** 8/2/26 - Don Moynihan - Is MAGA Melting Down?..............
Buzz Sawyer
Cabinet on down, and one that has seeped into the broader MAGA world. By doing so, he
has altered the market for competence among conservatives. Why invest the hours to learn
about economics or social policy, when the guy posting white nationalist memes on
X is the one getting hired?
is fracturing because they don’t have a common enemy and Trump is not delivering.
Trump was the essential man of MAGA, and when he is gone the big question
is if anyone can replace him. The movement could easily fracture.
Even so, there are real long term concerns that the views of MAGA have become
ever more extreme. MAGA true believers might be losing faith in Trump, but they
are not re-connecting to the real world. And like it or not, some of those people
will be governing us in the future.
Is MAGA Melting Down?Signs and wonders, portents and data points
MAGA continues to be powerful, but we may be in the last months of the height of its powers. Gerrymandering notwithstanding, the midterms appear set to punish Republicans. President Trump’s popularity is at record lows. Can We Still Govern? is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider subscribing! A few recent data points suggest that MAGA’s problems extend beyond Trump’s sagging poll numbers. The BaseThe MAGA base appears to be shrinking. This does not mean that people are rejecting the movement overall, but that they are becoming disillusioned with its leader and his lack of responsiveness to their concerns. Thomas Schull at the UnPopulist wrote about this trend. The key takeaway is the proportion of people who see themselves as Trump loyalists is declining by about a third. Across a variety of data points, fewer Trump voters still believe he is on their side
A caution here is that Trump voters are not necessarily moderating their views. They still dislike elites, but are now more likely to put Trump in that category. One intriguing exception is that bureaucrats have become slightly less hated by Trump voters. Maybe a year of watching public servants be fired for no reason has burst the myth of the all powerful deep state, at least for some in MAGA.
The MediaStuart Thompson at the New York Times offered a fantastic breakdown of media attention to Trump supporting influencers, whose reach is declining.
The decline in support comes as much of this media becomes more fractious because of personal beefs, disagreements over policy, especially related to Israel and Iran, and their tolerance for the very far-right views. But the broader picture is that it has become harder for these influencers to maintain an audience. Why? The obvious answer is that they are outrage merchants, and it is hard to sustain outrage when your allies are running everything. On the right, the Fauci hearings were a media frenzy, a Superbowl of nostalgia for the glorious era where they could blame others for the state of the world. Media Matters reported that Fauci was:
Increasingly, the right does not have Fauci or Biden-level targets to aim at. Its business model is a mix of attacking elites who no longer seem very elite or just punching down. I can’t imagine that people listening to the bashing of trans people, or the WNBA, think it will help them in their daily lives. One thing I am genuinely interested in is how much the MAGA influencers will start to document the very real human toll from Trump’s policies on SNAP and Medicaid. A lot of Trump voters are losing food supports and more will soon lose health insurance because of Trump policies. That is a real basis for populist outrage, a legitimate and tangible argument that Trump has (further) abandoned the people he promised to help.
The Brains TrustElisabeth Zerofsky at the New York Times also wrote a deep dive into the crack-up at the Heritage Foundation, the organizers of Project 2025. Much of the blame is laid at the feet at its current President, Kevin Roberts, though the rot set in earlier, when Jim DeMint refashioned Heritage to align with Trump. When Roberts was hired, he promised to balance the traditional Heritage (more policy focused, greater expertise, traditional free market conservatism) with the MAGA era. He has failed. The experts have been purged and normie conservatives are gone. Increasingly, Heritage is the home for cranks. The whole piece is excellent, and I urge you to read the entire thing. But I will excerpt some key passages. Because Project 2025 became a public controversy, Heritage lost cachet with Trump. One strategy to reclaim their influence was to purge any critical experts who were not on board.
In recent years, the Heritage Foundation saw internal purges, and a sense of fear that mirrors the atmosphere that Trump created in the federal government.
With the experts out, Heritage hired hacks and frauds, including a guy who listed a PhD from a non-PhD granting institution, and a Bachelors degree from a high school. Much of the recent tensions became public when Roberts first defended, and then backtracked, in his defense of Tucker Carlson for elevating neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes. At the time, Roberts talked about supporting free speech rights and avoiding cancel culture. So, apparent from the purges of people mildly critical of Trump, how is free speech at Heritage? Existing employees were told to remove posts critical of policies supported by JD Vance, who wrote the foreword to Kevin Roberts’ book. A Jewish analyst who raised First Amendment concerns about a plan to ban Muslim head scarves in Congress directed to “go dry clean Ilhan’s hijab.” This is a reference to Ilhan Omar, one of the four female Muslim members of Congress. Rather than discuss policy issues of the day, new Heritage hires debated things like World War II, with a lot of “rehashing and going through who was the bad guy and who were the good guys.” A fair degree of classic antisemitism seems to be in the air. (Maybe Trump’s task force on antisemitism could look into this!) One former Heritage staffer said:
All of this sounds bad for Heritage, but it also has implications for governance. Political scientists describe a tradeoff between loyalty and competence that Presidents must make when selecting appointees. A President might hire someone with more competence even if is unsure that they voted for them. But that choice assumes there are potential hires with some minimal level of competence. But there are fewer people on the GOP side willing to make those investments in competence. Trump has very explicitly focused on loyalty. It is a trademark of his administration, from the Cabinet on down, and one that has seeped into the broader MAGA world. By doing so, he has altered the market for competence among conservatives. Why invest the hours to learn about economics or social policy, when the guy posting white nationalist memes on X is the one getting hired? Sometimes the devaluation of competence is advertised explicitly. For example, the conservative Liberty Law School told its students looking for government jobs:
Kathy Gilsinan in Politico details how the competence gaps are becoming clear to people working in Congress.
It is hard to know how deep this problem is, and how much the institutions themselves encourage it. Congressional offices who want to have a big online presence will hire communications staffers who can get clicks online. And to do that as a right-winger in environments like X typically requires hiring those fluent in the toxicity that site has elevated. One Congressional staffer worried about the long-term impacts: “Five, eight years from now, if we’re reliant on people with this view of the world, we’re in serious trouble.” Should we be optimistic about the MAGA meltdown? I think MAGA as a political force is fracturing because they don’t have a common enemy and Trump is not delivering. Trump was the essential man of MAGA, and when he is gone the big question is if anyone can replace him. The movement could easily fracture. Even so, there are real long term concerns that the views of MAGA have become ever more extreme. MAGA true believers might be losing faith in Trump, but they are not re-connecting to the real world. And like it or not, some of those people will be governing us in the future. And now, for something completely differentThe Oscar-winning Irish singer-songwriter Glenn Hansard died last week. You might not recognize the name, but chances are you might have seen him in The Commitments or Once. The tributes that flow in from an untimely death of a well-known person duly followed, but a couple of things struck me about Hansard. One was how he was clearly a musician’s musician: people who loved the craft of songwriting respected him deeply. The other was that lots of random people remembered him fondly as an incredibly kind person. And that is sort of the ideal if you work in a public-facing profession: the people who know your craft well respect you deeply, but so too do people outside of your field. Hansard was also a wonderful storyteller. It came across in his music. His discussion of meeting Van Morrison is worth watching…  …as are any number of live clips of him performing — one aspect of his musicianship is that he excelled in the messiness of live performance. A 2012 performance of him singing the “The Parting Glass,” a traditional song about departures, is especially poignant.  Can We Still Govern? is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. You're currently a free subscriber to Can We Still Govern?. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
© 2026 Don Moynihan
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