President Donald Trump has clapped back at his fractured MAGA base after being accused of betraying his America First principles.
But the president also made a rare admission that his approval rating had fallen after a tumultuous few weeks, telling a business forum in Washington: “My poll numbers just went down” before quickly adding: “but with smart people they’ve gone way up.”
The comments come as Trump’s once unbreakable grip on his Make America Great Movement appears to be slipping over everything from affordability and skilled workers, to his halting response about the Epstein files being a “hoax.”
MAGA’s rage intensified last week when the president dismissed concerns from his base that Chinese students were taking up college places that Americans wanted.
“I know what MAGA wants better than anyone else,” he said in a jaw-dropping interview with Fox News ally Laura Ingraham.
By the next day, that rage turned white hot when he suggested that there were no talented workers in the U.S. after being cornered over wanting to bring more high-skilled foreign workers into the country on H-B1 visas.
The hashtag #AmericaLast began to trend on social media and some even declared: “MAGA is dead.”
However, speaking at a US-Saudi investment forum on Wednesday, whose guests included billionaires, company executives known to hire foreign workers and Saudi investors, the president doubled down.
“You can’t come in, open a massive computer chip factory for billions and billions of dollars like is being done in Arizona, and think you’re gonna hire people off an unemployment line to run it. They’re gonna have to bring thousands of people with them—and I’m gonna welcome those people!” he declared.
“I love my conservative friends and I love MAGA but this is MAGA! And those people are going to teach our people to make computer chips, and in a short period of time our people are gonna be doing great.”
The comments were well received by the forum, which was put on as part of a controversial visit by the Saudi leader at the centre of the gruesome killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi: Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
But they are likely to prove contentious for Trump, who came to office with an “American First” agenda that took aim at “globalists” and cast him as a champion for the working class.
But as Trump travelled around the world this year, MAGA acolytes such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, who Trump now calls a “traitor,” began urging the president to focus less on foreign affairs and do more to advance domestic problems, such as cost-of-living pressures.
“No one cares about the foreign countries. No one cares about the never-ending amount of foreign leaders coming to the White House every single week,” said Greene, who has clashed bitterly with Trump over the Epstein files.
However, on Wednesday, Trump announced that, after brokering numerous peace deals around the world, he was now planning to wade into a new conflict at the request of his “friend”, the crown prince.
“Arab Leaders from all over the World, in particular the highly respected crown prince of Saudi Arabia… have asked me to use the power and influence of the Presidency to bring an immediate halt to what is taking place in Sudan,” he said.
“We will work with Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and other Middle Eastern partners to get these atrocities to end, while at the same time stabilizing Sudan.”
The comments come as a new Marist poll puts Trump’s approval at just 39 per cent, his lowest since right after the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol in 2021.
Democrats now have their largest advantage, 14 points, since 2017 on the question of who Americans would vote for if the midterm elections were held today.
Some in MAGA world have sought to blame Trump’s chief of staff and so-called “Ice Maiden,” Susie Wiles, for his missteps.
But Trump allies and family members—including Vice President JD Vance, Donald Trump Jr. and Robert F Kennedy Jr.—have firmly rejected this.
“The Twitter trolls running their mouths don’t know the first thing about Susie Wiles or how this White House works,” Vance told the Daily Beast.
At the forum on Wednesday, Trump also praised Wiles as she sat in the front row near Elon Musk, NVIDIA chief Jensen Huang and the crown prince.
“The most powerful woman in the world,” he said of his White House gatekeeper. “She can destroy a country with one phone call. That’s power.”
The post Trump Claps Back at MAGA After America First Backlash appeared first on The Daily Beast.
