Trump 'embodies a mess' for MAGA future as US driven 'towards the abyss': analysis

The actions of Donald Trump during his second term in office will have major, long-term consequences for MAGA voters, a political analyst has claimed.

Though the president may be an important figurehead for the movement, The Guardian columnist Rafael Behr believes the political base will recede rapidly once Trump has left office. This is not just because Trump is the image the MAGA movement are keen to prop up, but because his toxic actions in office will have a lasting effect on the voter base.

Behr explained, "Trump is unpopular and old; visibly declining. He also looks irreplaceable as a figurehead for an ideologically incoherent MAGA movement.

"He embodies a mess of protectionist, free market, interventionist, isolationist, chauvinist and libertarian impulses that none of his mooted successors could contain.

"But in the meantime he can drive the US hard towards the abyss, past all of history’s signposts, before a stiffening of democratic spines in Congress or the grim reaper stops him."

Behr used the recent rhetoric Trump has presented on Greenland as an example of how a post-Trump MAGA outline may be difficult to hold together.

He continued, "It is not stupidity or arrogance that prevent the current White House honouring the transatlantic partnership, or not those traits alone. The parables of history that teach Europeans to see multilateral governance as a brake on ultranationalism are direct rebukes to the doctrine that now guides US power.

"There is no misunderstanding. Trump is not neglecting the old alliance. He despises it as antithetical to his politics and his character.

"If Europeans are right about the values they want the US to uphold, it follows that the country also needs regime change. If they have history on their side, the current president must fail, and he knows it. Sycophancy doesn’t bridge the gap. European leaders flatter only themselves if they think it can.

"Trump is not ignoring the lessons that European democracies have learned from their past. He chooses to fight for the other side."