With the inauguration looming massive in direction of the top of winter, you could possibly be forgiven for considering that the MAGA motion could be gearing as much as turn into one thing approaching useful. In spite of everything, it’s time to take the presidency and get to work “making America nice once more.”
Predictably, the MAGA motion isn’t fairly able to that, so it’s as an alternative falling over itself in a present of chaos that may be humorous if it wasn’t so critical. This can be a motion characterised by devotion to at least one man on the prime, and that’s by no means been fairly as clear as when the MAGA underlings attempt to have an impartial thought — solely to get shot down by their betters and informed what to consider as an alternative.
Mike Johnson, the Republican Speaker of the Home, has spent weeks being trashed by his fellow Republicans — together with Donald Trump and JD Vance — just for there to have been an abrupt turnaround. This modification in opinion has little to do with Mike Johnson himself, or something he’s stated and carried out; Trump stated he’s okay, so the MAGAs agreed. Whereas that is par for the course from a MAGA-infested Republican Get together with extra flip flops than a seashore in July, it’s not a great look.
In an entire departure from his earlier angle, Trump posted an announcement praising Johnson and in a complete reversal of their beforehand held, fully “impartial” emotions, the MAGA foot troopers fell in line.
The MAGA motion is constructed on slavish devotion to at least one man. It’s primarily a cult of persona the place strongly held convictions, ideological considering, or impartial thought are forged apart in favor of adherence to the chief’s whims. Nowhere is that this clearer than in how elected Republicans stumble and journey over themselves as they rush to fall in line.
New Jersey Congressman and Republican Jeff Van Drew claims to help Mike Johnson in a Fox Information interview, after which together with his subsequent assertion makes it clear that he would change his thoughts if Trump informed him in any other case! Claiming to be an “impartial” individual, Van Drew appears fully unaware that each his actions and his phrases help a unique view. X customers had been fast to level out the disparity, calling Van Drew a “clown” or a “joke” amongst different issues.
As amusing as remoted incidents akin to this may be, the unhappy and harmful truth is that these will not be remoted incidents. Nor are they confined to a small subset of elected representatives — this conduct is rife all through the whole MAGA motion. When Trump says bounce, they ask how excessive. When Trump says up is down and grass is blue, they agree.
When the motion spent days arguing in opposition to oligarchs-in-training Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s want for extra expert immigration in keeping with its “deeply held” ideological convictions, all it took was an announcement from Trump for the matter to be dropped. As journalist Ronald Filipkowksi put it on X, “they only consider what Trump tells them to consider.”
In latest weeks many have joked about “President Musk” being the actual energy behind Trump, however increasingly more it seems much less like a joke and extra like a worrying assertion of truth. Trump would be the motion’s in style figurehead, the chief whose phrases change minds, nevertheless it feels fairly clear that he’s removed from the driving drive behind its insurance policies and beliefs — no matter these truly are this week.
