Conservative shocked as positive tweet met by MAGA's fury

Conservative columnist Matt Lewis has brought down MAGA's wrath on himself in a surprising way.

On Wednesday, Lewis tweeted a video link to his interview with The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols, adding the caption, “It's a GREAT time to be alive. So why are so many Americans depressed and convinced that things have never been worse ?!?”

He was then surprised when former Trump administration official Richard Grenell quickly jumped in to attempt to show him how he was wrong, he said in a new column for The Daily Beast.

"Grenell, who has over a million X followers, responded by cryptically citing '3 wars,' 'An open border,' 'An open attack on political enemies,' as the accomplishments of the sinister 'The Biden Regime,'" Lewis wrote.

Lewis said he's known Grenell, who served as Trump's ambassador to Germany and director of national intelligence, for about a decade and didn't recall any past criticism, so he wondered why that tweet had set him off.

"Then it hit me: Donald Trump needs to advance the notion that things have never been worse," Lewis wrote. "Indeed, this is the fundamental premise of his re-election bid."

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The Washington Post coincidentally profiled Grenell right after that, describing him as a rapid-response, war room director, perpetually exalting Trump and trolling his political foes on social media and in interviews," which Lewis found to be accurate, and he said the episode gave him a fresh insight into the former president's foundational campaign promise.

"MAGA (Make America Great Again) isn’t just a message on a red hat, it’s a mantra," Lewis wrote. "And to acknowledge the ways America is currently great (and improving!) is to admit that the country does not, in fact, need a fulminating strongman like Trump to save us from the ashes of our once proud homeland."

"Trump needs his MAGA followers to believe America is screwed," he added. "The danger, of course, is that this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."