Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”
When Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene apologized to CNN, went on The View, blamed Trump for supposed death threats, was hailed by the Washington Post and welcomed to join the Democrats by Rep. Jamie Raskin, many in MAGA compared her to Rep. Liz Cheney.
The original Never Trump is long since dead, its leading lights indistinguishable from Democrats, hammered home by Bill Kristol’s endorsement of Zohran Mamdani, but a new Never Trump 2.0 has formed, once again made up of Republicans like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Rep. Thomas Massie who claim that their rejection of President Trump is grounded in their ‘principles’ only to then turn around and ally with Democrats and smear Trump to the media.
Their shameful press conference, complete with leftists brandishing signs smearing President Trump as a sex predator, showed that the Epstein files have become the new Access Hollywood tape, an opportunity for RINOs to justify their break with Trump because of their ‘principles’ only to demonstrate that they have no principles. Never Trump 2.0 had been hoping that the Epstein files would do what the Access Hollywood tape didn’t, instead, like their leftist allies, they were shocked when the files blew up in their faces, exonerated Trump and instead indicted Dems.
Never Trump 2.0 never cared about what was in the Epstein files. Their performative outrage was as fake as the pearl clutching over the Access Hollywood tape. Instead, Greene and Massie joined with Democrats to manufacture a narrative of a fallen Trump after the election losses in Virginia and New Jersey. The Epstein files release rollout was preceded by woke right accounts (some of them in Pakistan) claiming that MAGA was dead and would be replaced by ‘America First’ with a blue and white cap that matches Democrat ‘Blue MAGA’ iconography.
The new ‘America First’ or ‘Never Trump 2.0’ agenda with its promises of student loan cancellation and fighting billionaires to appeal to Gen Z would be a painfully obvious reboot of RINO politics under the guise of populism even if it didn’t involve praising Mamdani, allying with Rep. Ro Khanna and urging that Republicans adopt socialism to stave off Marxism.
Like Never Trump, Never Trump 2.0 has an outsized obsession with foreign policy, this time from the libertarian flank, and while they claim that they are fundamentally different from the neo-cons, their foreign policy views are so indistinguishable from leftists that their leading publication, Responsible Statecraft, is financed by radical billionaire George Soros.
Both Never Trump and Never Trump 2.0 adopted the foreign policy programs of two different factions of the Democratic Party, liberal interventionists and leftist anti-imperialists, and denounced President Trump for not hewing to their adopted leftist party line.
Never Trump 1.0’s foreign policy was so indistinguishable from liberals that its key figures comfortably migrated to the New York Times and the Washington Post while Never Trump 2.0’s foreign policy is so indistinguishable from leftists that Tucker Carlson’s favorite political analysts are Jeffrey Sachs, a Soros funded UN official, and Glenn Greenwald, a Brazilian socialist.
They’re incapable of understanding Trump’s actual ‘America First’ foreign policy because they’re too busy taking their cues from leftists who, like Sachs, hate Trump and blame America first.
Like Never Trump, Never Trump 2.0 claims that it’s actually to the right of Trump, but the evidence for that is scant. Mostly Never Trump 2.0 vibes as if it’s edgier than Trump, led by a handful of politician-influencers and political influencers who don’t actually believe anything.
Whenever Never Trump 2.0 sounds as if it’s going further to the right, wait and it goes left.
After years of tough talk on illegal aliens, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene argued on a podcast during her recent reinvention that the labor force is “built on illegal labor” and that “as a conservative and as a business owner in the construction industry and as a realist, I can say we have to do something about labor, and that needs to be a smarter plan than just rounding up every single person and deporting them just like that, right?”
Most of Never Trump 2.0 has principles and if you don’t like them, they have other ones.
Never Trump 2.0 tries to sound tough and edgy while pushing Marxist economic policies and a foreign policy, and then tries to convince MAGA their movement is dead and they have something better. Since Twitter isn’t real life and they have no actual accomplishments, their impact on Republican voters has been minimal, but they have tied up and sidetracked Trump’s congressional agenda. And then complained that Trump isn’t keeping his promises.
Their infighting has drained energy out of a movement that should be moving forward, but is instead busy dealing with their sabotage, their conspiracy theories and their undermining.
Never Trump 2.0 may be as fake as Never Trump, but it’s certainly not harmless.
Trump has been prematurely declared dead before. It didn’t work in 2016, 2020 and it didn’t work in 2025. But Never Trump 2.0 isn’t giving up after faceplanting with the Epstein files. Instead it’s wishcasting Dem midterm victories while blackpilling the economy, accusing Trump of betraying the base, and tearing down everyone from White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino. If the Dems win in 2026, they’ll declare that MAGA is dead and their trojan horse replacement is the future.
Never Trump 2.0 wants to be in control of the post-Trump future. It can’t wait for the moment when it can finally declare Trump’s political legacy dead and get to choose his replacement. But Never Trump 2.0 is no better at that than Never Trump was. It doesn’t understand what made Trump popular, it has no clue about how to replace him and it’s confusing its online echo chamber with the larger preferences of Republicans and the conservative movement.
Both Never Trump movements were never conservative, they were leftist insurgencies that wrapped themselves in fake principles so thin you could see through them, in outrage and then finally in victimhood, brandishing a handful of name brand personalities and a leftist agenda in the hopes of controlling the future. They were wrong then and they were wrong now.
Their latest attempt to take down President Trump with the Epstein Files has failed but, like the original Never Trumpers, they won’t stop until conservatives stop listening to them. And then they can all get jobs writing columns at the New York Times and the Washington Post too.
