The Consequences of MAGA's Cruelty, Bigotry and Rage

Under the Felon's and today's MAGA controlled Republican Party, cruelty and bigotry towards those deemed "other" by the increasingly deplorable MAGA and white Christian nationalist base - namely, non-whites, non-Christians and non-heterosexuals among others - and  rage that any anyone other than white right wing Christians achieve financial and social success are the movements main stock in trade. Indeed, in a regime that whines about anti-Semitism, acceptance of Neo-Nazis and admirers of Hitler is growing., further confirming the moral bankruptcy of so much of the MAGA base which wears Christianity on its sleeves yet ignores Christ social gospel teachings.  As CNN reports, millions of Americans are seeing health insurance premiums skyrocket and critical medial research funding has been slashed, all so billionaires and the ultra-wealthy can enjoy huge tax cuts. As SNAP payments that benefit some 16 million children and many among the working poor whose employers pay pitiful wages and in effect have taxpayers underwrite their employees, are being held up and are in limbo. Add in the horrific deportation actions of ICE and it times it seems cruelty is the unifying theme behind the Felon's and GOP's policies.  Yes, last Tuesday's election results appear to be a repudiation of the Felon and MAGA, but so much damage is being done. Indeed, as Vice is reporting, 63% of adults ages 18 to 34 have considered leaving the country this year because of “the state of the nation.”  and among parents, more than half—53%—say the same. A column in the New York Times looks at the evil consuming the GOP and ponders whether the situation can be turned around:

Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, must be confused. Last month, he turned to the most reliable move in the Republican crisis-management playbook, and it didn’t work. On Oct. 30, three days after his friend Tucker Carlson released a softball interview with Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust denier and perhaps the most notorious fan of Adolf Hitler in American public life, Roberts posted a video online that decried cancel culture. . . . “That includes Tucker Carlson,” Roberts continued, “who remains — and as I have said before — always will be a close friend of the Heritage Foundation. The venomous coalition attacking him are sowing division. Their attempt to cancel him will fail.”

It’s hard to overstate how much this approach tends to work in the modern Republican Party. The hatred of the left — and of conservatives who are critical of Donald Trump — is so overwhelming that even the most basic acts of moral hygiene are considered weak or woke, or worse.

Even if you are uncomfortable with the words or actions of your fellow Republicans, there is relentless pressure to swallow your tongue. There should be no enemies to your right. The left is the true existential threat to the United States.

When Roberts, who was also a guiding force of Project 2025, recorded his video, he could be forgiven for thinking that neither Carlson nor Fuentes was particularly toxic on the right. . . .Fuentes, for his part, dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago along with Kanye West in 2022, and Marjorie Taylor Greene spoke at Fuentes’s America First Political Action Conference that same year.

But Roberts miscalculated. His statement tore the Heritage Foundation apart. Facing a staff revolt, he issued a new statement more clearly condemning Fuentes (but still leaving Carlson alone), and when that didn’t quell the uprising, he held an all-staff meeting that quickly degenerated into an airing of grievances, with some Heritage employees eviscerating Roberts and passionately condemning the moral decline of the conservative movement and others — often with equal emotion — standing by his side.

Roberts remains Heritage’s president and has vowed to stay, but senior foundation employees have resigned, the National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism has severed its ties with the group, and vast segments of the right are in open revolt against both Roberts and Carlson.

Readers might be a little bit stumped. Wait, this is what’s splitting the right? A podcast conversation? It’s not that dialogues like this don’t matter (they do), but after everything that America has seen and endured since 2015, why now?

The answer is rooted in part in the unstable bargain that millions of conservatives made with themselves and with America to keep supporting Trump.

First, as a bit of background, Trump’s rise not only eviscerated the idea that there should be any kind of character test for participation in Republican politics, it also resulted in an aggressive, vicious purge from the party and the movement of anyone who attempted to hold Trump accountable for depravity and lawlessness. Some of us have even been told that we’ve abandoned our Christian faith for opposing Trump.

Many of the conservatives who remained didn’t want to abandon the president, but they also didn’t want to completely abandon decency, either. So they chose a third way. Trump receives special dispensation (witness the much more muted response to Trump’s dinner with Fuentes, especially among Republican lawmakers), but standards still apply to everyone else. Other Republicans have to toe the line.

But this approach suffers from a fatal flaw. A movement, especially one that verges on an outright cult of personality, is defined by its leader, not by its rank and file. And when the leader is lawless and depraved, then efforts to contain his influence while preserving his power are doomed to fail.

The proof is everywhere. Throughout the Trump era, many of the most prominent voices of right-wing America have only become shriller, angrier and, yes, more racist and more antisemitic. The right-wing media universe is culturally different in 2015 than it was in 2025 — substantially so.

The balance of power has flipped upside down. The fringe has become mainstream, and the mainstream has become fringe.

And now, with the end of Trump’s presidency coming into view, there is an increasing number of conservatives who fear that the movement has been and is being completely redefined — not just in Trump’s image, but in Carlson’s and Fuentes’s as well. And now some of these conservatives are speaking up.

I want to believe that a large number of conservatives are in the process of waking up. They’re finally questioning what their movement has become.

But I’m rather afraid that they’re too late. One sign that might be the case is that virtually every person who’s raised a voice against Carlson has a far smaller audience than he does. Since Carlson posted his interview with Fuentes less than two weeks ago on X, it has racked up almost 18 million views. On YouTube it has 5.6 million views.

Compounding the problem, there are many prominent right-wing influencers who won’t explicitly defend Carlson or Fuentes but will scold the people who are confronting them. . . . Got that? We can’t condemn good old Tucker for elevating an actual fan of Hitler in front of many millions of people because that will distract from taking on the real enemy, Jake Tapper.

Making the problem worse, the fight for the future of the Republican Party is taking place only after many of its most thoughtful and decent members have been excommunicated. Millions upon millions of Republicans have been told that these brave men and women — Mitt Romney, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, to name just three — are traitors to the cause.

The Republican rank and file have also been conditioned to dismiss moral arguments against MAGA as sanctimonious and complaints about Republican racism and antisemitism as inherently leftist. Hearts are hardened, ears shut.

I don’t know if Roberts will survive at Heritage, but I do know that Carlson and Fuentes and their constellation of friends and allies are far too popular to cancel or even to contain.

The fight for the future of the Republican Party is underway, but until the demand for decency reaches toward the very top of the movement, then Trump’s malignant influence will continue to metastasize, and he’ll hand the baton to a woman or a man (including, possibly, Carlson himself) who extends Trump’s legacy of cruelty, bigotry and rage.