Why Trump Lost Control Of The MAGA Mob
The mob always controlled him.
Donald Trump is an electoral anchor for the Republican Party, but you wouldn’t know this based on the pathetic, cult-like demonstrations from congressional Republicans and administration officials.
Democrats have consistently overperformed in almost every election held after Trump returned to the White House. They’ve flipped 30 legislative seats since 2025, while Republicans have flipped exactly zero. This month, Wisconsin liberals expanded their majority on the state Supreme Court, and Democrat Alicia Halvensleben won an upset mayoral victory in Waukesha, a GOP stronghold.
Trump is not someone who deserves or even rewards loyalty, as Kristi Noem and Pam Bondi can tell you from underneath the nearest bus. He’s unhinged and unstable. His overall approval during his second term have been in free fall. He’s currently sitting at 38 percent with little potential for improvement.
Republicans could end this nightmare tomorrow and remove Trump from office, which would be in their own self-interest. But Republicans facing tough elections in November aren’t even distancing themselves from an unpopular president, as Republicans did 20 years ago with George W. Bush. They are doubling down in their attachment to Trump, as if his approval ratings matched Bill Clinton’s in the late 1990s.
The common explanation is that Trump maintains an iron-clad grip on the party’s base. Although Trump’s support has shrunk to just his most devoted followers, the MAGA mob exists in its own reality, and while small in number, their might is felt most in GOP primaries.
There is also the not-so-subtle threat of violence against anyone who strays from the MAGA path. Former Rep. Peter Meijer revealed in The Atlantic that a fellow Republican House member claimed he couldn’t vote to certify Joe Biden’s victory because he literally feared for this life. Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowsi admitted last year that “we are all afraid … I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice because retaliation is real.”
The MAGA mob has repeatedly saved Trump from political ruin. Most notably, weeks before the 2016 election, the Washington Post released audio of Trump bragging to Access Hollywood host Billy Bush about how his fame and power let him do whatever he wanted to women, specifically “grab ‘em by the pussy.” Republicans swiftly denounced and abandoned Trump — a stark difference from how they respond now to his latest scandal. Yet, they just as quickly returned to the fold when it was clear that Trump’s diehard supporters — including women! — were sticking with him.
After January 6, Trump was personally radioactive, but within a few weeks, then-GOP House Leader Kevin McCarthy went to Mar-a-Lago to kiss his ring. Trump maintained the MAGA mob’s support and McCarthy felt he needed Trump’s backing to become speaker.
This is why many Democrats and disaffected former Republicans insist Trump is the primary driver of the GOP’s seeming madness, but a closer examination reveals that while Trump might appear at the head of this dangerous mob, that doesn’t mean he fully controls it. For instance, although McCarthy surrendered his dignity to Trump for the speaker’s gavel, Trump’s endorsement alone wasn’t enough to pacify the mob. Many MAGA hardliners openly resisted Trump’s appeals on McCarthy’s behalf, and McCarthy endured 15 rounds of failed votes before making humiliating concessions to them. When the mob later turned on McCarthy, Trump was unable to protect him and McCarthy’s speaker tenure ended after a historically brief nine months.
Trump’s limited influence over the MAGA mob was most obvious when it came to Jeffrey Epstein. Trump spent months demanding that his supporters forget the deceased pedophile ever existed, but the MAGA cult wouldn’t budge. Trump posted a flop-sweat-drenched Truth Social message defending his since-discarded attorney general, who’d tried to bury the case for him.
What’s going on with my “boys” and, in some cases, “gals?” They’re all going after Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is doing a FANTASTIC JOB! We’re on one Team, MAGA, and I don’t like what’s happening. We have a PERFECT Administration, THE TALK OF THE WORLD, and “selfish people” are trying to hurt it, all over a guy who never dies, Jeffrey Epstein. For years, it’s Epstein, over and over again.
The Epstein scandal also delivered what amounts to Trump’s biggest political loss. He’d actively pressured Republicans to vote against releasing the Epstein files, but MAGA hardliners, including Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene andNancy Mace, rejected his increasingly desperate personal appeals. Facing a humiliating defeat from his own party, Trump suddenly announced that he was “urging” Republicans to vote for the release of the Epstein files. It had the same energy as a misbehaving child “ordering” his parents to send him to bed without dessert.
Trump posted on social media, “House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide.” (He’d literally just yelled at Greene that his “friends would get hurt” if the files were released.) “And it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party, including our recent Victory on the Democrat ‘Shutdown’.”
Greene’s rebellion greatly wounded Trump’s massive ego, and he repeatedly denounced the former congresswoman as a “traitor.” Greene is hardly a good actor, but her defiance of Trump shows that she considers herself loyal to a larger cause (albeit a terrible one) but she’s not blindly loyal to the president. This clearly confuses a malignant narcissist like Trump.
The Epstein debacle is particularly revealing because, for obvious personal reasons, it’s a rare instance of Trump digging in his heels on a position that’s clearly in opposition to what MAGA loudly demands. He usually has a talent for barking loudly enough so that no one immediately notices that the base’s tail is wagging the top dog. Another example is the covid pandemic. By April 2020, MAGA had started to revolt against most covid mitigation measures as unendurable restrictions on their freedom. Soon, Trump was egging them on, at great risk to public health. When right-wing protesters railed against Democratic governors’ stay-at-home orders, Trump tweeted on April 17: “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” and “LIBERATE VIRGINIA.”
He even resisted wearing a mask publicly, where his supporters could see him. He also played coy about receiving the life-saving covid vaccine — perhaps the one objectively good achievement from his entire first term. Trump admitted to Fox News’s Bret Baier in 2023 that he doesn’t like to talk about the vaccine “because, as a Republican, it’s not a great thing to talk about.” Trump probably still bore the psychic scars from when he was booed at a 2021 rally in Alabama when he suggested that supporters get vaccinated.
The Republican Senate runoff in Texas has also highlighted Trump’s fecklessness. After Democrat James Talarico decisively beat Rep. Jasmine Crockett, thus avoiding a runoff, Trump demanded an immediate end to the Republican Senate primary. He said he’d ask whichever candidate he didn’t endorse to drop out of the race. At the time, it was speculated he would endorse John Cornyn, throwing the incumbent senator a much-neeed lifeline. However, Ken Paxton made it clear that he wouldn’t drop out. Worse, polls showed that Trump’s endorsement held little sway, and there was a very good chance Cornyn would lose the runoff even with Trump’s endorsement. Trump’s ego apparently couldn’t take that risk, so he declined to endorse anyone. Now, Paxton’s lead continues to grow. Despite Trump’s face-saving comments to the contrary, Talarico is not an easy opponent to beat, and Texas Republicans are sweating the possibility that Talarico could flip the seat.
During the 2024 campaign, Trump told the crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference, “I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.” The audience applauded, but Trump might not have fully appreciated that such “retribution” was one-sided. Trump is MAGA’s tool, through the awesome powers of the presidency, to inflict harm upon everyone MAGA fears and resents. That doesn’t necessarily mean Trump can successfully weaponize MAGA against anyone he feels has wronged him.
For a while, it did seem otherwise. Only two of the 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump after January 6 survived their next primaries. Yet, lately Trump’s had mixed results directing the mob’s rage toward his perceived enemies. Trump never forgave Sen. Bill Cassidy for supporting his 2021 impeachment, so even after Cassidy, an actual doctor, shamelessly cast the deciding vote to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of Health and Human Services, Trump enthusiastically endorsed his primary challenger Rep. Julia Letlow. That didn’t prove a knock out blow, though, and Cassidy could still make it to the runoff.
Trump has made it his business to oust Rep. Thomas Massie, who led the Epstein rebellion, but the base isn’t listening. Recent polls show Massie leading his Trump-backed primary opponent. This further shows that the MAGA base isn’t Trump’s personal weapon of mass destruction but simply a mob whose passions he can inflame. He appears in control but only when their interests align, as they did after January 6.
The more Trump seems to lose whatever illusory hold he has over MAGA, the more he publicly crashes out. It’s almost amusing to watch. He’s spending his days before midterms bashing once-loyal allies who dare question his disastrous and unpopular Iran war. He’s posted bonkers rants on social media:
I know why Tucker, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, & Alex Jones have all been fighting me for years, especially by the fact that they think it is wonderful for Iran, the Number One State Sponsor of Terror, to have a Nuclear Weapon — bc they have one thing in common, Low IQs. They’re stupid people, they know it, their families know it, and everyone else knows it, too! Look at their past, look at their record. They don’t have what it takes, and they never did!
Yes, this is the president of the United States. You can imagine the Batman villain Bane asking Trump, “Do you feel in charge?”
To the extent that MAGA is a cult, Trump is not the undisputed cult leader. It’s more apt to say that MAGA is a political Frankenstein monster that Trump didn’t even bother to build himself. He just set it loose. Sometimes it listen to him, but increasingly, it does not.
After a devastating midterm, perhaps Republicans will realize that it’s the MAGA mob alone they need to fear and flatter. Trump is merely the middle man they might learn to do without, but the mob itself remains a threat to all of us.
"we are all afraid … I’m oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice because retaliation is real.”
Then fuck you. If you can't stand up for your country and for what's right because you're a coward then you don't deserve your seat. Ask Ilhan Omar her opinion on that. You think she doesn't get death threats day and night, at a much more vitriolic level? Or AOC? Take this whiny, cowering horseshit, shove it straight where the sun doesn't shine, and move aside for someone who isn't afraid to take the heat.
The racist MAGA mob angrily, then joyfully coalesced around the racist Donald Trump. He gave them a gleefully commodified initialized "identity" - MAGA - and their dangerous, deep-seated bigotries a "socialized" legitimacy. They were LIONIZED by an initially bemused, then "sympathetic" legacy media machine, for their fears and pathetic, small-minded weaknesses as they pledged passionate "loyalty" to a TV shill whose only "product" was himself. Now the hate-fueled joy has sufficiently leaked from their raging old, decrepit gasbag - their King Liar is now beset by madness and has already turned on his "daughters", Kristi, Pam and Lori. Trump, indeed, encouraged, then demanded his MAGA to be anti-democratic monsters by leading with the example of his personal monstrousness and, if he ever felt their mob-brain interest waning, the more deranged he grew and more monstrous he became. Donald's spiralling monstrousness has damaged and will destroy him - but the darkness he evoked in the MAGA mob's souls retains its primacy, and that may destroy us all. It was there before Trump fed and watered it into spectacular, hideous bloom and will persist in lethal, poisonous forms after he's gone. I agree with SER: The MAGA "mob" won't abandon Donald, so much as he will chase after a slowly diminishing number of sycophants and superfans who will keep slowly but determinedly peeling away at the mob's edges as they personally suffer the consequences of indulging their own worst selves.