In the New York Times, Ezra Klein writes that the Trump “vibe shift” is dead.
The Trump vibe shift was American culture and institutions moving toward President Trump and Trumpism with a force unexplained by his narrow electoral victory. It was Mark Zuckerberg donning a chain and saying that the corporate world was too hostile to “masculine energy.” It was corporate executives using Trump as an excuse to wrest control of their companies back from their workers. It was the belief that Trump’s 2024 coalition — which stretched from Stephen Miller and Laura Loomer to Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Joe Rogan and Tulsi Gabbard — was the arrival of something new rather than, as many thought in 2016, the final heave of something old.
As 2025 closes, Trump’s polling sits in the low 40s, with some surveys showing him tumbling into the 30s. Democrats routed Republicans across the year’s elections, winning governorships in New Jersey and Virginia easily and overperforming in virtually every race they contested.
Unmentioned in Klein’s pre-mortem is the war that broke out at TPUSA’s AmericaFest, where the Ben Shapiro/Ramaswamy wing took the Nick Fuentes/Candace Owens/Tucker Carlson wing to task for being anti-Semites, white nationalists and Christian fundamentalists, which didn’t seem to be problem for Vice President J.D. Vance, who proclaimed America a Christian nation.
At the same time, the Heritage Foundation, the think tank that used Trump as its ideological patsy, backed Carlson’s rabid love for Putin and hatred of Jews, watched as its staff and backers fled. Having seized control of the levels of power, with Russ Vought charged with dismantling the government and Stephen Miller with ridding the nation of “garbage people” who were trying to replace “Heritage Americans,” which ironically didn’t include someone like Miller, it is now an empty shell of neo-Nazis apologists.
While Trump spends his “me time” slapping his name on anything he can, from the Kennedy Center to the oxymoronic Trump-class battleships, or putting up plaques amidst the goldish doodads to smack “sleepy joe” or pretend Reagan liked him, his bizarre attempt to blame Rob Reiner’s murder on Reiner’s Trump Derangement Syndrome crossed a line that many of his erstwhile supporters found intolerable.
His staunch supporters, Marjorie Traitor Greene and Elise Stefanik, have fled the ship, realizing that their love and adoration for Trump would never be returned. Trump has taken to the road to tell his supporters that costs are down, income and jobs are up and the constantly-changing trillions in tariffs are about to usher in the Golden Age, any day now. Except people aren’t buying, having to actually buy food.
And then there’s the Jeffrey Epstein debacle, coming after Trump’s valiant effort to get people to forget about it or distract them by any means possible. A law ignored, too little disclosed in violation of the law, and even the redactions have redactions.
A year ago, we kept hearing that Trump was cool now. Is anyone saying that now?
Has the MAGA coalition imploded, shredding its supporters for ideological purity of who it’s allowed to (supposed to?) hate and want to rid from America to make room for Mayflower descendants? Was this inevitable when Trump was re-elected, given the intolerable schism between conservatives and MAGA, much like the schism between liberals and progressives?
Trump remains president, for better or worse, for three more years, and there remains much he can do to wreak havoc, including going to war against Venezuela and his renewed interest in seizing Greenland, that could rally his support and cause his sycophants to put aside their differences over race and religious hatred. Can Trump pull MAGA back together by creating a new enemy that they’ll hate more than each other?
More importantly, do Trump’s MAGA supporters care about any of this, or will they slough this off as just another example of “Trump being Trump”?
*Tuesday Talk rules apply.
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Add not naming federal assets after living people to the list of political reforms we need to end this era of corruption. Should be comparatively easy after the constitutional amendments on term limits, age limits, eliminating the presidential pardon, limiting the census and redistricting to once a decade; not to mention the repeal of the National Emergencies Act, the IEEPA, all remaining AUMFs, the TikTok ban…
The new Trump-class battleships will be 100 times more powerful. High tech missiles, lasers, everything. If Venezuelan dictator Madura acts up it will be the last time he gets tough. This is not all aimed at China, Our Augustus, (Hail Caesar!), has a wonderful relationship with president Xi. Just like his great relationship with Putin. Our Augustus has already ended 8 wars. It will be 9 as soon as Ukraine capitulates, and the 10 after Caesar’s legions bring peace to South America by defeating the drug lords running Venezuela. They will have to give him the coveted Nobel Peace Prize then. It won’t be as large as the gold trophy given him by FIFA for bringing peace to international soccer, though. No matter, The Trump and the kennedy center for the something arts makes up for that. Ah, the New Golden Age! So to answer the question, the MAGA millions will never leave him. The movement grows. It’s what Charlie wants, the Trump Golden Age. It’s a miracle.
C., Thank you! I am now going down a Heilung rabbit hole.
You’re most welcome. Sharing is caring!
The vast majority of people are done with the idea that criticizing Israel makes you anti-Semitic, or a Nazi. Ben Shapiro’s temper tantrum at TPUSA was a desperate attempt to regain the upper hand, but it failed. Vance shut him down, not out of principle, but because he is a very good weather vane, and he sees which side is winning. Nobody is going to cancel Tucker nor Megan Kelly. It’s likely that this schism will cause the Republicans to lose the midterms, and maybe 2028, but at this point control of the party is more important than who wins this or that election.
Ironically, it was Trump who turned the tide by his shameless sellout to the highest bidder, his failure to fulfill any of his campaign promises, and his attacks on free speech after promising to defend it.
Censorship never works. The people who are censoring are always the bad guys, and people recognize them as the bad guys, and that’s what happened here. Trump was against censorship (when he was being censored), and so many people saw him as the good guy in the fight despite his many flaws. When he revealed that he actually loved censorship, he lost his good-guy status and his relentless grifting came to the forefront. All but his most rabid supporters have abandoned him. So yes, MAGA is dead. I expect that Vance will pick up the America First banner and pretend to be leading that parade, until he gets elected, after which I expect that he will sell us out all over again.
There is a distinction between criticism of Israel, a nation state, and antisemitism, but too often the criticism serves as mere pretext for the hatred. Make no mistake that Fuentes is on the wrong side of this divide. He is without a doubt an antisemite; he told me so during his interview by good ole Tucker. Being that you’ve demonstrated sympathy for that young man and his beliefs, I want to be clear with you. I consider any endorsement of Fuentes to be an endorsement of antisemitism, which I absolutely abhor.
If you’re going down that dark path, as of yet friend, beware, stop, and reconsider.
We don’t know much about the whole Venezuela business. I read that it’s all about securing Venezuela light crude that’s needed for the US economy, but I haven’t seen any indication about who’s driving the problem and whether is a MAGA thing at all. Maybe it’s just pressure from billionaire oilmen.
Aside from that, the US political system has been harassed by racists, and small government fanatics, and science deniers, and religious (or maybe just Christian Culture) factions, and stupid people with big egos since ever. It can go back to that with out being MAGA, and I think it will.
Here are some reasons: JD Vance is no Trump, Representatives and Senators are tired of being hog-tied by the President, the courts are getting past the preliminaries and into the deciding of cases, etc. And most importantly, the whole country is tired of the current regime, and too many peoples’ oxen have been gored.
> More importantly, do Trump’s MAGA supporters care about any of this, or will they slough this off as just another example of “Trump being Trump”?
I doubt they care. At this point I’ve gone through an entire hay bale thinking that $thingTrumpDoes must be the final straw. I’ve ceased to have expectations.
When he said “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters” I think he was right.
Teflon Don.
This was true, as long as people were able to believe that he was going against the establishment. His consistent failure to keep any of his promises, combined with his promotion of establishment goons like Lindsey Graham, and his attacks on true MAGA patriots like Thomas Massie, caused significant erosion of his support, and his attacks on free speech were the final straw. He has become so toxic that nobody wants his endorsement. Vance is desperately trying to figure out how to distance himself from Trump without alienating him. If he can’t pull that off, he will lose in 2028.