A celebrity trainer turned MAGA podcaster has a blunt midterm warning for Republicans counting on President Donald Trump's base to save them.
Former "Biggest Loser" trainer Jillian Michaels made the case on her podcast "Keeping It Real," after watching coverage suggesting that strong MAGA loyalty to Trump could hold off a Democratic "blue wave" in November, according to reporting by The Daily Beast.
Michaels argued the math doesn't work in the GOP's favor.
"They talk about how MAGA is still very loyal to Trump, but MAGA is not a big percentage, not a big percentage, of the total voting pool, because it's not the entire Republican Party," she said.
To back up her point, Michaels pointed to Pew Research data showing 28 percent of voters call themselves Republicans, compared to 29 percent who identify as Democrats and 44 percent who consider themselves independent or something else. Among those independents, Democrats hold a slight edge, with 47 percent leaning their way versus 43 percent leaning Republican.
She also referenced a University of Massachusetts Amherst survey that found 32 percent of Republican voters don't identify with the MAGA movement at all.
Michaels said that what she hears on the road lines up with the numbers.
"I gotta be honest, in talking with people, I travel a lot across the country, people come up to me in airports, in restaurants, Uber drivers, and they talk to me," she said. "I meet a lot of people who are Republicans that are not happy right now."
She also played a clip of rapper Nicki Minaj appearing on Lara Trump's Fox News show "My View," urging Republicans to show up at the polls.
"The point is simply don't get confident," Michaels said. "MAGA is not the majority."
The real danger, she argued, isn't that disaffected Republicans and right-leaning independents will cross over to vote for Democrats. It's that they'll stay home.
"They may not vote Democrat, but they may not vote at all, and that's it," Michaels said. "That's the nail in the coffin if that is the case."
