MAGA is 'crashing down' over Trump's 'seriously endangering' move: analysis
Supporters of the Make America Great Again ideology may find it hard to latch onto the movement for much longer, a political analyst has claimed.
The war in Iran has become a central fault line dividing the MAGA movement and exposing deep ideological fractures within Trump's coalition. Analysis from The New Republic's Glen Sargent suggests that some in the MAGA movement, both key speakers and supporters, could feel alienated by Trump's decisions in the Middle East.
Sargent said, "The scale of betrayal — in a way — of what Trump is ostensibly supposed to represent and what MAGA is ostensibly supposed to represent, nevermind that it was always bullshit that they were anti-war, but they’re supposed to be that.
"The scale of this betrayal is actually at the point where it’s really seriously endangering a massive movement. And I find that really striking. And I’ve got to say, man, if this is what brings MAGA crashing down, then boy, is that a certain kind of satisfying, poetic justice—aside from the fact that thousands and thousands of innocent people are getting killed."
Former pro-Trump figures like Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene have publicly softened on the president and made their opposition to his Iran policy known.
Sargent's guest, Alex Shephard, added, "Yeah. And I think that you’ve been seeing this sort of crackup—I’ve been writing about it for the last couple of months, especially since Iran started — which is it started, I think, with people that are all opportunists. They are almost all, or maybe all, antisemites.
"They are people like Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, Megyn Kelly. But these are also people that I think were genuinely trying to intellectually backfill the notion of Trumpism with something. And that’s not just the president. And what you’ve seen, I think, is a real—the first schism was between people that were trying to kind of come up with a meaning outside of Trump for this stuff.
"They left. And I think that you now have this sort of true believers that just say, well, MAGA is Trump, it’s whatever Trump says, it’s just a straight-up cult of personality."
GOP strategist Jeff Burton warned that the Iran war exposed "a real fault line between more hawkish Republicans and a rising isolationist wing." He predicted: "That tension is only going to grow as 2028 gets closer, and it's going to be a defining challenge for whoever tries to take the MAGA mantle."