Are President Donald Trump and the Make America Great Again movement he started headed for a divorce?
You might think so if you pay attention to Leftmedia headlines today. Literally today.
“America First? Some Trump Supporters Worry That’s No Longer the Case.” —The New York Times
“Trump faces heat from MAGA base on ‘America First’ agenda, Epstein” —The Washington Post
“Trump defends his MAGA bona fides amid backlash from his base” —NBC News
“‘Where is my president?’: Some MAGA supporters in uproar over Trump’s H-1B visa comments” —ABC News
As a representative sample, here’s how The New York Times leads off its article:
President Trump has been dining with Wall Street bigwigs. He has embarked on an opulent revamp of the White House at a time when Americans are struggling to pay their bills. He has expressed support for granting visas to skilled foreigners to take jobs in the United States. He approved a $20 billion bailout for Argentina, helping a foreign government and wealthy investors at a moment when the U.S. government was shut down.
For a president who returned to office promising to avoid foreign entanglements, make life more affordable and ensure that available jobs go to American citizens, it has been a significant departure from the expectations of his loyal base. And it is starting to open a rift with his supporters who were counting on a more aggressively populist agenda.
The divisions within Mr. Trump’s movement, spawned by his own actions, have been only amplified by the latest developments on a story that he has been doing his best to quash: his relationship with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The other stories all start out with similar litanies of Trump’s alleged divergence from MAGA priorities. But Trump isn’t buying it. “Don’t forget, MAGA was my idea,” Trump told Fox News host Laura Ingraham this week. “I know what MAGA wants better than anybody else.”
That’s certainly true, but it’s also true that Trump is often his own worst enemy. In his first term, he would routinely achieve great conservative policy successes only to say something crazy and divert all media attention to that, rather than to his victories. In his second term, he’s been far less conservative in his governance — prioritizing executive power, often leaning into overreach with a strong dose of vengeance — and both have caused his early-term support to slide significantly.
But is this “MAGA crisis” just media hype meant to distract from Democrats’ colossal failure on the Schumer Shutdown?
Yes and no.
First, the no. It’s not merely media misdirection to say that Trump has not really upheld his (albeit rash) promise to lower prices (a.k.a. focus on affordability) on Day One. Inflation is stubbornly persistent, sitting at about 3% — or 50% higher than the Federal Reserve’s targeted rate of 2%. Cumulative inflation since Joe Biden and Crew “rescued” America is almost 25%, and most Americans are tired of everything feeling unaffordable.
Trump has offered tariff “rebates” and 50-year mortgages in a tacit admission that affordability is a problem, but he also seems to have settled on the same strategy that cost Joe Biden and Kamala Harris dearly in 2024 — namely that inflation isn’t a problem anymore and even that grocery prices are “way down.” Overall, that’s simply not true. Neither was it true when Biden repeatedly insisted that inflation was “down,” though I don’t recall quite such eager fact-checking from the likes of The New York Times.
As for the White House ballroom, however, that is Leftmedia churn. The primary ones hysterically sobbing about that are leftists who need psychiatric counseling for Trump Derangement Syndrome. The rest of us know it’s a useful addition paid for via private funds. No big deal.
The Jeffrey Epstein saga is actually both. Trump’s Justice Department spectacularly failed earlier this year in its supposedly explosive release, but so did Democrats with their dud of a distraction earlier this week. Some MAGA folks are indeed getting impatient with Trump over the release of material, but if that’s what actually divides anyone from Trump, then perhaps they were allies not worth having in the first place.
Moving on to the foreign policy disagreements. Yes, there are some MAGA Republicans who have decided to transition from America First to America Only. Marjorie Taylor Greene is chief among them, though she’s sounding more like a Democrat than a Republican these days. Trump also had a completely mainstream Republican response: “When you’re president, you really sort of have to watch over the world because you’re going to be dragged into it.” He added, “When somebody makes a statement about, ‘he’s devoting time to the world,’ well, the world is the United States.”
Trump’s moves in the Middle East (especially allying with Israel), orchestrating peace deals, helping Argentina, and so forth are all aimed at strengthening America’s position in the world. Frankly, Trump’s foreign policy has been his best aspect in this second term.
Finally, let’s consider immigration. Trump told Ingraham that “you also do have to bring in talent” with H-1B visas. “Well, we have plenty of talented people here,” Ingraham said. “No, you don’t,” Trump shot back. “No, you don’t.”
That sparked a fair bit of backlash from the Right. Our Emmy Griffin unpacks that in greater detail today, but for my purposes, I’ll just say that Trump doesn’t explain himself very well. He assumes too much about whether people (i.e., his base) will understand what he means. In this case, many of them were just angry.
He was elected to fix two things: the economy and immigration. Most Americans wouldn’t give him an A on either issue. Leftmedia propaganda — especially on immigration — absolutely plays a role in that, but it’s not the only reason.
On the one hand, Trump can’t run for election again, so it matters little whether he retains unflagging support. On the other hand, the midterm elections are coming up, and presidents don’t historically do well in them. The GOP Senate might be safe, but the House is definitely not. If Trump truly wants to put America First, he will work hard to improve his results on the issues above so that he can build momentum in 2026.
I hate to be Debbie Downer, but celebrating America’s 250th birthday could end on a sour note if we’re staring down two more years of gridlock and impeachment fiascos.
