What Is MAGA Without Trump?

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Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast.

I'm Deepa Shivaram.

I cover the White House.

I'm Stephen Fowler.

I cover politics.

And I'm Domenico Montanero, Senior Political Editor and Correspondent.

Okay, so we're about six months into President Trump's second term and a little over a year away from the midterm elections.

Crazy.

So today we're asking the question, is there a MAGA without Donald Trump?

So Dominico, let's kick it off with you.

Broadly speaking, what do you think the future of the Republican Party looks like without Trump?

Whew, it is going to be really interesting, especially in 2028, when we think about the tension that happens, because I really think that politics has become so much about personality on both sides of the aisle, frankly.

I mean, I think you could say that with former President Obama.

It certainly is the case of this cult of personality with Donald Trump.

And I put this question to Republican strategist Alex Conan about whether or not there would be a MAGA that continues without Donald Trump.

There is a populist movement with or without Trump in the United States, but Trump has never really been able to transfer his political support to other candidates.

So whether MAGA or the populist movement continue to be successful after Trump, I think is really unclear.

And I'm actually skeptical.

And look, he's skeptical, he said, because Trump's political success hasn't really translated to other Republicans when he's not on the ballot.

I mean, think about the midterms in 2018, big losses for Republicans.

2022, they didn't do as well as they wanted to.

So it's going to be hard for someone else to easily pick up the mantle.

Aaron Powell, well, let me ask you this then, because I think this is a really important question.

We've had populist political leaders before.

That's not a new thing.

So what makes MAGA unique?

Aaron Powell, not in really recent American history for politics.

And, you know, largely what Trump has focused on is culture, this anti-elitism.

And he eschews a lot of political norms himself.

You know, he mines a kind of cynicism in American politics and a grievance of white people, frankly, across the country, more than any recent American president has,

going back, to Nixon, frankly, or beyond that.

That anti-elitism, cynicism of the system, if you know, that allows him with his base to break precedent and ethical norms.

It's not clear how others will really be able to do that with the kind of strong hand that he's been able to do that with.

And he's putting a lot of that into action with a retribution campaign.

I'm not sure anyone else in American politics, let alone the Republican Party, is quite capable of.

So it's really more than just policy.

Yeah.

Well, Stephen, let's bring you in here.

And I don't know if there's an answer to this question, but how much of the coalition that elected Trump in 2024, this base that he's built up, how much of that can exist without Trump at the helm?

Well, there's always going to be some sort of falloff because after getting elected, there's two to four years of time in office and different priorities and policies.

Things change.

The world changes.

life goes on.

But the way that Trump built the 2024 coalition is by stacking together a number of disparate groups, both within the traditional Republican Party and Republican adjacent, that inherently don't get along with each other and have different policy priorities that only exist because Trump is able to wrangle them all together.

So much of the things that he's done in the first months back into office have involved taking stances and pushing policies and platforms that different parts of that coalition don't agree with.

Whether it's the one big beautiful bill or bombing Iran or so on and so forth.

These are things that should and could be deal breakers for Republicans and this conservative coalition in the future.

That people aren't going to be able to necessarily put that aside in the same way.

I mean, everybody has had to come to the table and basically capitulate to whatever Trump wants.

There's not really a negotiation negotiation or a compromise position.

The compromise is, you do what Trump says or else.

All right, then my follow-up is, where do these groups go without MAGA?

Well, that's something that's going to be the key to the future of the Republican Party.

So much of the party's apparatus, from the local parties to the state parties, all the way up to the executive, legislative, and judicial branch have been centered around one person and one person sometimes shifting ideology.

So there's going to be some sort of slippage, whether that's to the couch and not showing up in the midterms or in the next presidential election, to independent groups or third parties that might try to run in some places, or to the Democratic Party, who's at record low unpopularity right now, that may be able to pick up those pieces.

It is all but guaranteed that the coalition that showed up in November 2024 is not going to be the same one that shows up in 2026 or 2028.

But what that looks like is going to remain to be seen.

There have been a few recent issues that have divided parts of the MAGA movement.

I'm thinking of, you know, the investigation into disgraced financier, convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

That was a big one that sort of caused some fissures.

And of course, the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Gaza.

We recently had Marjorie Taylor Greene, the congresswoman, call it a genocide, which is really breaking with what President Trump has said.

Dominico, these cracks that are kind of happening here, how permanent are they?

How seriously do you take them?

Yeah, I'm skeptical of how permanent they are as far as hurting Trump, because his approval ratings among Republicans are still very, very high.

Even though you have polls that show that

big percentages of Americans don't feel like they've gotten a lot of transparency on the Epstein case, for example, you'll hear from a lot of folks within MAGA that they're blaming someone like Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, for not going through with

releasing more information.

And he still gets almost 90% approval

from Republicans overall, even in the same polls that show that people think that there wasn't enough transparency or hasn't been enough transparency when it comes to Epstein.

So it seems that the MAGA movement always finds a way to blame someone else, some advisor, something else.

And there's a lot of psychology behind that, you know, on picking your guy and sticking with him and saying, you know, it's all these other people who are trying to influence him that are the problem.

So not really like a finger pointing at the president himself sort of a situation.

Yeah, not quite yet.

All right, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be back in a moment.

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And we're back.

We've been talking about the future of the MAGA movement, so we kind of need to get into next year's midterm elections on that.

So, Stephen, what can we learn from past efforts by MAGA-aligned candidates to win some of the competitive seats that you're looking at in 2026?

Well, during the first Trump term and the midterm when Trump wasn't in power, there were some notable trends with the types of candidates he promoted.

Namely, they didn't do so hot in places where they had to appeal beyond the Republican base.

After the 2020 election defeat, there were efforts to primary Republicans that didn't say the election was stolen.

Many of them were unsuccessful.

And in the general election, where those election-denying candidates did make it through, voters pretty roundly rejected them.

And so this time around, there's not the cause of denying the 2020 election rallying people around, but you are seeing kind of the made-in Trump's image candidate showing up in who is running for these seats.

I mean, the case in point, North Carolina Senate race, Michael Watley is the latest Republican candidate and probably the eventual nominee there.

He's Trump's hand-picked chair of the Republican National Committee and is completely 100% aligned with Donald Trump.

And that's going to be the biggest, most closely watched, most expensive race in the country on the the Senate side.

It's also important to note all of the people that aren't running in these races.

In Georgia's Senate race, popular Republican governor Brian Kemp, not running.

In New Hampshire, Chris Sununu, not running.

There are not really a lot of lanes for Republicans, even popular with their constituency Republicans, that aren't all in on the Trump train.

So you're going to see a true referendum on Trump's power and Trump's image in ways that maybe in the past there might be a little bit more daylight.

Aaron Powell, interesting.

Well, let's jump in on that because, Dominico, one thing I've been wondering about, I mean, a lot of things have happened with Trump's agenda recently, right?

All of these tariffs that he's rolling out, programs that in the Big Beautiful Bill, his big domestic agenda, that was tax breaks, cuts to Medicaid that could really impact rural hospitals.

That was signed back in July.

And part of that conversation has been this question of: will there be a backlash for Republicans in the midterms, even if Trump, like you're talking about,

his poll numbers and his support has been largely untouched.

Aaron Powell, Jr.: Well, yeah.

I mean, look, a lot of the things that he's tried to do, whether it's his tax and spending bill that he's gotten through, these tariffs, he's not really getting very high marks for them.

You know,

the program Medicaid, which helps to get insurance for the elderly and disabled in this country, and people who don't make enough money to be able to afford their own insurance, you know, it's a very popular program that affects a lot of people.

And these cuts to Medicaid in that were very unpopular, Polling had found.

You know, his economic handling numbers are not very good.

And we know that that's how you get from his 46, 47%

overall with the popular vote in 2016 and 2020 to almost 50% in 2024 by winning over some of these competitive voters, these persuadable voters who were unhappy with prices and inflation.

during the Biden era.

And, you know, his popularity with his base

is only going to go so far in helping Republicans in the midterm elections, especially when he's not on the ballot.

And all those voters who weren't out there voting for Republicans previously, but voted for Donald Trump in all of these presidential elections, they need those voters to be at the polls, especially in competitive places when his numbers for some of these programs are not very high.

You know, in fact, his popularity with his base is also going to be key for whether or not this idea of Trumpism or MAGA is going to be able to survive beyond Trump long term and fundamentally reshape the party.

Here again is Republican strategist Alex Conan.

I think in terms of relatively near-term American politics, we could see Trump's influence lasting in the Oval Office beyond him, you know, at least for a few years.

But

long term, is the Republican Party a populist party?

Is the populist movement really a force that's electing a lot of politicians?

You know, I'm skeptical because Trump has just not been able to really expand his political support beyond himself.

So there's a latent populist movement clearly in the country when there isn't someone at the top who's pushing for those things.

But we're going to see in 2028 if someone can pick up that mantle.

Yeah, you know, there's one part of this that I also wanted to ask about, which is, you know, speaking of Trump being the reason that is bringing some of this base together, there have been like a little bit of a movement from voters of color.

I'm thinking of Latino voters specifically in the 2024 election of Latino men, Asian men, like moving closer to the Republican Party.

Is there any indication that those groups will remain Republican voters or part of this MAGA movement even after Trump?

Well, I think they're very much up for grabs.

I don't think that they're a group that's necessarily moved totally toward Trump.

I don't think they vote on identity in the way that Democrats have tried to appeal necessarily to some voting groups on identity.

You know, and I think that Trump has been able to tap into something, especially with young male Latinos, about

what the culture should be in the country.

And I think that there are a lot of people on the Republican side who are going to be vying for the nomination in 2028 who are targeting those groups specifically, especially on all these podcasts and the quote-unquote manosphere.

All right.

Well, speaking of 2028, for both of you, are there any potential Republican contenders that you're specifically tracking for the 2028 presidential election.

Could Vice President J.D.

Vance be the future of VACA?

Well, I would say not necessarily.

I would think a better analog for J.D.

Vance would be Vice President Kamala Harris.

Harris took a bit of a backseat to President Biden's policies and vision and wasn't as vocal on a lot of things out there and didn't want to get in front of Biden or say anything different.

And much in the same way, J.D.

Vance has really been behind Trump's shadow.

He hasn't really carved out a portfolio of policy issues that he's taking the lead on, other than appearing on a lot of conservative podcasts and kind of doing a lot of behind-the-scenes massaging of this coalition.

And so I think the things that he's doing to not overshadow Trump and to not do anything to have any daylight there could end up harming him when it's time to come and make the case to 2028 primary voters that he's going to pick up the aggressive, big, loud,

forceful MAGA vision that Trump has.

And another reason is because Trump's MAGA messaging, especially in this last campaign, is geared towards being not in power and towards getting this idea of, you know, the party in power is wronging the American people and doing things.

And that's going to be a lot harder of a message to sell both to the general electorate and to the primary electorate when you have been in control in Washington for the past four years.

Aaron Ross Powell, yeah, and look, if J.D.

Vance is the Kamala Harris, then Secretary of State Marco Rubio might be the Pete Buddhige

of the Republican side because he's somebody who's obviously articulate, but he has kind of morphed himself as a supremely anti-Trump person to be someone who is very close to Donald Trump now.

And I think both of these guys are vying for influence, not just from Trump himself and trying not to get in his way, not to make themselves a target of Trump's, but also with the MAGA movement, which Rubio has not always been the first person that MAGA has trusted or wanted to go to.

But I think there's another name, there's a lot of other names, but I think there's another name that a lot of us can talk about, and that's Don Jr.

Donald Trump Jr.

as a potential heir.

Because if you remember, there was a piece by the journalist McKay Coppins in The Atlantic in 2019 where it looked like he was saying that Don Jr., quote, is emerging as Trump's natural successor.

And that's because when you look at the campaign trail, a lot of senators want Don Jr.

out on the campaign trail.

And I think there's going to be a lot of conversation around him, about him, whether he's going to be somebody who decides to actually put himself into politics.

He's not someone who has a traditional political

profile.

And he also has had some tension with his own dad.

They're very different kinds of people, but he's very plugged in in that young young, you know, podcast bro environment in ways that J.D.

Vance is too, you know, someone who's a friend of his.

So I think that on both sides of the aisle here, we're going to see a really interesting competition for not only a vision for the future, but on the right, who's going to be the heir to Trump and MAGA?

Well, do we think that Trump will willingly give up the reins to his MAGA movement?

Someone's going to win, obviously, and they're going to be the new person.

But I don't think Trump is going to get out of the way through the primary process at all.

I think that he has the potential to be a kingmaker, to pick the person.

And that's why you're seeing all of these guys really try to stay on Trump's good side, although none of them is Trump.

I mean, unless they're Don Jr., who is a Trump, but he's not his father, Donald Trump Sr.

Yeah.

All right.

We're going to take a quick break.

And when we get back, it's time for Can't Let It Go.

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And we're back, and it's time to end the show like we do every week with Can't Let It Go, the part of the show where we talk about the things from the week that we just can't stop thinking about, politics or otherwise.

Um, Stephen, let's kick it off with you.

So, Deepa, I don't know if you know this, but I have have never had coffee before in my entire life.

What?

And I am a big fan of the Celsius Energy Drink.

A big fan of Celsius.

I know, and I have a two-year-old, and somehow I'm upright, thanks to Celsius.

But my can't let it go is that some cans of the Celsius energy drink weren't actually Celsius.

They were vodka seltzers.

Are you okay?

High noon recalled some vodka seltzers mislabeled as Celsius energy drinks.

I did not consume any of of them.

I was on morning edition bright and early many times this week, and I was a-okay I promise.

But people somewhere, somehow, accidentally bought vodka seltzers thinking that they were energy drinks.

Those two are not the same.

So funny.

Wait, so like, was it a full switch?

So like people buying the vodka seltzers were just getting Celsius and then the people, was it a switch both ways?

From our website, High Noon is recalling certain 12 packs of its vodka seltzers, which turned out to offer more than just a variety of fruit flavors.

The company says some of them also contain cans of the cocktail that were mislabeled as Celsius Energy Drinks, an entirely different brand.

Well, I would tell you this: I have never had a Celsius.

I don't intend to.

Energy drinks are not exactly my thing.

I do drink coffee, although I could see the appeal.

I will say something must be going around because there was a pizza place in Wisconsin where they were putting oil on their pizza and it was was laced with THC.

So, a little bit different kind of

a pizza high, I guess you could call it.

That's really wild.

Stephen, has this made you decide that maybe the safer bet is just drinking coffee?

No, it makes me want to go buy some more.

Just kidding.

No, I am still firmly in the

coffee camp.

It is high noon somewhere, but I am going to stick with my Celsius and just take a little sip first to see what kind of day I'm going to have.

Oh, interesting.

I respect it.

Deepo, what can't you let go this week other than potentially cans of Celtsi's high noon?

Mine is

the most iconic movie of my childhood is coming out with a sequel, and it is not Devilwear's Prada 2, even though I am excited about that.

And it is not Freaky Friday 2.

It is, in fact, Bend It Like Beckham 2.

Announced this week, the same director who made the first one, Gurin Lurchada, said that in 2027, we are getting a sequel to Bennett Like Beckham, which was maybe the most influential movie I saw as a child and a movie that I could probably quote start to finish if you wanted me to do that.

I feel very old.

That's all I will say.

I think I was,

oh God, I had graduated from college already when that movie came out.

It was 2002, I believe.

It was 2002, yeah, because this is going to be the 25th, yeah, 25th anniversary.

That is not like the movie of my childhood, which was Coming to America.

Thank you very much.

Well, noted, noted.

But yeah, I'm so pumped.

Like, I feel like after that movie, I was like, oh, I'm going to sign up for soccer.

And, you know, I played soccer for a while.

And now we're in this moment where women's soccer is just like...

so blown up and it's so fantastic how many people are following women's soccer these days and supporting women's soccer.

And I just feel like that was a movie where if you guys remember, like there was a part in the scene where the characters are like talking about how crazy it is that like women get paid to play soccer at all in the U.S.

And it's just wild to see like how much the sport has come.

And I feel like there's going to be a lot of hype around the second one.

Yeah, that should be great, especially how things have changed.

I wonder if the movie will,

you know, maintain.

You know, like sometimes you look back at some of these movies that were made in the early aughts and you're like, ooh, that did, that didn't, that didn't translate well.

Yeah, I, well, look, I can confirm after several rewatches in recent history, I think it holds up, but we'll see how we'll see how number two does.

Dominica, what can you not let go of?

Well, Deepa, I want to ask you a question, actually, and it's not about your clig, but about a former clig, I believe, of yours.

And I think that's, what is your favorite fruit?

Oh my gosh.

Oh my gosh.

Yes.

We were on a pod together where we talked about mangoes.

And I know someone who likes mangoes maybe more than you do.

And it's

not my daughter, exactly, because she does love a good mango, but it is monkeys from Bali.

I don't know if you follow this story in the Wall Street Journal, but you better have some pretty expensive stuff to get your stuff back and have some mangoes to give to these monkeys to trade.

Because apparently these monkeys are going to a temple in Bali and they are stealing sunglasses, iPhones, and they're not giving them back until people give them mangoes.

No way.

Yeah.

I think that's my spirit animal.

The Wall Street Journal did this story and they have a really cool video of these very aggressive monkeys and people either both scared and laughing at the same time as they as they exchange.

They are they can be scared.

I have not been to Bali, but I have been to India and the monkeys there, I mean, no fear, truly no fear, they will come right up to you.

It's pretty scary.

I'm amazing.

They sound like children, though.

You know, they shake you down for money in exchange for honestly wild.

I would love to see that video.

All right.

That's going to be a wrap for today.

Our executive producer is Mathoni Maturi.

Our editor editor is Rachel Bay.

Our producer is Brea Suggs.

Thanks to Megan Pratt, I'm Deepa Shivaram.

I cover the White House.

I'm Stephen Fowler.

I cover politics.

And I'm Domenico Montanero, Senior Political Editor and Correspondent.

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

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