Donald Trump was sitting in his office at Trump Tower on November 7, 2012, when he came up with the phrase that would make him the President of the United States.
He discarded a couple of ideas. “We Will Make America Great” and “Make America Great” didn’t quite click.
But the master salesman knew immediately when he found the perfect brand name for his unlikely White House aspirations.
“Make America Great Again.”
He wrote it down and called his lawyer. Within five days, he’d trademarked the phrase, and it quickly went from a slogan on a cap to the motto of a movement.
For GOP read MAGA. It was exactly what it said on the tin: a step back in time to the 1980s, a simpler period of gas-guzzling cars, manufacturing jobs, family values, Reaganomics, and Just Say No.
And of rampant sexism, racism, homophobia, and unfettered global warming.
Trump was the unquestioned MAGA king. He spoke to a vast swathe of the country that had previously felt disenfranchised. The idea of a man identifying as a woman made as much sense to them as sending their young to die in foreign wars they didn’t care about.
MAGA swept Trump to power in 2016, in 2024, and almost in 2020.
But somewhere in the first year of his second term, Frankenstein has lost touch with his monster.
And now it is threatening to devour him.
Trump’s bungled handling of the Epstein files is the most obvious sign of his disconnect. He campaigned on a promise to make them public, and his Attorney General, Pam Bondi, presumably just parroting her boss, vowed to follow through.
Then he reneged. Whether or not he has something to hide from his years as Epstein’s friend, he’s been about as transparent as a Ghislaine Maxwell interview.
It was only this weekend, when it became clear that his most MAGA lawmakers would defy him and vote to release the files, that the president relented. Release them, he said. Who cares?
Trumpers. They care. The president’s subjugation was a first in the MAGA era. It may not be the last.
Not when figures like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Laura Ingraham are questioning the man who was so much a part of their rise.
Ingraham was preaching to the MAGA choir when she questioned the president on Fox News over his support for H-1B visas for foreign workers and Chinese students attending American colleges.
There are core issues for the movement. She understood that. It appeared that he did not.
Trump is claiming diplomatic victories for solving wars in countries he even forgets and, as MAGA stalwart Steve Bannon claimed, many GOP voters believe he has spent “too much time on Palestine and not enough on East Palestine,” Ohio.
Does the MAGA faithful really care about a $300 million ballroom in the White House? Or the marbleization of the Lincoln bathroom? It might care about all the stories of millions of dollars flooding into the Trump family’s coffers.
It might care about the FBI chief taking cross-country flights to visit his girlfriend. Or Cabinet members living rent-free in federal housing. Or the never-ending trail of billionaires being invited to presidential dinners.
Who really believes that grocery prices are going down?
Trump was 65 when he came up with MAGA. He sounded like an old man of 79 when he insisted to Ingraham: “MAGA was my idea. MAGA was nobody else’s idea. I know what MAGA wants better than anybody else, and MAGA wants to see our country thrive.”
A quick sample online will show that Trump no longer knows what MAGA wants. There’s disquiet. Discontent. Suspicion. His Cabinet won’t tell him; they’re too busy sucking up. And Trump is too busy talking to listen.
The master of ceremonies has lost control of the circus. It’s only a matter of time before the tent collapses.
When Mary Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein abandons his monster to deal with the world alone, it becomes embittered and vows revenge on its creator.
Donald Trump should take note.
The post Opinion: Proof Trump, 79, Can’t Even Remember What MAGA Is Anymore appeared first on The Daily Beast.
