All posts tagged "maga"

MAGA civil war takes a turn as right-wing conspiracist threatens to unleash 'damning' info

The battle between MAGA Republicans and right-wingers splitting from the camp has a new fire with threats to take down one of Trump's dissenters.

"I'm going to be releasing some very damning documents today that prove @RealCandaceO Candace Owns has a lot to hide," MAGA loyalist Laura Loomer wrote on X on Tuesday. "Candace won't be able to get out of this one."

Former MAGA celebrity and podcast host Candace Owens has come under fire from Trump and his allies since she started pushing conspiracy theories about Charlie Kirk's death, baselessly accusing his widow, Erika, of hidden, insidious motives.

While Trump has already fired shots at Owens on social media, Loomer is threatening a bombshell reveal, writing on X that Owens "isn't at all who she claims to be."

Loomer didn't go into detail, but she attacked Owens' wealth, saying "those who live in 2 multi-million dollar glass houses hidden in a trust fund shouldn't throw stones."

Loomer also included screenshots of Owens' X posts scoffing at Loomer on April 20 with comments like "I'm so scared Laura!" and "she's upset she literally can't find anything on my family."

MAGA loyalists tear into 'loser' GOP Sen. for press gala shooting remarks: 'A disgrace'

MAGA slammed Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) on Monday over his remarks after the shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner amid the ongoing Department of Homeland Security funding standoff in Congress.

GOP leaders were under pressure to end the ongoing stalemate as DHS employees, including Secret Service members who protected Trump, his cabinet, and the hundreds of politicians, diplomats, and journalists, on Saturday night, prepared to go without a paycheck, CNN reported.

"It is difficult to believe that this is the third time, the third time, President Trump has faced an assassination attempt... I am thankful for the many law enforcement officers who responded, in particular those who secured the shooter before he could harm the president or anyone else at the event," Thune said. "Incredibly, some of the law enforcement officers who responded are working for a department that is currently completely unfunded thanks to Democrats' refusal to negotiate on an Appropriations Bill."

MAGA loyalists started to turn on Thune via social media:

"Why have you allowed the good men and women of the Secret Service—who put their lives on the line for the President, his family, and his staff—to go without a paycheck for more than 70 days? This is inexcusable," attorney and former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, Mike Davis, wrote on X.

"Someone came out of his coma," wrote user TamAZ, who self-describes as "America First," wrote on X.

"It is past time for you to be removed as leader. You are part of the resistance, working against the American people. What a disgrace," user Richard Turner, who shares MAGA and right-wing content, wrote on X.

"Thune was too busy sabotaging President Trump and the American people to address another assassination attempt? Thune is not a 'leader' he is a loser. Thune can f--- all the way off," user CC, who self-describes as "original MAGA," wrote on X.

"You did this!" Dr. J Brown, who self-describes as an farmer "behind the blue curtain" and "ultra MAGA," wrote on X.

Why have you allowed the good men and women of the Secret Service—who put their lives on the line for the President, his family, and his staff—to go without a paycheck for more than 70 days?

This is inexcusable. https://t.co/g7Mitqym8E
— 🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸 (@mrddmia) April 27, 2026

Secret operation to fast-track Trump ballroom revealed by ex-MAGA loyalist: columnist

A former MAGA loyalist claimed there was a coordinated strategy among Republicans to fast-track President Donald Trump's ballroom after the shooting at the White House Correspondents' Dinner this weekend, according to an analyst on Monday.

Salon's Sophia Tesfaye described how in the wake of the shooting, the right immediately pivoted to repeating Trump's talking points about his desire to complete his ballroom, while the left shifted to conspiracy theories around the shooting.

"The speed and uniformity of the response would be striking under any circumstances, even after Trump himself had laid the groundwork for using security concerns to justify construction of the White House ballroom just a few weeks before Saturday night’s events," Tesfaye wrote.

"But in the aftermath of a violent and potentially deadly incident, it’s perhaps the clearest example of a media apparatus that behaves more like a professional marketing operation."

Ashley St. Clair, ex-MAGA and former Turning Point USA recruit, went on TikTok "to expose what she described as a coordinated messaging operation," Tesfaye wrote.

"All of MAGA is paid and they coordinate their messaging in lockstep via group chats," St. Clair said. "All of these people came to the conclusion that after they saw what happened at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, their first thought was, all independently, ‘Trump needs his ballroom.'"

St. Clair claimed that she was offered money to promote Ric Grenell for secretary of state and alleged that "one of the main group chats used to coordinate MAGA messaging is called 'Fight Fight Fight,' after the attempted assassination of Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania."

"Her claim should be treated carefully, but it aligns with what we can observe in real time," Tesfaye added. "Modern campaigns have built sophisticated digital infrastructures that blur the line between influencer culture and paid political advocacy. The MAGA media sphere doesn’t just converge on narratives; it snaps to them with the precision of a professional public relations rollout."

@ashstc right on time boys!!
♬ original sound - ashley st. clair

JD Vance 'sold his soul' – and voters are abandoning him for Trump favorite: analyst

Vice President JD Vance's support for a presidential campaign is slipping rapidly, according to a political analyst.

Vance has attempted to consolidate his possible presidential push with a series of appearances at Turning Point USA rallies. But the Vice President is seemingly losing support, and potential voters are abandoning Vance in favor of Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Vance faces a significant erosion of support within MAGA circles as Secretary of State Marco Rubio gains prominence as a potential 2028 presidential successor. Trump voters surveyed in focus groups express a preference for Rubio over Vance, viewing him as the "adult in the room" compared to other cabinet members.

Rubio's multiple government roles—secretary of state, national security adviser, acting USAID administrator, and acting archivist—have created an image of competence and influence. By contrast, Vance's standing has deteriorated sharply. MS NOW analyst Zeeshan Aleem believes voter sentiment is shifting from Vance to Rubio.

Aleem wrote, "It might be that he is more closely identified with Trump and hardcore MAGA ideology, and so Trump’s plunging ratings weigh more on Vance than other administration officials.

"Or, somewhat paradoxically, it might be — as many of Longwell’s quoted focus group participants suggest — that Vance comes across as less sincere rhetorically and seems to have “sold his soul” for proximity to power.

"Sometimes these things boil down to vibe. Even though both Rubio and Vance, like most of their GOP colleagues, have shifted many of their political views during the Trump era, Vance can come across as more try-hard than Rubio, perhaps because of the theatrical zeal with which he speaks, or because the very premise of his relatively short career in national politics was rejecting Trumpism."

Vance previously found himself ditched by MAGA voters, with The Atlantic analyst Sarah Longwell noting the changing tide for Rubio, who appeared to be benefiting from his vast number of titles.

Longwell wrote, "Rubio currently serves as secretary of state and national security adviser, and until recently he served as acting USAID administrator and acting archivist of the United States. Voters see the memes tweaking Rubio for having such a laughable number of important titles and think he must be doing something right."

Trump's own MAGA supporters now target him with wild conspiracy theories: columnist

President Donald Trump's MAGA supporters have started to turn on him, using his affinity for conspiracy theories to flip the script, a columnist reported on Friday.

Matt Lewis, an opinion contributor for The Hill, revealed how Trump's long-time use of 'extreme conclusions,' including his firm belief that the 2020 election was stolen, his claims that former President Barack Obama was not born in America (although Obama was born in Hawaii), and his belief that Haitian immigrants living in Ohio were eating cats and dogs, was haunting him.

"Regardless, we have entered a new and possibly ironic phase of the timeline: Trump is finally discovering what it’s like to be on the losing end of a conspiracy theory," Lewis wrote.

Now MAGA has started to unleash its own conspiracy theories targeted at the commander in chief as "the conspiratorial thinking about Trump has metastasized."

Not only has MAGA started to circulate the belief that Trump staged his own assassination attempt, some think he could be under "demonic possession," Lewis explained. Even Trump's recent photo op at the White House with "Doordash grandma" to talk about his "no tax on tips" policy has led to questions and theories that she could be a "paid actor" or "crisis actor" after it was discovered she had previously testified before Congress to support that policy.

"Taken together, these examples make it pretty clear that MAGA influencers haven’t stopped their conspiracy-theorism," Lewis wrote. "They have just finally migrated toward one of the most suspicious-looking supervillains in the nation — namely, Trump himself."

"It would be easy to lament all of this as evidence that Americans have lost trust in institutions and a common reality. And yes, that is a huge problem," Lewis wrote. "But it is also difficult to ignore the cosmic irony: Trump spent years encouraging the very style of thinking that now has people claiming he is the Antichrist who faked his own assassination attempt."

Ex-ICE official running for Congress accused of having abusive relationship with staffer

A former deputy director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under Trump now running for Congress, is facing accusations of a controlling, abusive relationship with subordinates.

The Daily Mail broke the story on Thursday, reporting that Madison Sheahan, who is now running for the ninth congressional district in Ohio, had a controlling, "toxic" relationship with a 19-year-old woman who worked with Sheahan on the Trump 2020 presidential campaign.

"I think a lot of the problems with our relationship was that she's not comfortable in her own skin," the anonymous young woman told the Daily Mail about Sheahan. "It's okay to be gay...but I don't think that's something she has accepted."

Sheahan declined to comment for the Daily Mail. Her political advisor Bob Pudachik denied the accusations, saying "Madison was not and has never been in a relationship with a subordinate."

The Daily Mail reported that Sheahan "exerted control over her younger partner" and lashed out over the clothes she wore or smoking a cigarette. The relationship started when Sheahan was a senior official with the Ohio Republican Party, and while she was on the Trump 2020 campaign's payroll, the Daily Mail reported. Sheahan was 23 at the time.

The younger lover was living in Sheahan's home after she lost her student housing at Denison University amid the COVID-19 pandemic, she told the Daily Mail, and Sheahan was even her supervisor at one point in 2020.

Sheahan reportedly yelled at her younger lover over the phone when she disagreed with what she wore to go out, telling her "what the [expletive], you're not gonna [expletive] go. Are you actually [expletive] serious? I'm not gonna talk to you again." Another anonymous source who worked with Sheahan at the time told the Daily Mail they could hear the tirade through the walls.

In late 2021, Sheahan tried to stop her secret girlfriend from moving to Washington D.C., and the relationship ended soon after in 2022 over the phone, Sheahan's ex told the Daily Mail.

Sheahan was appointed as Kristi Noem's political director when she was governor of South Dakota. When Noem became the DHS director, she hired Sheahan as an ICE deputy director in March 2025, and Sheahan left the post in January to run for Congress.

MAGA movement set to crumble after 'exodus' of key members: strategist

The MAGA movement has suffered a blow that could mark the beginning of the end, according to a political analyst.

Veteran Democratic Party strategist Max Burns believes the movement's loss of both Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson is a sign that MAGA support could be slipping.

Burns wrote in The Hill, "MAGA voters have long believed in taking Trump 'seriously but not literally.' This is just another way of saying Trump might lie to other people to advance his own interests, but he would never lie to the supporters who power his political movement.

"At least some of those faithful Trump supporters are finally ready to admit that they’ve been conned, and there’s no way back to believing the fairy tale.

"Greene and Carlson’s awakenings are just the beginning of an exodus from the MAGA movement, which just a year ago seemed to be reaching new heights of power. After a decade of chaos and disruption, Trump’s transactional politics is finally catching up with him. It’s just a shame that it took so long."

Carlson has emerged as a vocal critic of Trump's MAGA movement, primarily over the Iran war. Carlson directly challenged GOP leaders during heated interviews, demanding they answer basic questions about Iran policy.

Carlson, a mainstay on Fox News from 2016 to 2023, recently said he regrets backing Trump over traditional conservative values, The Guardian reported. He said, "You know, we’ll be tormented by it for a long time – I will be. And I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people. It was not intentional, that’s all I’ll say."

Greene has distanced herself from the MAGA movement over Trump's Iran war, which she views as a fundamental betrayal of core MAGA principles. Greene spent millions campaigning for Trump specifically because he promised to end foreign wars.

Greene suddenly resigned from Congress late last year. Greene had publicly distanced herself from Trump over his Iran war policies, declaring opposition to the conflict and characterizing it as a betrayal of MAGA principles.

Her decision to leave Congress marked the culmination of growing ideological rifts within Trump's movement and her frustration with the direction of the Republican Party under Trump's leadership during his second term.

MAGA congressman gets more than he bargained for from Jake Tapper: 'Guess I'm confused?'

CNN anchor Jake Tapper pushed Rep. Mike Flood (R-NE) to answer his questions, with the longtime journalist pressing the Trump administration's claims over its objectives in the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran.

As President Donald Trump announced an extended ceasefire as the current deadline was set to end, Flood told Tapper during a live broadcast on Tuesday that congressional leaders had been receiving classified briefings surrounding the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

But Tapper didn't stop his line of questioning — multiple times — saying he wanted Flood to answer direct questions about the Iranian regime, its nuclear capabilities and what the plan was for America's military operations.

"I guess I'm just confused because President Trump has been saying for weeks that that that he won the war, the U.S. won the war, and [Pete] Hegseth and others have said that the Iranian Navy is at the bottom of the sea and they don't have the capability of doing the missile construction that they did, the ballistic missiles and the nuclear material is underground," Tapper said. "I'm just I'm trying to understand what the metric is other than opening the Strait of Hormuz for this to be over for. You say nobody wants to cut and run. OK. But what still needs to be done?"

Flood had a quick response.

"Making sure that there is no more nuclear weapons that comes out of Iran," Flood said.

Tapper wasn't satisfied with that.

"But what's the metric for that? I mean, because it sounds as though they're pretty close to having achieved that," Tapper said. "If the missiles are destroyed the way President Trump and Pete Hegseth say they are."

But Flood said that wasn't good enough.

"Nuclear pretty close isn't achieved — and by the way, a lot of this is handled in a classified setting with actual metrics and actual updates," Flood explained.

"And that is not something that can be shared on CNN or any other network right now," he added. "You know, we are into this now. We have a mission to rid ourselves of, of a nuclear prepared Iran. The people of America have checks and balances and that there's going to be a request for supplemental. There are certain limitations on how long the president can engage in this way. There's going to have to be an opportunity for the White House to share with Congress where they're at. And I know that the guys behind me that are 100% for not only the cattle industry, but national security and safety from a terrorism sponsor. We want it all. We want all of the above. And I think we can have it, but it doesn't happen on a 24-hour news cycle. It happens over time. And it happens when our military leaders can go to bed at night knowing that we don't have to worry about a dirty bomb or a nuclear bomb landing somewhere in Israel or in the United States."

Trump squanders 'slam dunk' win with 'colossal misreading' of MAGA base: columnist

President Donald Trump misunderstood what drove voters to reelect him as his MAGA base fractures, an analyst explained on Tuesday.

The Guardian's Moira Donegan described how Trump's most recent publicity stunt revealed how his "fixation on culture-war grievances is a colossal misreading of voters who just want prices to come down." In a recent moment at the White House, 58-year-old grandmother Sharon Simmons arrived to deliver McDonald's to the president. She's been working as a DoorDash app delivery driver to help pay for her husband's cancer treatment and the occasion was aimed to highlight Trump's agenda.

"The photo opp should have been a slam dunk for Trump: a simple way to promote one of his policies in the company of a sympathetic advocate and beneficiary," Donegan wrote. "But Trump, in characteristic fashion, could not resist the urge to insert a non sequitur about one of his own grievances: trans women athletes."

He asked Simmons if she thought men should play in women's sports, but instead she showed "considerably more message discipline than the president."

"I really don’t have an opinion on that," Simmons said. "I’m here about ‘no tax on tips.'"

Trump's supporters have questioned why he has focused on harsh immigration policies and alienated voters, instead of lowering costs for working Americans, Donegan explained. The Supreme Court has banned his tariffs and has signaled it will not side with his birthright citizenship case.

"It’s little wonder: a lame duck whose underlings are already openly vying to replace him and whose once lockstep Maga coalition is now fracturing under internal pressures, he hasn’t been able to get many of his much-touted policy proposals done," Donegan wrote.

By repeating errors of previous GOP presidents, he may have inadvertently opened a path for Democrats to retake Congress.

"And, now, he has made the exact same mistake as his Republican predecessors did – one for which he once lambasted them when he launched his own political career: he has begun a regime-change war in the Middle East that he has no chance of winning," Donegan wrote. "Now, ahead of November’s midterm congressional elections, Trump is increasingly unpopular, failing in his major policy initiatives and presiding over a fracturing coalition. The Democrats, ever eager to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, have yet to put forward a coherent agenda to counter him. But maybe they don’t need to. Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."

MAGA's 'self-appointed crusade' in Europe falls flat as Vance left reeling: analysis

MAGA supporters were dealt a devastating blow earlier this week and will struggle to recover from it, a political analyst has claimed.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a far-right autocrat who has led the country for 16 years, conceded defeat in April 2026 to opposition leader Peter Magyar, marking a stunning rebuke to Trump-backed authoritarianism in Europe. Endorsement from Vice President JD Vance was not enough to win Orban the election, marking an embarrassing moment for Donald Trump's administration and the MAGA movement.

Salon columnist Andrew O'Hehir believes Orban's election loss will set the MAGA movement back, but not stop them from attempting to pool their resources in Europe. He wrote, "It wasn't a great week for the far right’s self-appointed crusade to reconquer Europe as a fairytale paradise of whiteness and Christianity.

"Maybe that’s because that whole idea is vaporware, rooted in a nonsensical social and historical vision and devoted to a losing battle against economic and demographic reality. But that quality of noble, doomed struggle toward impossible goals is both the far-right movement’s fundamental weakness and the source of its power and danger."

O'Hehir went on to suggest that MAGA's backing of Orban and the subsequent election loss highlighted an undermining of Trump's own support during his second term in the Oval Office.

He wrote, "Viktor Orbán, the pudgy poster boy for 'illiberal democracy' and object of a mysterious man-crush by legions of American conservatives, suffered a catastrophic electoral defeat in Hungary that felt, at least for a day or two, like the global MAGA movement’s Waterloo moment.

"As for Donald Trump, what is there to say? The entire world is over him, big time, and it’s the unique curse of America’s narcissistic self-regard that we’re still stuck with him, dominating the headlines day after day with his empty, contradictory and randomly-punctuated blather.

"Trump heads into the latter stages of his presidency as a damaged and toxic figure, a human AI-meme desperately trying to spin his way past the massive humiliation of the Iran war he chose to fight and the global energy crisis he single-handedly created.

"As for the ambitious schemes to reshape Europe’s political map variously proposed by JD Vance, Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon and Elon Musk, among others, to this point none have amounted to more than flatulent rhetoric."