'MAGA is coming apart': Renowned historian zeroes in on signs of trouble for rattled Trump
Historian Heather Cox Richardson says the MAGA movement is falling apart — and that a rattled Donald Trump is growing weaker by the day.
In her latest video, the author of the popular "Letters from an American" newsletter laid out what she called mounting signs the president's coalition is fracturing.
"MAGA certainly seems to be coming apart in a lot of different ways," she said. "And what we're seeing come together is a new kind of larger democratic tent."
Richardson pointed to a string of warning signs, including that two Trump loyalists — MyPillow founder Mike Lindell and Rep. Andy Ogles — recently lost primaries after his backing. Lindell, she noted, went down by more than 10 points. Trump's job approval has sunk to 33 percent, and, she said, most Americans now tell pollsters he's dishonest, that the country is out of control, and that he's too old for the job.
The exodus around him tells the same story, she argued.
The White House counsel is out, and press secretary Karoline Leavitt is stepping down, departures Richardson tied to aides growing wary of being asked: "to do things that might get them in trouble in the long term."
Abroad, she said, Trump "looks completely weak," with Benjamin Netanyahu publicly breaking with him and Iran "walking him like a puppy dog" as traffic through the Strait of Hormuz collapses. She blasted the decoy-plane scheme that left the press pool and aides on a jet facing an Iranian threat as an act of "sheer cowardice."
At the root, Richardson argued, is the broken promise that Trump sold 2024 as a "permanent realignment" but couldn't hold white supremacists, Latino voters and young people together.
"Trump was promising everything to everybody," she said, "and it was not going to be possible."
Now, she warned, his allies are racing to "grab as much as they can" before the midterms as questions about his health mount.