Things are getting interesting in the MAGA world after a rather eventful AmericaFest event this weekend.
Conservative pundit Ben Shapiro got into it a bit with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson at the Turning Point USA event, but that was not the end of things.
In the closing speech for the event, Vice President JD Vance fired off a few shots of his own.
I don’t want to say that Trump is losing MAGA, as that would be far too aggressive an assessment, but I do believe there are some cracks in the foundation, especially among media figures who used to be uber loyal to Trump.
Frustration really started to settle in when the Jeffrey Epstein files were not released as initially promised, then came an announcement from DOJ officials that there was no client list forthcoming and no proof that Epstein had ever blackmailed anyone.
That was all still percolating when the interview with Trump chief of staff Susie Wiles appeared in Vanity Fair. Then, of course, there were Trump’s comments on Truth Social after the deaths of Rob Reiner and his wife, which even drew backlash from his loyalists in Congress.
I think the final piece of the puzzle was Trump’s recent commentary about the economy, as I know my friends who generally defend the president were frustrated, even saying that he was starting to sound like Joe Biden. This was the first time any of them had talked about Trump's status as a billionaire, with one of my friends asking, “How can a billionaire who has never walked into a grocery store tell me how much I am paying for my groceries?” Keep in mind, this was coming from someone who has defended all things Trump for most of the last six years.
I expected AmericaFest to be more or less a celebration of Trump, but that was not quite the case when it came to Shapiro and Carlson, both of whom used their time to throw down with each other.
Shapiro called out Carlson for interviewing Nick Fuentes, stating, "There is a reason that Charlie Kirk despised Nick Fuentes and, indeed, even chided Dinesh D'Souza for debating him. He knew that Nick Fuentes is an evil troll and that building him up is an act of moral imbecility. And that is precisely what Tucker Carlson did.”
When Carlson took the stage, he took his shot at Shapiro, stating, "I just got here, and I feel like I missed the first part of the program. Hope I didn't miss anything meaningful. But I just want to say I don't think I did. No, I'm just kidding. I watched it. I laughed."
He later added, "Charlie stood firm in his often-stated and deeply held belief that people should be able to debate, and if you have something valid to say, if you're telling the truth, you ought to be able to explain it calmly and in detail to people who don't agree with you, and that you shouldn't immediately resort to, ‘Shut up racist.’"
Carlson also addressed Shapiro’s points about the infighting amongst MAGA, saying, "I think it’s fake. I think it’s totally fake."
Vance followed that up a bit more strategically, not calling out anyone by name, but stating, “President Trump did not build the greatest coalition in politics by running his supporters through endless, self-defeating purity tests. I didn’t bring a list of conservatives to denounce or to deplatform.” He continued, “Let me just say the best way to honor Charlie is that none of us here should be doing something after Charlie’s death that he himself refused to do in life.”
I believe both Carlson and Vance are making a huge mistake by dismissing these concerns. They are falling into the same trap as Democrats, namely, of strenuously denying a problem to the point that if they do so loudly and long enough, people will believe them. A significant group of my friends are MAGA loyalists, and they are clearly frustrated right now. I doubt very much that it is limited to my circle of friends.
It’s tough to address an issue if you are refusing to even admit that it exists. It’s like a scratch that you fail to clean. At first, it is just an annoyance, then it festers until it gets infected and becomes a problem. So, before we need to go see a doctor, I would suggest that Trump and company start to address these whispers of discontent before they grow into something much more serious and far more damaging.
