The Maga Meltdown: Is Donald Trump losing his grip on the base?

HAS THE FEVER FINALLY BROKEN? Donald Trump’s hard MAGA base seems to be softening, splintering and shifting under his feet. His poll numbers are steadily going down, the flaws once dutifully ignored by ‘bhakts” are coming into sharp focus and a few Republican members of Congress are even daring to rebel.

Of course, Trump doesn’t acknowledge the cracks and paints over them with trade­mark bravado. He knows best since he created the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement and he is the rightful reader of those minds. MAGA is whatever he says it is.

But is it anymore? Is it the beginning of a post-Trump era where the Republican Party starts to regroup since he would soon become a lame-duck president who can’t run again? Has he become a drag on his party as some are saying? Or are the reports of a meltdown greatly exaggerated because there have been occasions in the past when Trump appeared to be losing his grip on the movement only to come out stronger? The jury is out for now.

Meanwhile, Trump’s popularity has taken a serious beating. The latest AP-NORC poll done early November showed 62 per cent of the respondents disapproved of the way he was handling his job while 36 per cent approved. While the AP poll was the most drastic, the average of other polls still shows a disapproval rating of 55.9 per cent, the highest since he began his second term.

There is a definite vibe change. A moment of clarity, perhaps. It took only 10 months to get from worship to disillusionment. Or to apostasy as some might prefer. To say that prominent MAGA voices are disappointed would be an understatement. Influencers are openly talking about corruption, graft, sweetheart deals for family and friends and their families, the messy U-turn on the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, White House dinners for crypto billionaires and decadent Halloween parties in Mar-a-Lago while people suffered the longest government shutdown. Trump flew down on Air Force One to attend the galas as ordinary folks faced thousands of flight delays/cancellations and airport chaos. An image of Trump as Marie Antoinette done by a prominent Demo­crat did the rounds on X.

Additionally, a perception among supporters is gaining ground that do­mestic issues get half-hearted attention while the president remains actively engaged on foreign policy problems. Propping up Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, a friend and political ally, was especially jarring. Other conten­tious issues include US support for Israel, the fate of Palestinians, divisions over what constitutes anti-Semitism, and yes, the H1-B visas.

While Trump has successfully halted illegal immigration on the border, legal immigration and work visas for people from India and China remain sore points for MAGA. Laura Ingraham, a Fox News host, had a contentious exchange with Trump on H1-B which was illustrative of the divide. She said he couldn’t “flood the country with tens of thousands—or hundreds of thou­sands of foreign workers.”

Trump responded, “I agree, but you also do have to bring in talent… you don’t have certain talents, and people have to learn.”

An immigration raid on a Hyundai factory in Georgia in September resulted in hundreds of skilled South Koreans being arrested and shipped back despite valid work visas. The Trump administration was embarrassed. The South Koreans have since come back but the campaign to round up illegal workers has resulted in mistakes, indignities and injustices for many who are legally in the US. Trump recalled the Hyundai episode at the US-Saudi Invest­ment Forum last week and proceeded to declare MAGA a domain of the dumb. “I said, ‘Stop it, don’t be stupid,’ and we worked it out,” he said of his over-eager enforcers.

“You can’t open up a massive computer chip factory for billions and billions of dollars… and think you’re gonna hire people off the unemployment line to run it. They’re going to have to bring thousands of people with them, and I’m going to welcome those people,” Trump declared. While it may be music to many ears in India and elsewhere, it is raw meat for MAGA.

SHOWDOWN WITH MARJORIE

Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a MAGA loyalist-turned-critic, attacked Trump frontally on the visa issue. She said promoting H1-B visas to “replace American jobs, bringing in 600,000 Chinese students to replace American students…

 those are not America First positions.” Greene announced last Friday, November 21, she would resign from Congress come January because “our government is broken beyond repair and the Political Industrial Complex is the problem.” Nothing changes.

The trouble started when Greene joined three other Repub­licans and all House Democrats in a 427-1 vote to support a bill requiring the release of the Epstein files and speak for the victims. Epstein was a convicted paedophile who allegedly hanged himself in prison. After flip-flopping for months over the release of information, Trump gave Republicans the go-ahead to vote when it became clear the bill had overwhelm­ing bipartisan support. He has signed the bill into law which directs the Department of Justice to release all the documents in 30 days. But he was not done targeting Greene whom he called a “traitor” and a “lunatic” who had gone far-left.

After Trump forced Greene out over the Epstein files, many MAGA voices were incensed. They saw her as someone courageous who stood up for the victims and not powerful men who exploited young girls. Several prominent personalities—Republican and Democrat—are named in the 60,000 pages of documents already made public. Trump’s name also comes up. In an email to Ghislaine Maxwell, the procurer of girls, Epstein wrote that the “dog that hasn’t barked is trump. (Victim) spend hours at my house with him.” In another mail, he claims, “you see, I know how dirty donald is.” The White House has ac­cused the Democrats of conducting a deliberate “smear” campaign with “selectively leaked emails” to create a fake narrative.

Now that many more Epstein documents are expected to hit the stands except those related to ongoing investigations, chances are many more careers will end and reputations ruined. Prepare for what has been called “a bonfire of the political elite”. The documents, which will include flight logs, internal memos, personal communica­tions and meta data, will be searchable and downloadable. The spread of names in the documents already in public is remarkable—politicians, bankers, academics, social climbers, diplomats, spiritual bigwigs, and royals are all there trying to one-up, tease info, seem ahead, and project status.

The question is whether Greene is positioning herself as a MAGA leader of the future and trying to own issues dearest to the movement, especially affordability—the newest buzz­word in American politics. Her resignation letter was crafted to check all the boxes that raise MAGA hackles: corporate interests, foreign wars, jobs, healthcare, eliminating H1-B vi­sas, and the disappearing American Dream for so many young people. As they say, the movie is not over. The Trump-Greene brawl could be a symptom of a bigger problem of trying to keep the coalition together that includes isolationists, white supremacists, Christian nationalists, tech tycoons and others.

THE TRUMPDANI SHOW

Recent Democratic victories in gubernatorial and mayoral elections was a wake-up call for Republicans who spent more time playing Congressional games than lowering prices and creating jobs which brings us to the latest cause for MAGA outrage—Trump’s love-fest with Zohran Mamdani, the socialist mayor-elect of New York. It seemed very much like a Harold & Kumar stoner movie from the early 2000s—friends facing obstacles (reporters’ questions) together in a haze of goodwill like there was never a past, only the present. Just going with the flow.

The Trumpdani show confused the hell out of not only MAGA but pundits and ponderers too. Respected analysts started dream­ing of a populist partnership be­tween MAGA and the Democratic left, calling it a “genuinely novel development”. A “communist-fascist” alliance to take on the big­gest domestic issue of the day— affordability—would indeed be novel as in fiction.

MAGA majors and many Republicans weren’t buying it. Trump suddenly switching gears and calling Mamdani “a rational person” after weeks of war blew a hole through the 2026 election strategy built around Mams as the “midterm bogeyman”. The plan was to repeat some version of the killer 2024 ad— “Kamala’s for they/them, President Trump is for you”—with Mamdani’s socialist schemes writing the script.

Laura Loomer, a MAGA activist and Trump whisperer, had a meltdown after the Trump-Mamdani meeting. “So we are just going to normalize communism?” She later walked back a bit and added, “Not condemning Trump. However, I think we can all agree it’s a bad look to let a foreign-born jihadist who said he wants to implement ANTI WHITE policies like taxing white people more money to stand behind the desk in the Oval Office.” A self-described “proud Islamophobe”, Loomer predicted that Republicans would lose the midterm elections next year. While she says she is “super pissed” at several of Trump’s decisions, including meeting Mamdani, she is not in the MAGA-is-dead camp.

DEBATES WITHIN

Infighting and utter confusion over the Mamdani visit to the White House prevented a unified MAGA response. Some big names such as Tucker Carlson haven’t yet weighed in yet but Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist who wants a complete stop to all immigration and the US to jettison Israel, said the meet­ing was “a soap opera” which only showed political hypocrisy at the top. While Fuentes himself is increasingly a source of division within MAGA for his anti-Semitic comments, his cur­rency among young conservatives as a Trump critic is high.

However, many voices on X, the soapbox of choice for public troublemaking and venting, have declared “MAGA is dead”. Influencers are trash-talking to each other like you wouldn’t believe. “Your soul is as ugly as your face you decrepit witch,” Morgan Ariel yelled at Loomer, a certified Trump supporter who can end careers with a post on X. Why? Because Loomer was celebrating Greene’s resignation. Ariel defines herself on X as a “Christian Cultural Commentator, Lioness for Jesus Christ and a fashion designer.”

Parts of MAGA are with Greene who seems strangely principled in this mad ecosystem of slander and slaying. Ariel and many other self-appointed MAGA guardian angels feel betrayed by how she was treated. Ariel’s post with a photo­graph of several people declaring the death of MAGA sums it up: “After Trump stabbed his entire base in the back yesterday with his push for H-1B visas, his continual gaslighting over the Epstein files and his obsession with pandering to Israel it’s evident that everybody is thinking the same thing. What even is MAGA at this point? It’s over.”

Maybe, maybe not. Trump can still wave his charm band over the flock and lure them back.