It is not entirely clear whether, in a tribute to the myth of Frankenstein, resurrected in recent days for the umpteenth time by the cinema, Donald Trump warned this Monday in an interview with Laura Ingraham, host of Fox News: “Don’t forget, MAGA was my idea. I know better than anyone what the MAGA people want.”
And this is partly true: ten years ago, the president of the United States borrowed Ronald Reagan’s slogan which called for bringing the country back to greatness to transform it into that unprecedented movement that corresponds to the acronym of Make America great againa modern political Prometheus made up of nationalist, populist, conspiratorial and xenophobic shreds. But, perhaps for the first time since then, it is no longer clear whether Dr. Trump/Frankenstein is capable of controlling his creation.
Ingraham asked him about his support for admitting hundreds of thousands of Chinese students, and whether this could be considered a “pro-MAGA position” or a betrayal of his promise to tighten immigration policies. “I want to be able to get along with the world,” the president responded. And he justified himself by saying that there are not enough “talented people” in the United States.
The clash, in the middle of a game in which Trump was playing at home, caused a revolt among his supporters more or less at the same time as the reopening of the administration allowed the Democrats (and some Republicans) in the House of Representatives to resurrect the ghost of Jeffrey Epstein, billionaire pedophile and former friend of the president, whose shadow has haunted him for years. It is a relationship that was even immortalized with the statue of an anonymous collective of artists, which portrayed them dancing while holding hands. He appeared for the first time in front of the Capitol and this Thursday he woke up in front of one of the branches of the Busboys and Poets bookstore, a meeting center for the African American community in Washington.
Both failures, due to Epstein and foreign visas, were enough to demonstrate that the support of his unconditional supporters seems to be cracking on several fronts after a year of lockouts around the leader, who has returned to the White House. The main one comes from the accusations against Trump of having betrayed the spirit America first (America First). It is the main glue of the MAGA movement, as well as the electoral promise returned to the Republican candidate which contains many others: from the fight against irregular immigration to the correction of the global economy through tariffs.
Some of the most prominent voices in his ranks, from activist Laura Loomer to national-populist ideologue Steve Bannon, have criticized his administration for being too distracted by international politics and neglecting domestic issues. The attack on three uranium enrichment and storage bases in Iran, prompted by pressure from Israel, was the first skirmish of that war in June.
Then came Trump’s obsession with exaggerating his profile as a universal peacemaker to win the Nobel Peace Prize, the rescue of Javier Milei in Argentina or the series of (already 20) extrajudicial executions in the Caribbean and Pacific against alleged drug traffickers who appear to be sailing at cruising speed towards some kind of intervention in Venezuela to overthrow the Maduro regime. Wasn’t this the candidate who had promised during the election campaign that he would not involve the country in further warlike adventures with unpredictable consequences?
Change of mind
The other important front is that Epstein Documents, that enormous material relating to the cases against the pedophile financier, who died in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking of hundreds of minors in a secure cell; It was a suicide, according to the medical examiner and the government, and an endless source of conspiracy theories for those who believe in such matters. Those files are in the possession of Attorney General Pam Bondi, who promised she would make them public until she changed her mind last July, to the chagrin of the MAGA world.
“When they protect pedophiles, when they waste our budget, when they start wars abroad … I’m sorry, but I can’t support them,” Rep. Thomas Massie, a fractious Republican from Kentucky, told CNN. “And in my state, people agree with me. They get it. Even the most die-hard Trump supporters get it.”
The House of Representatives will vote next week on an initiative by Massie and Democrat Ro Khanna (Calif.) to call for the release of the Epstein documents, and dozens of Republicans are expected to second it. Among them, some members of the hardest wing of the party and, therefore, also inhabitants of the MAGA universe. Then the initiative must receive 60 votes (out of 100) in the Senate, where the Democrats have only 47. Trump always has the possibility of vetoing it.
“It seems like everyone in the MAGA world is at odds,” writes Ben Domenech in the American edition of The spectator, reference for Washington conservatism. “The war is underway. It’s not just a hierarchical struggle between social and fiscal conservatives, between insiders and outsiders, between MAHA mothers (that wholesome version of Trumpism) and tech giants; tariff defenders and detractors…
In recent times Greene has been the protagonist of one of the most dizzying and unexpected journeys in the capital’s memory. For years he was the loud embodiment of MAGA ideals on Capitol Hill, now transformed into a calm critic of the administration’s policies: The Epstein documents to health subsidies or the military campaign in the Caribbean. “Not only am I America first, I am America alone,” the representative in
This week, Trump said of her: “She’s a good woman. But I don’t know what happened to her, she’s gone.” On his social network, the president also warned that “only a very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into the trap” of demanding the publication of the millionaire pedophile’s documents. This Friday he returned to the attack against Greene. And he did it with all the artillery. She has announced that she will withdraw her support in the next elections and will offer it to anyone who wants to face her at the polls. He called her “crazy” and mocked her concern since the president stopped answering his phone.
In its enumeration in The spectatorDomenech also refers to the clash in the name of Israel between the podcasters Candace Owens and the Turning Point organization, founded by Charlie Kirk, murdered a couple of months ago, as well as the phenomenal dispute over how much (anti-Semitic) extremism the American far right can tolerate.
The origin of this latest brawl is in a friendly interview by host Tucker Carlson with Nick Fuentes, the country’s most famous neo-Nazi, which had consequences in one of the intellectual lungs of Trumpism in the capital, the Heritage Foundation. The support for Carlson by its president, Kevin Roberts, has thrown it into a deep crisis.
It is unclear whether the perfect storm that Trump faces (complete with defeats suffered by his people in the elections of New York, Virginia and New Jersey last week and the fact that the Supreme Court was skeptical about the constitutionality of his tariffs) will lead to the flight of the MAGA creature away from its creator’s laboratory. Even less so if this will penalize him at the next polls.
It will be November 2026, and Trump risks losing control of one or both chambers, which would push him to become another mythological animal in Washington’s bestiary: a lame duck, a president with little power and his days numbered, since he cannot run for re-election. Meanwhile, the veterans of this jungle remember well that it is not a good idea to underestimate him. It wouldn’t be the first time something like this didn’t work. Nor, certainly, the last.
