MAGA

Over the past several months, various news outlets have been prognosticating the flight of young conservative women from the Republican Party. In March, New York magazine focused on what it called “the young women leaving the new right.” Now Politico has suggested that a Turning Point USA conference in San Antonio, Texas this past weekend shows that “bubbling under the surface are divisions within the GOP that have enveloped the online voices of the young right and a budding disillusionment among young women with the second Trump administration. It’s all part of a growing divide between being “MAGA” in 2026 and being “America First.” But that’s not what I saw at the very same conference.

Alex Bruesewitz is the President’s celebrity whisperer. He has brought the likes of YouTube personality Jake Paul and rapper Nicki Minaj into the MAGA fold. He is also the director of a social media empire with 50 million followers, which includes such X accounts as @TrumpWarRoom and @TeamTrump. Bruesewitz is an influencer, both online and in the corridors of the White House. A sense of loyalty to Donald Trump is what motivates him. It started when Bruesewitz was a teenager in Wisconsin. In 2015, he posted a picture of the Trump Tower in Chicago, saying the sign would look good over the White House. Trump retweeted him. So began his life as an online crusader for MAGA.

What’s the one thing that every pundit and certified member of the Fourth Estate knows? Why, it’s that MAGA is finished.  How many stories have we been treated to about “the fracturing of MAGA?” NPR knows it, Politico intuited it, Salon bet on it and the New Republic salivated over it. “Trump’s MAGA Base Splits Dramatically,” that anti-Trump orifice recently crowed, “New Poll Shows Donald Trump’s support continues to drop.” Then of course there is the New York Times, which has predicted and rejoiced in the death of MAGA again and again. That is – that was – the narrative. What is the reality? Yesterday’s primaries tell a very different, in fact a contradictory story.

Readers may disagree with the cover line of this issue. Pronouncing “the end of Trumpism” feels somewhat similar to declaring “the end of history” – a provocative, albeit less grandiose, statement that risks being mocked in the near future. We should start by saying we hope that we are wrong. Trumpism, as this magazine understands it, has been a boon to America. As Christopher Caldwell argues, the rise of Donald Trump was a healthy democratic response to a fetid political system. On many fronts, the Trump administration, now in its second and more dynamic term, has made great progress. It has fought illegal immigration with vigor.

The celebrity circles surrounding the second Trump administration are pretty thin. Sylvester Stallone, Jon Voight, Adam Sandler’s close friend Rob Schneider and a scant few others support the President in ways loud and quiet. But other than pop star Nicki Minaj, whose residence in Trumpistan has caused a lot of head-scratching, no entertainment celebrity occupies a more prominent place in the MAGA firmament than the musician Robert Ritchie, better known to the world as Kid Rock. “I call him Bob,” Trump once said. Kid Rock, the second most famous white rapper from Detroit, has long been in Trump’s social circles. He was a guest at Mar-a-Lago before either he or Trump became political figures.

When Trump administration figures want to do a warm, humanizing interview these days, they can’t depend on the mainstream media. It’s often adversarial or downright hostile. Chatty bro podcasters such as Joe Rogan give them room to talk, but also challenge them on policy positions. Their best bet is The Katie Miller Podcast, a show hosted by Katie Miller, the wife of Stephen Miller, Trump’s chief policy advisor. She’s quickly emerged as the Barbara Walters, or Oprah Winfrey, of the new American conservatism.

The Republican establishment is on the verge of extinction. Donald Trump’s first term wasn’t enough to kill it off: Trump came into office in 2017 with establishment figures such as Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan leading the party in Congress, and Trump’s own vice president, Mike Pence, had been chosen for that role as a reassurance to the old guard. Trump made some efforts to staff his administration with outsiders, but the likes of Steve Bannon or the ill-fated Rex Tillerson were heavily outnumbered by Republicans who would have been just as happy – or a great deal happier – to serve in another Bush administration.  This time, though, things are very different.

It is always interesting to see who the American left claims are the leaders of the American right. There was a time during President Trump’s first term when Steve Bannon fit the role – and relished playing it. Back then most days brought another media profile of the dark genius of the MAGA movement. The Guardian, New York Times and others were obsessed. Vanity Fair would send reporters to follow Bannon as he conquered America and, er, Europe. Documentary crews were perennially in tow. Indeed one documentary following Bannon around included a scene in which they followed him to the showing of another documentary about him from a crew who had similarly followed him around. At which point you felt that we might fall into some kind of vortex.

Former vice president Dick Cheney, who died on Monday at age 84, loathed Donald Trump. In a 2022 election campaign ad for his daughter, Liz, a congresswoman from Wyoming, he declared: “In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump.” Yet Cheney was more responsible for Trump’s rise than almost anyone else in the Republican establishment. He helped to mastermind the calamitous Iraq War and preached the unitary executive theory of the presidency. Instead of vilifying Cheney, MAGA-world should offer him a bouquet of appreciation. Recall that it was during the 2016 South Carolina primary that Trump first showed his real independence from the folderol surrounding the Iraq War.

Charlie Kirk’s assassination was a tragedy. A young conservative voice was silenced by savagery, leaving behind grieving family, faithful friends and loyal supporters. But something deeply troubling is happening in the aftermath. The Trump administration isn't just mourning Kirk or pursuing his killer. They're using his death to justify an unprecedented crackdown on free speech that should alarm every American.Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that visa holders are being deported for "celebrating" Kirk's killing. The State Department warned immigrants against "making light" of his death. An anonymous group called the Charlie Kirk Data Foundation is building a database of social media users who criticized Kirk or his politics.

Empire has always been part of the American tradition. We are a sequel state to the greatest empire in world history. Our period of colonial tutelage under that empire taught the lessons of legitimate territorial expansion against French and Spanish rivals. Our continental aggrandizement after independence was necessary. Later overseas expansion, including periods of imperial apprenticeship in places such as Liberia, the Philippines and Panama, was further evidence of our colonial métier. Like it or not, imperialism and colonialism are congenital to the American experiment. This has been the case since 1779, when the Continental Congress branded a proposal to limit westward expansion an “intolerable despotism.