'That had to sting': Ex-GOP insider flags response to Trump that may spell the end of MAGA

Donald Trump gave a big speech in front of important people, but the reaction to his presentation could end up hurting MAGA, according to a former GOP strategist.

Ex-GOP strategist Rick Wilson, who recently said he might depose Trump in a lawsuit and force the president to explain his ties to the deceased child sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein, wrote a piece on Friday in which he hammered the president for his speech alongside Pete Hegseth in front of top military leaders from around the globe.

According to Wilson, Trump and Hegseth were out of their depth trying to impress a sea of generals.

"This wasn’t the county GOP Lincoln Dinner; this was a forced assembly of America’s senior military leadership, men and women who manage more complexity before breakfast than Trump, Pete Hegseth, and their entire MAGA cosplay corps could comprehend in a lifetime," he wrote. "They lead in real danger, in real time, in real space, against real adversaries. They run multivariate operations across the globe that would leave the weekend cable-host-turned-pretend-Patton drooling into his third morning cocktail. Instead, they had to sit for two hours and watch Hegseth try to swing his rhetorical broadsword before Trump wandered onstage and word-vomited all over the carpet."

That made the response from the crowd even worse, the strategist said.

"The silence was deafening. The smatterings of polite applause? Mercy claps from Hegseth and Trump’s staffers. You could feel the oxygen getting sucked out of the room as the Commander-in-Chief proved what all of the Flag officers in the room knew already: he is utterly unqualified, mentally unfit, and below the standard of leadership they’d expect from a green 2nd LT," he wrote Friday.

He then added, "The lack of real applause wasn’t a production glitch; it was a temperature check."

"Those were not roaring ovations. For Trump, a man who needs crowds like a shark needs blood, that quiet had to sting. For Hegseth, it had to land like a brick. The fantasy of 'I summoned the warfighters and they all swooned' died right there, under the fluorescents of that auditorium at Quantico," he wrote next. "There’s a sliver of hope in that silence. Power hates quiet. Cults need chanting, cheering, the crowd hoarse and eager. Trump didn’t get his roar. He didn’t get the mass ritual of allegiance he wanted. That matters."

There is more work to do to fight back, according to Wilson.

"Take heart in the silence of the Generals, but don’t mistake it for safety. The show will be back on the road tomorrow, selling the same poison in a new bottle," he wrote. "Our antidote remains the same as it ever was: law, courage, and the stubborn refusal to be drafted into someone else’s fever dream."

Read the full piece here.