Only one year after his reelection as president, Donald Trump’s populist America First movement is fracturing. Conservative criticism of the president is becoming widespread following a Democratic sweep of off-year elections across the country. From Capitol Hill to MAGA media, the pushback signals a major rupture in the ideological pact between Trump and his base, suggesting he may finally be losing credibility where it counts.
Trump built his political brand as a so-called disruptor. But as transparency demands mount on multiple fronts, he is increasingly seen as closing ranks, often defending the very systems he once railed against and unsettling his previously steadfast base of supporters. With his legacy as outsider-in-chief rapidly unraveling, the right-wing influencers who built his MAGA coalition are no longer able to enforce populist standards that Trump himself can’t meet. Now his ability to control the narrative appears compromised — especially without the united MAGA media shield that once protected him.
Tucker Carlson, for example, once a staunch Trump ally, released his latest video on Friday that challenged FBI Director Kash Patel over the Butler, Pennsylvania, assassination attempt. The former Fox News host alleged that Patel’s FBI is covering up critical details of the attempted assassination, a charge that immediately drew a direct response from the agency’s head.
On Fox News, meanwhile, the White House is sending mixed messages on the economy. While the president insisted to Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Monday that the economy is white hot, three days later Vice President JD Vance suggested to Sean Hannity that a continued sluggish rebound should be blamed on former President Joe Biden’s administration.
Trump’s economic rhetoric is not matching the reality of many of his supporters — and his MAGA mouthpieces in the media are willing to admit as much.
Trump’s economic rhetoric is not matching the reality of many of his supporters — and his MAGA mouthpieces in the media are willing to admit as much.
“The price of everything feel[s] very expensive to people right now,” the Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro recently noted on his podcast. “When President Trump says things are becoming more affordable, people don’t believe that they are becoming more affordable because they aren’t really more affordable.”
On Thursday, speaking on “The Sean Spicer Show,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., told Trump’s former press secretary that the president’s “gaslighting [of] the people and trying to tell them that prices have come down is not helping.”
“It’s actually infuriating people because people know what they’re paying at the grocery store,” she said. “They know what they’re paying for their kid’s clothes and school supplies. They know what they’re paying for their electricity bills. That’s first and foremost. You don’t gaslight them. You don’t lecture them, and you don’t deny what’s happening.”
On Friday, Trump signed an executive order eliminating his signature tariffs on a wide range of commodities amidst consumer concerns about affordability, including record-high beef prices.
“You’re not gonna convince [Americans] to go to the polls and vote by bailing out Argentina,” Greene warned on CNN.
“[Trump] has distanced himself from the MAGA base,” Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., told reporters this week. Massie is one of four House Republicans, along with Greene, who signed a discharge petition to force a vote next week on releasing the Epstein files, a move the president had gone to great lengths to block after campaigning on their release. On Wednesday, shortly after the federal government shutdown was ended after an historic 43 days, House Democrats released more than 23,000 documents from the Epstein estate that were recently obtained by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Many of the files included references to Trump.
“Trump knew of it. and came to my house many times during that period,” Epstein wrote in an email on Feb. 1, 2019, several months before he was arrested on federal charges. “He never got a massage.”
“My people want to know: Who else, if anyone, did Epstein traffic young women to?” Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., told CNN’s Kasie Hunt on Thursday. “Now, President Trump has turned that issue over to Attorney General [Pam] Bondi. And I don’t know how she is going to answer that question for the American people without releasing all the records. Maybe she can, but I just don’t think this issue is going to go away until that issue is addressed and answered to the American people’s satisfaction, and I may end up with a sombrero on my head for saying that, but that’s the way I see it.”
As early as Tuesday, the House will vote to compel the Justice Department to release its files on Epstein’s case, with up to 100 Republicans voting to do so. GOP Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio, who told CNN that he plans to vote for the bill, said this week that “Pam Bondi needs to come here and explain herself.”
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“I have to be honest. I don’t really trust Pam Bondi’s word,” Megyn Kelly said on her podcast, before offering a befuddling defense of Epstein against charges of pedophilia.
“Jeffrey Epstein was not a pedophile,” she said. “He was into the ‘barely legal’ type. Like, he liked 15-year-old girls… He wasn’t into, like, 8-year-olds, but he liked the very young teen types that could pass for even younger than they were but would look legal to a passerby.”
But she didn’t stop there. “We have yet to see anybody come forward and say ‘I was like, 8, I was under 10, I was under 14, when I first came within his purview,’” Kelly continued. “You can say that’s a distinction without a difference. I think there is a difference between a 15-year-old and a 5-year-old.”
Fox News host Sean Hannity was successfully rage-baited on his show by progressive radio host Stephanie Miller, who used her opportunity to break a virtual blockade on the mention of Epstein on the cable news network.
Trump, for his part, accused Democrats of using Epstein to distract from the shutdown fiasco and ordered Bondi to use federal funds to investigate Democrats.
“Now that the Democrats are using the Epstein Hoax, involving Democrats, not Republicans, to try and deflect from their disastrous SHUTDOWN, and all of their other failures, I will be asking A.G. Pam Bondi, and the Department of Justice, together with our great patriots at the FBI, to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, J.P. Morgan, Chase, and many other people and institutions, to determine what was going on with them, and him,” Trump wrote on Friday. “This is another Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, with all arrows pointing to the Democrats. Records show that these men, and many others, spent large portions of their life with Epstein, and on his ‘Island.’ Stay tuned!!!”
He continued: “Only a very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into that trap.”
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Hours after Trump’s request, Bondi announced on X that Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, would take on the job.
Aside from Epstein, one of the most glaring sources of internal conflict is immigration, an issue that has historically united the Trump coalition. The centerpiece of Trump’s “America First” agenda has been a fierce crackdown on immigration. While MAGA remains adamantly committed to mass deportations, Trump — despite White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller’s best efforts — has wavered. The president’s recent defense of the H-1B visa program has provoked a fierce backlash from staunch MAGA figures who see any support as a betrayal of the administration’s “America First” economic nationalism. While Ingraham, who has called H-1B visas a “scam,” argued that the U.S. has talent at home, Trump insisted that wasn’t the case, arguing there is a shortage of “certain talents” domestically.
Following the interview, Erick Erickson, a veteran conservative radio host, said on his show that he had “never seen so many longtime Trump supporters furious” about Trump’s position on H-1Bs. Tim Pool, a right-leaning YouTuber, mocked Trump on X: “Don’t worry — Trump is bringing in more H1Bs to make sure our young people are f****d.”
With multiple MAGA fault lines converging this week, we are now seeing clear signs of erosion of Trump’s grip on power. His aura of invincibility and the unquestioning loyalty is over. For MAGA to stay cohesive and vibrant beyond this cycle, the movement needs to reconcile the leader’s actions with its core expectations.
