Trump: Is he losing control of MAGA?

Marjorie Taylor Greene and Epstein survivors

Figures like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), above at a rally with a group of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, are breaking with Trump

(Image credit: Reuters)

“Marjorie Taylor Greene just wrecked the cult of Trump,” said Greg Sargent in The New Republic. Standing outside the U.S. Capitol last week with a group of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, the GOP representative slammed the president for calling her a “traitor” and a “ranting lunatic” because she helped force a vote on releasing government files on the deceased sex trafficker. In a barb clearly aimed at Trump—who reversed his opposition to releasing the files as it became clear he couldn’t stop the congressional effort—the Georgia Republican said a traitor “serves foreign countries and themselves” while a patriot serves “Americans like the women standing behind me now.” This “rift is a big deal,” said Nick Catoggio in The Dispatch. That a “notorious Trump-slobberer” like Greene would openly resist the man who coined the phrase “Make America Great Again” is significant. But she’s also doing it while promoting the radical idea that MAGA “has discrete ideological content beyond the president’s whims and daily political needs.” If this notion catches fire on the Right, Greene could find herself leading “the first meaningful right-wing rebellion against autocracy of this era.”

The “MAGA crackup” goes far beyond Epstein, said Michelle Goldberg in The New York Times. In recent weeks, Greene has chided Trump for being too focused on striking foreign deals while ignoring “the five-alarm fire” of affordability and health-care costs. Other MAGA types have been infuriated by the president’s un–America First defense of skilled foreign worker visas, which he told Fox News are needed because Americans lack “certain talents.” A few days later, Trumpist influencer Mike Cernovich was raging online about “how overt the corruption” is within this administration. It was against this backdrop of spreading disaffection that Trump rebuked Greene—rebukes she said led to death threats against her and her family. “Many right-wing influencers reacted with unusual fury” to Trump’s jabs. Some even posted images of burning MAGA hats, a sign “that the MAGA coalition is fragmenting.”

Perhaps, said Joan Vennochi in The Boston Globe. But if the last decade has taught us anything, it’s that Trump’s “base sticks with him,” no matter what, and so far there’s little reason to think that this time will be different. True, Trump’s average approval rating— about 40%—is at a second-term low. But it’s only down some 2 points from September, which hardly signals some imminent sea change in his political fortunes. Trump’s Epstein-files “U-turn” may read as weakness to D.C. insiders, said Jack Blanchard in Politico. But it could be a “path to redemption” with his base. If Trump fulfills his promises and now delivers “an all-out blitz on ‘affordability,’” slashing tariffs and mailing out $2,000 “rebate checks,” MAGA might forget its “disenchantment.”

But Trump isn’t “losing control of MAGA” because of the growing incoherence of his policies, said Jeet Heer in The Nation. Figures like Greene are breaking with Trump, and MAGA is “splintering,” because the GOP’s voters, donors, and leaders are already looking past Trump to 2028, when the party will need a new standard bearer. Can a political coalition “created and unified by a cult leader” survive “without that cult leader”? asked Andrew Sullivan in his Substack newsletter. We’re about to find out. It’s less than a year until the 2026 midterms and perhaps only months before Donald J. Trump, as a political force, finds himself “quacking lamely in the rearview mirror.”