'They feel him betraying them': Trump reportedly nixed MAGA's most potent weapon
President Donald Trump may have eviscerated some of his base's most potent attack weapons against Democrats, according to one conservative activist.
Anti-Trump conservative activist Rick Wilson, co-founder of The Lincoln Project, said the Trump administration's attempts to bury the Jeffrey Epstein files story have uprooted some of the foundational elements of the MAGA movement. First, it has broken MAGA's unflinching loyalty to Trump. The episode has also exposed a few of the "tricks" Trump has used to keep his base in line since 2015, and it has withered the guilt by association excuse that many MAGA loyalists use to demonize Democrats, according to the strategist.
"They know what's happening; they feel him betraying them right now," Wilson said.
One of the most lethal aspects of the MAGA movement has been the united front it presents against its political opponents. This front has steadily increased its strength since Trump's first administration, as more moderate Republicans bowed out of Congress and were replaced by Trump loyalists.
That front appears to have evaporated since Attorney General Pam Bondi declined to release the Epstein files last week, Wilson argued. By refusing to release the documents, Wilson said Bondi "embarrassed" the MAGA base and exposed that MAGA's central narrative of Democrats operating a vast pedophile conspiracy is false.
"They feel that cognitive dissonance building up inside of themselves, where they have to suddenly say, 'S---, I knew it all along'," Wilson said. "They saw the pictures of [Trump] and Epstein. They saw the dancing. They heard the stories. They knew something was there."
Not releasing the Epstein files also took away MAGA's ability to attack Democrats by guilt of association, Wilson argued. For instance, MAGA has constantly vilified Democrats as "communists" since Zohran Mamdani won the New York City Democratic primary. Now, MAGA's faith in Trump appears to be "shattered," he said. That is going to cause people to defect from the base, and ultimately weaken MAGA's ability to change the subject from unsavory stories about Trump by attacking Democrats.
"This is the most consequential moment for MAGA since it became a coherent political force in this country," Wilson said.