Managing MAGA

Who is actually driving the MAGA bus?

In a New York Times article entitled No One Controls MAGA - Not Even Trump, Ross Douthat advances the thesis that the president's relationship to his political base may be like that of 19th century French populist politician Alexandre Ledru-Rollin, to whom is attributed the famous quote, "There go my people.  I must find out where they are going so I may lead them."

If you've been following current events, you know the precipitating incident for Douthat's column has been the continuing story of the late Jeffrey Epstein, notoriously accused of providing underage girls for the illicit, immoral and abusive pleasuring of his elite circle of friend.  For many of us, the Epstein story was newsworthy a few years ago, seemingly culminating in his (alleged) suicide in a federal jail while awaiting trial.  After that, the story mostly receded from our consciousness. 

But it seems that, among MAGA followers, the Epstein story never went away, perhaps because it seemed to epitomize their world view that corrupt elites control our society and need to be brought down.  Various members of the Trump administration (Pam Bondi, Kash Patel, Dan Bongino) had spent earlier parts of their careers keeping consumers of right-wing media riled up about alleged lists of perpetrators that were (supposedly) being covered up by the Deep State.  Now that those same accusers are actually tasked with running the Department of Justice and the FBI, they, along with their boss President Trump, have been trying to minimize, distract, deflect and do whatever else is necessary to make the Epstein story go away.  And the MAGA faithful are having none of it.

It's become a common talking point among news reporters that this split between the president and his base is rare.  Are we witnessing a (rather belated) declaration of independence on the part of Trump voters who, for the last decade or so, seemingly have been bewitched by their leader into accepting anything and everything that suits the president's purposes?

Douthat offers a more complicated view: whereas it's widely believed that "MAGA is just a cult of personality in which any ideological reversal will be tolerated so long as the Great Man sets the course", in point of fact, Trump "doesn’t single-handedly decide what [MAGA] demands or where it ends up. Instead, there is an ongoing negotiation between what the president would like to do and what his voters will accept."

Douthat offers examples:

• On immigration: Douthat perceives that the MAGA base wants more restrictions on immigration than Trump otherwise would impose.  Douthat suggests that Trump probably is naturally sympathetic to the demands of business owners for farm workers, hospitality workers and so on; and Trump recently issued a Truth Social post saying so.  But Trump quickly reversed course; per Douthat, "Trump doesn’t actually do this kind of deal, however, because he knows [Stephen] Miller represents the purest form of anti-immigration sentiment, to which even MAGA’s leader must defer."
• On COVID: "Trump was often one step behind the populist impulse. He treated the outbreak as a nothingburger while the online right was freaking out about it. He accepted lockdowns and restrictions just as the populist impulse began evolving toward anti-Faucian libertarianism. And then he took up the libertarian critique himself — but haphazardly, leaving Anthony Fauci in charge of big parts of policy. Similarly, Trump’s desire to celebrate the triumph of Operation Warp Speed was in persistent tension with grass roots vaccine skepticism, and his eventual embrace of “MAHA” and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was a case of the grass roots mostly getting its way."
• On Israel and Iran: Douthat notes that MAGA is isolationist, but it also likes quick, painless wins.  Trump's intervention to bomb the Iranian nuclear sites might have stirred MAGA isolationist anger, but because it was a quick win with few or no repercussions, it didn't cost Trump anything politically.  Thus, here Trump succeeded in spite of, not because of MAGA.  

Douthat then goes on to note that all of these dynamics seemingly are mixed together in the Epstein affair.  MAGA clearly cares about it a good deal more than Trump does.  (I'm setting aside here the notion, broached recently by Elon Musk, that Trump may have personal reasons for actively keeping Epstein's files under wraps.  I understand the Wall Street Journal reported today that Trump is actually named in the DOJ's Epstein files.)

I'd add that this dynamic of negotiation between Trump and MAGA provides a plausible explanation for what happened on January 6, 2021: Trump didn't particularly plan for or expect his followers to storm the capitol (although, as the events unfolded, he decided to do little or nothing to interfere with it).  And it's possible the motives weren't perfectly aligned: while Trump wanted to stop the certification of Biden's election, it seems many of the stormers of the capitol were at least as interested in brawling with cops and inflicting harm on Nancy Pelosi and other perceived enemies of their movement.  It's not that Trump and his followers had opposing motives; but it's also possible that this was not a case of Trump intentionally unleashing attack dogs to overthrow our electoral system.