment below: