'Can smell decay': Expert says MAGA breaking down as Trump's 'power' wanes
A legal expert signaled Tuesday that MAGA's "cult of personality" has hit a major breakdown over a specific "ideology" split involving how the right-wing movement plans to handle Nazis and racism.
Journalist and lawyer Jill Filipovic wrote in a Slate report that the breaking point was apparent over the weekend during Turning Point USA's AmericaFest, "as the Nazis vs. Say-No-to-Nazis fissures broke open."
"In something of a Christmas miracle, the MAGA coalition may finally be starting to break down," Filipovic wrote.
The debate appeared to magnify between the MAGA followers in Arizona during the first large-scale event since "martyred leader" Charlie Kirk was assassinated at a Utah campus.
"Among prominent MAGA leaders—mostly elected officials, people who want to be elected officials, and podcasters—there is a growing divide over what one might assume should be an easily answered question: Should they welcome Nazis, avowed white supremacists, and unrepentant racists hurling slurs into the movement?" Filipovic explained.
As the cracks emerge among the movement, MAGA has started to face "the GOP's Nazi problem." And throughout this, it has appeared that the focus is no longer on the former main character: Donald Trump.
"It’s worth noting that in all of this, Trump is largely absent. Perhaps those closest to him see what average Americans do not: that his abilities, and with them his power, is waning," Filipovic wrote.
MAGA's entire scope has appeared to shift now from solely Trump to the future.
"He turned the party into a cult of personality, in which the only ideology was to line up behind Donald Trump," Filipovic added. "The GOP rule 'Whatever Trump wants, Trump gets' was so clear that the party stopped writing out policy platforms, instead issuing a one-page fealty pledge to its unquestioned leader. No one has the audacity to try to unseat him, or even to say that he won’t be in charge forever. MAGA stalwarts still wear their Trump 2028 hats, make Trump-as-Jesus fan art, share the triumphant photo of him raising his fist after surviving an assassin’s bullet, and believe that his 2024 win was a political resurrection divinely ordained to save America. Maybe Trumpism will never die. But clearly those around him can smell decay."