Is MAGA dead? No. Is Trumpism a thing of the past? Nope. But its influence is plainly collapsing, and the strange thing is that its long-awaited decline doesn’t bring anything close to the anti-authoritarian joy I once imagined it would.
During peak COVID, when we were all busy signaling our adherence to the social contract and succumbing to the OCD set, I remember telling friends I couldn’t wait for it to end. We’d have a huge party and just hug each other nonstop. I wasn’t alone in that. A lot of people found the isolation very hard to contend with.
Of course that was a naive idea. COVID didn’t end with a clear signal to go back to “normal,” whatever that was. It was a slow and cautious reintegration into something we arrived at years later, and by the time we got to the big nonstop-hug party, we’d all moved on.
I’m reminded of that as we arrive at the end of another sort of plague. By every measure you can see — politically, narratively, and just vibes — we are very near the end of Trumpism. RIP, MAGA. Yes, the clearest indication is what looks to be a hard referendum against a deeply unpopular president in the coming midterms.
The thing that’s dying is the movement. The Make America Great Again hats and the once ubiquitous TRUMP flags. The rallies people drove four hours to, their abject willingness to forgive him for anything. The cult-like following who spewed QAnon theories as gospel because they did the research.
To be clear, the Trump presidency isn’t dying. Neither is the machine the movement spent a decade building to keep it. Things can change in a month, and the polls can be wrong (they usually are!) But Trump has clearly lost his mojo, his charm, and his hold on a big chunk of his own people, and MAGA is no longer the gravitational force in American politics. It’s a constituency now, and a shrinking one. Thank fucking God.
The evidence is overwhelming, but the most recent bit that caught my attention was an Elle Reeve segment on CNN’s AC360, where she returned to Trump Town USA in Boones Mill, Virginia. It’s a converted church on Route 220 at the town’s only stoplight, about 20 miles south of Roanoke, and I’ve visited it three times (!) with my son on trips to or from Savannah, where he was in school.
Reeve first covered the store in December 2023, in the run-up to the 2024 election, and the focus then was that it had never been more popular, moving the most pro-Trump and anti-Biden merch you could possibly imagine. Cut to 2026 and the owner, Whitey Taylor, who says Trump has made him millions, is admitting he’s moving a lot less of it. “We had a lot of $12,000 days, maybe a $15,000 day occasionally,” he told Reeve. And now? “1,500, 2,000 bucks, sometimes hit 3,000.” The shopper interviews are the revealing part. The Trump fans who made air all admitted they’d lost a lot of passion, and some admitted they don’t know yet who they’ll vote for. One mother, who put her grocery bill at $800 to $1,000 a month and blamed the war for it, was asked who she’s voting for. “I’m not sure yet, to be honest.”
There’s loads more evidence, which I detail every morning in Morning Frame. Trump’s approval, now in the high thirties with a net rating worse than any president’s at this point since polling began, is well known, as is a congressional map that looks exceptionally blue, more so than one typically sees in a first midterm. But there’s more to it.
Longtime MAGA supporters like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson have turned Trump apostates, Greene over the Epstein files and Carlson over the war, and they’ve taken their loyal audiences with them. Republican members of Congress are increasingly comfortable pushing back on things Trump is doing that look plainly illegal, namely the federally funded ads promoting his presidency, one of which vows America will “never go communist.” The White House now says the $10 million already spent won’t be paid back, and the Senate majority leader has said out loud he’s not for it.
But I think it’s as much to do with Trump himself. For whatever reason, he just doesn’t seem to care. '
Actually, there are some clear reasons. He and his family have reportedly made billions in office over the past two years, and by his own ethics filing more than a billion dollars in crypto income in 2025 alone. He’s also 80 years old and, as evidenced by his mid-press gaggle naps in the Oval Office, he’s also tired. He’s also done the one thing he cares about most: changing the narrative from being the loser of 2020 to not being a loser.
That’s why the end feels so underwhelming. MAGA was only ever about one guy, and the guy got what he wanted. He has no reason to keep the movement going, so he’s content to monetize the bejeezus out of it and take naps before live cameras. Not a bad gig to be honest!
The open decline of Trumpism and MAGA, Inc. is visible to anyone paying attention. To wit:
In Mobile last week, he told a crowd of about 8,000, in a 10,000-seat arena that was three-quarters full when he took the stage, to “close your eyes and pretend I’m on the ballot.” In 2015, he drew 30,000 to a football stadium in the same city. His own benchmark, which he’ll still recite, is that “a small rally is 20,000 people.” He is now playing high school activity centers in Ohio, then threatening to arrest reporters who accurately report empty seats.
Ken Paxton, the man Trump flew to San Antonio to campaign for on Wednesday, was caught on tape telling donors what’s dragging his race: “It’s the war, it’s gas prices, it’s diesel,” and “I don’t make the decisions.” Greg Abbott, on the same ballot, skipped the rally. Susan Collins told a debate audience “I’m not exactly his favorite senator.” A Fox News contributor, Marc Thiessen, said on Fox & Friends that the fact Trump has to campaign in Nebraska at all is “pretty stunning.” As I wrote in today’s Morning Frame, the blame game that normally starts the Wednesday after an election started a month early, and it is pointed at him.
The Russian boxing executive who paid for Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding on two private islands said this week that Don Jr. has repaid him and that “frankly speaking, I do not understand why he decided to do so.” A Republican senator, John Curtis, wants the Judiciary Committee to subpoena the president’s son. The still-loyal customer in Reeve’s CNN piece put it as well as anyone: “It kind of does bother me a little bit that he’s in office and he’s gaining a lot.”
None of this is a reckoning. Nobody is marching, and there’s no tape of the exact moment Trump lost his mojo. Personality cults don’t end with a verdict. They end with boredom, the way the pandemic did, and you only notice afterward, long after the passion has abated.
Which is where the worry should still very much exist, because the threat to Madisonian democracy isn’t the thing that’s thinned out with the crowds.
But the same administration that can’t fill an arena in Mobile is also acting in curious ways just weeks before the election. For the first time since 2002, election observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe have been told to stay home this year. Not only does ICE have 48 million voter records that came via an election-denying adviser at DHS, but it’s reportedly considering sending agents after voter registration groups in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. And on Tuesday, Trump promised "big surprises coming up in another few weeks" from the man who wrote Project 2025, Russ Vought.
The people who created MAGA now run the government. They don’t care about who buys a red hat.
Many Americans have waited for the end of Trumpism the way we waited for the end of COVID, and it turns out they feel the same, like nothing much. We moved on before it was over. What I didn’t plan for is that the thing we moved on from is still in the White House, and it says it has a few weeks of surprises left.