Like Marvel’s MCU, Trump’s version, the MAGA Corrupt-o-matic Universe, is a long-running saga released in multiple phases. We’ve already been through Phase 1 (Mr. Trump Goes to Washington) and Phase 2 (A Capitol Offense). Now, we’re in the thick of Phase 3 (The Trials Balloon). Things are not going well for Mr. Trump.
Donald J. Trump remains the dominant player in his own universe, deriving his unjust powers from the consent of the fleeced. So far, the fleeced remain loyal. So loyal that the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago sparked a fundraising bonanza for Trump that occasionally topped $1 million per day. But outside of his core supporters, voters are repulsed. An NBC News poll found persuadable independent voters moving toward the Democrats. Where earlier this year, the persuadables favored Republicans 39%–33%. the latest polling has them down 37%–40%. That’s a nine-point swing toward Democrats. If that weren’t enough to spark panic in the GOP, last night, Sarah Palin lost her bid for Congress in Alaska’s special election. Alaska will be sending a Democrat, Mary Peltola, to D.C.
There are early signs of wavering out among the complex web of the MAGA infrastructure. Few players in that world have any abiding personal loyalty to ex-president. They are held in his orbit, not by the gravitational pull of Trump himself, but rather by their interest in advancing white nationalist, authoritarian power and serving corporate interests. Now, with the wheels of justice grinding toward Trump, and swing voters easing away from him, some players in his supporting cast may be ready pull free and step up to do what they must to sustain the MAGA project—sans Trump.
Uneasy lies the head that wears the combover.
Continuing our survey of players in the MAGA Corrupt-o-matic Universe.
(Part 1 of this post is here: The Casting Director/Executive Producer, The Big Brain, The Sidekick)
The Brownshirts
Both Trump and his lickspittle sidekick, the pathetically pandering Sen. Lindsey Graham have been threatening violence if Trump is indicted. The most likely foot soldiers to bring that violence will be the Trump-aligned militias—Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Boogaloo Bois, Three Percenters—and the lone-wolf individuals they inspire.
Although Trump didn’t call America’s dark network of paramilitary hate groups into being, he did call them to his service.
Armed, white nationalist, Neo-confederate, neo-nazi, anti-LGBTQ, anti-semitic, and anti-government hate groups have been haunting the country and hunting their enemies for more than a century and a half. Our domestic terror movement harks back to the Ku Klux Klan of the Reconstruction era. For much of our history, however, they have been rightly condemned as fringe extremists and held out of the mainstream. Trump, by contrast, made the choice to embrace them, welcoming them under his big MAGA tent. Extremists haven’t been this close to political power since the 1920s, when the Klan claimed “11 governors, 16 senators and as many as 75 congressmen —roughly split between Republicans and Democrats,” (that according to Jennifer Mendelsohn and Peter A. Shulman in The Washington Post).
The Southern Poverty Law Center has been tracking the world of hate groups and their leaders since 1971. Last year, they tracked 733 of them.
SPLC finds continuing entrepreneurial churn in this world—startups, failures, mergers & acquisitions. Last year, for example, the number of hate groups declined, but the Proud Boys expanded their ranks. They have even placed a half-dozen current and former members onto the Miami-Dade Republican Executive Committee.
Trump-aligned militias spend most of their time posing, training, recruiting, threatening, and whining. Their biggest threat has been their impact on individuals—the seething and simmering lone-wolves inspired to grab an AR-15 and commit mayhem. According to FBI Director Christopher Wray:
“Today, the greatest terrorist threat we face here in the U.S. is from what are, in effect, lone actors… lone domestic violent extremists radicalized by personalized grievances ranging from racial and ethnic bias to anti-government, anti-authority sentiment to conspiracy theories… Because they act alone and move quickly from radicalization to action, often using easily obtainable weapons against soft targets, these attackers don't leave a lot of dots to connect,”
But planned actions by the groups themselves have become more frequent. We saw them in at the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally in August 2017. We saw them on the streets countering the George Floyd protests in 2020. And we saw them at the January 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol. In addition to the big three—Proud Boys, Oathkeepers, and Three Percenters, the mob at the Capitol also included people affiliated with more obscure conspiratorial and extremist groups such as, the Woodland Wild Dogs. America First Bruins, and Super Happy Fun America
Will we see militias take to the streets again in defense of Trump? Unknown. What we do know is that Trump and Graham are pushing their buttons, all but inviting them to act. Whether or not they respond, we can be sure that they are not disbanding. They continue to stand back and stand by and nurse their grievances. They will endure beyond the Time of Trump.
We also know this: they are armed. Dangerous. And pissed.
The Head Writer
Not a speechwriter, more a strategist and message architect, Christopher F. Rufo, has emerged to fill the role that Frank Luntz played in the Gingrich era—devising MAGA-friendly messages and crafting language that resonates with voters. Through frequent appearances on Fox News, Rufo came to the attention of Trump. Rufo also feeds his attack lines to Ron DeSantis, who not only recites them, but enacts them into policy.
Rufo goes places that Luntz never did. He not only hones attack lines for politicians, but he also develops complete strategies to be followed by activists at the local grass-roots levels. Here’s an example: a political-action handbook for parents to use at their local school boards.
If you’re looking for MAGA characters who can play effectively in multiple spinoffs in a post-Trump MAGA world, there’s probably nobody more versatile and effective than Chris Rufo.
The Understudy
Waiting patiently in the wings for Trump to falter, Florida governor Ron DeSantis has been diligently preparing to solo in his own Phase 4 film. He’s building his national fandom, studying the Rufo playbook, aping Trump’s hand gestures, and using his powers as governor to impose MAGA cruelty and autocracy in Florida.
The mimicry is so blatant that the Trump family is crying plagiarism according to Asawin Suebsaeng in Rolling Stone.
If the time comes to recast the role of MAGA leader, DeSantis is, for now, the leading contender.
His latest stunt project: having his election-security gestapo arrest 20 ex-convicts in Black districts for the crime of illegally voting. It quickly though it turned out that DeSantis’s own election officials had okayed their voter-registration cards. (Mark Joseph Stern reports on how the whole ploy is now imploding.) Hardly matters. Truth is still lacing up its boots.
Ron DeSantis (43 years old), as Laddie-in-waiting is one of the key reasons we can expect the MAGA World to outlast Donald Trump (76).
But first, DeSantis has to win re-election as Governor. Polling favors him. Florida is trending red. And he has a war chest of over $172 million. Charlie Crist, by all accounts, has a steep uphill sprint to catch him.
The Family
The MAGA players most likely to be jettisoned in Phase 4 and beyond are Junior, Eric, Ivanka, and The Son-in-Law. Unlike most of the other cast-members in MAGA World, they have no independent constituencies. When Donald goes, they go. All of them. Instantly.
(The-Son-in-Law may be an exception. He has his own family real-estate holdings and that $2-billion payoff from the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia to work with, but there’s scant evidence that he knows what to do with his money other than commission tightly-tailored business suits.)
The Chorus
The Rightwing media machine is legendary and powerful. Beginning with talk-radio, then adding Fox News on cable TV, and now expanded to the entire multiverse of internet-based media—newsletters, podcasts, videos, social media, and the dark web. In today’s world of influencers, the voices have multiplied and they are relentless at stoking the grievances of their audiences. For the most part, the MAGA chorus are still working their audiences to boost Trump. But some cracks are showing. They are waking up to the reality that the Trump cult can win primaries, but in general elections, Trump both repels independents and energizes Democrats.
The MAGA media chorus doesn’t need Trump if it can draw an audience by other means. For five years, they have found Trump useful, but as he turns more and more toxic they will gladly shoot the messenger and keep echoing the message. The hot-button grievances are still intact: wokeness (whatever that is), CRT, borders, crime, pronouns, trans kids, grooming, Hunter’s laptop, replacement theory, her emails, etc. The algorithms that promulgate them still work. Besides, most Trump’s rants are plagiarized from QAnon and other fringe sources to begin with. The MAGA chorus will simply go to the source. Many of them, in fact, are the source.
Coming soon: In Part 3 of the MAGA MCU Saga, I’ll look at the most dangerous of all the continuing threats arising from Trump’s regime, The Republican Party.
Part 1 of the MAGA MCU Saga: