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Is MAGA Finally Beginning to Fracture?

The Felon inherited an economy which had weaknesses which his policies - tariffs, mass deportations of agricultural and construction workers, and slashing federal funding that benefits a majority of Americans, among other things - has made things considerably worse.  Some of the most extreme MAGA cultists seem willing to close their ears and minds and continue blind loyalty to the Felon.  Elsewhere, some small cracks in MAGA are appearing and one can only hope the Felon is beginning to perhaps lose his stranglehold on the Republican Party.  True, the cracks are small, but if the economy continues to languish, new jobs become more scarce, inflation remains high, and more Americans see the operations of ICE as akin to the Gestapo - cruelty seems to be the point - these fissures may grow. Permission to be openly racist and to discriminate long term will not pay the bills and one can only hope more of the MAGA base wakes up to objective reality (at lot to hope for, I admit).  Add in the Felon's wanton corruption and now the Epstein files - which the Felon could order released right now - and for once the tide appears to be turning slightly.  One can hope the shifting tide becomes a storm surge, but at this point any weakening of the Felon is likely good for America so long as some insane military adventure isn't launched as an attempt at distraction. A column in the New York Times looks at where we find ourselves:

This [past] weekend, Donald Trump picked a fight with two Republicans in Congress and lost.

The president has reportedly been apoplectic about a House vote, which could come as soon as Tuesday, ordering the Justice Department to release its files on the sex-trafficking financier Jeffrey Epstein. On Friday Trump attacked Thomas Massie, the eccentric conservative who, along with the California Democrat Ro Khanna, spearheaded a maneuver to bypass House leadership and force the Epstein measure to the floor. Massie’s wife of three decades died unexpectedly last year, and on social media, Trump mocked him for remarrying. “Boy, that was quick!” he wrote, adding, “His wife will soon find out that she’s stuck with a LOSER!”

Then, on Saturday, Trump lashed out at Marjorie Taylor Greene, a MAGA die-hard who has been loudly demanding transparency on Epstein, calling her, among other things, a traitor.

Trump seemed to be trying to dissuade other Republicans from voting yes on the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Khanna wrote. But many were still planning to defect, with Massie predicting as many as 100 Republicans might join him. Such defiance, Khanna told me, would show “how weak Trump’s hold is becoming on his own caucus, and it may signal the beginning of the end of Trump’s dominance.”

Perhaps Trump agreed, because on Sunday night he reversed course, announcing that Republicans should go ahead and vote for the release of the Epstein files. In doing so, he avoided a humiliating public rebuke. What he cannot avoid, however, is the growing disillusionment among conservatives with their deeply unpopular lame-duck leader.

The last wretched decade shows that reports of a MAGA crackup ought to be viewed somewhat skeptically. There have, after all, been many moments when Trump seemed to be losing his grip on the right, only for his hold to grow stronger.

But a few things are different now. In his first term, Trump inherited a good economy from Barack Obama, and the establishment Republicans who surrounded him prevented him from tanking it with major trade wars or mass deportations. Much of Trump’s base distrusted these figures, seeing them as part of a deep state cabal trying to thwart his populist agenda. But they shielded the country from at least part of the price of Trump’s erraticism.

This time, however, Trump came into office with a much shakier economy, and, unrestrained by Washington technocrats, has proceeded to make it worse, putting the country in a sour mood. “The five-alarm fire is health care and affordability for Americans,” Greene told Politico. “And that’s where the focus should be.”

For a while, Republicans could dismiss polls showing public unhappiness with Trump as fake news. Such denial has become harder in the wake of this month’s elections, in which Democrats made outsize gains virtually everywhere. As Axios has reported, Republicans are now worried about the possibility of a Democratic upset in a Tennessee district that Trump won by 22 points.

When a president becomes a drag on his party, it can have a psychological effect on partisans. Suddenly, flaws they’d barely registered come into focus. . . . . We may never see a Republican stampede away from Trump, but some of his supporters are experiencing a moment of clarity about his character.

Even before this weekend, many conservatives were livid about an interview he gave to Laura Ingraham of Fox News explaining the need for H1-B visas, which American employers use to hire foreign workers for certain high-skilled jobs. The visas, Trump told Ingraham, were necessary to bring in talent. “We have plenty of talented people,” Ingraham said. “No, you don’t,” Trump replied.

To many Trump supporters, angry about both immigration and an increasingly bleak job market, his words were a slap in the face. “We’ve never seen an administration crash and burn in its first year so badly,” wrote Anthony Sabatini, a Republican county commissioner in Florida.

A few days later, Mike Cernovich, the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theorist and MAGA influencer, posted a surprising critique of the administration. During a visit to Washington, he wrote, “the talk of everyone was how overt the corruption was. It’s at levels you read about in history books.” Many, he said, were asking, “Do people just think Democrats will never win and they’ll all get away with this?”

Now, no remotely savvy person can be surprised by this White House’s epic graft. . . . But as Trump burns up political capital on personal enrichment, some on the right might be starting to suspect that it’s not just the libs being owned.

It was against this backdrop of conservative disaffection that Trump rebuked Greene and Massie. Many right-wing influencers reacted with unusual fury, some posting images of burning MAGA hats. Trisha Hope, a Texas Republican who was at Trump’s rally on Jan. 6, wrote that she was no longer entertained by Trump, and was “beginning to find him repulsive.” Scott Morefield, a columnist for the right-wing site Townhall, called Trump’s posts “cruel in a way that should make any human with basic empathy question what kind of human he is.”

[I]n the past, when Trump has turned on Republicans, his base has tended to follow. Trump ended the political careers of Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, once a darling of the Tea Party; Bob Good, former chair of the right-wing House Freedom caucus; and his own first vice president, Mike Pence. His inability to stand up to Greene and Massie suggests that something has changed.

Trump’s grudging endorsement of the Epstein Files Transparency Act is kind of absurd, since he could, if he wanted, simply instruct the Justice Department to release the files. Even if Khanna’s bill passes the House, Trump will have levers to thwart the files’ disclosure. Republicans might kill the measure in the Senate, where it needs 60 votes. Last week, under pressure from Trump, the Justice Department announced an investigation into prominent Democrats who’ve been associated with Epstein, and the administration may say it needs to keep the files under wraps while that inquiry is open.

But even if the files never come out, it’s increasingly clear that the MAGA coalition is fragmenting. On Monday, I asked Morefield how significant he thought the fissures in the movement were. “I think it’s pretty serious,” he said. “Epstein really started it. It was like the crack in the dam, I think.”

Even if the dam holds for a while longer, we can now see how brittle it is.

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The Felon And the Epstein Scandal

In a sharp reversal, the Felon overnight said that House Republicans should vote for the release of all of the Epstein files.  The Washington Post reports:

In a sharp reversal, President Donald Trump said late Sunday that House Republicans should support a measure that would require the Justice Department to release the information it has related to its investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — after key lawmakers said support was building ahead of a closely watched vote. . . . . Before Trump’s post, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky), who introduced the legislation with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California), suggested that “100 or more” House Republicans could vote in favor of releasing the Epstein files this week despite opposition from Trump.

Why the change?  Obviously, the Felon believes he will lose the vote in the House - and hopefully the Senate as well - and doesn't want a glaring defeat that would be trumpeted by the news media.  This change in posture doesn't demonstrates any interest in doing the right thing, merely not wanting to look like a "loser" or that he has lost his stranglehold over the GOP.  Another possibility is that he believe there will not be 60 votes in the Senate, so he can afford to pretend to support accountability.  Meanwhile, as a piece in the New Republic lays out, the felon remains very panicked by the Epstein files and their possible release:

The key thing about [the Felon's] Donald Trump’s presidency, when you examine it alongside the history of every other Oval Office occupant, is that to understand what drives him day-to-day, you have to have a handle on his psychology—all those twisted urges and impulses that twitch through his brain. This is because so much of what he does is by pure instinct—id unchecked by superego; animal urge unmitigated by conscience. That, plus the fact that all he really cares about is how he looks on TV (more specifically, Fox News and Newsmax). Who can doubt that part of what he loves about bombing those boats in the Caribbean is that he loves seeing them go boom on a big screen?

So, when we analyze this administration, we have to look for the psychological “tells” in a way we simply didn’t with any other president, because the other presidents, no matter their politics, weren’t emotional 5-year-olds who lived in an impenetrable image bubble created and maintained by their staffs and their propagandists with press passes. And the psychological tell of the week? Hauling Representative Lauren Boebert into the White House Situation Room to try to break her down and make her change her vote on the Jeffrey Epstein discharge petition.

Think about this purely as a presidential decision. We don’t know whether this was his idea or if an aide hatched this plan and he liked it, but it amounts to the same thing. Yeah, we can picture Trump thinking: the Situation Room; secret, private, all those fancy screens and maps—that’ll intimidate her.

When LBJ had a recalcitrant member of Congress to win over, he invited him up to the Truman Balcony for a bourbon. Trump locked Boebert in the room that’s supposed to be used to monitor military operations. . . . . willing hacks Pam Bondi and Kash Patel showed up. Wait, what? What was their presence meant to imply? Why did the attorney general and the FBI director need to be present on a legislative matter? Was the idea to hint to Boebert that she could face some sort of legal consequences if she didn’t capitulate? On a congressional vote?

Boebert laughed it all off, but she didn’t cave. In fact, the strong-arming apparently left her all the more convinced Trump may be hiding something. Hard to imagine I’d ever be saying this, but: good for her.

[The Felon] Trump is clearly in a dead panic about this. We saw this week the reason why. Many of the Epstein emails released this week were—at least in the court of public opinion—incriminating to one degree or another; none more so than the one Epstein wrote to an unnamed acquaintance in December 2018, in which he announced: “i am the one able to take him down.” Also: “I know how dirty donald is.”

But just stop and think: We are sitting here, in November 2025, in the middle (or the beginning-middle) of a credible investigation into whether the president of the United States engaged in sex acts with underage girls. (And when media allies such as Megyn Kelly publicly try to finesse the differences between having sex with a 5-year-old versus having sex with a 15-year-old, that’s not a good sign.)

There’s still plenty of reason to think we’ll never get a satisfactory answer about Trump’s place in Epstein’s grotesque constellation of decadent elites. Trump still has a number of roadblocks to put in the way of getting to the point of the files being released. First and foremost, there’s the Senate. Because once the House votes to release the files, then the Senate has to. I haven’t seen much handicapping on this yet. But it would have to clear the 60-vote cloture hurdle, meaning that 13 Republicans would have to vote with the Democrats to bring the matter to final passage.

Then, of course, even if it does pass the Senate, Trump can veto it. At that point, two-thirds of each House would be required to override the veto. And even then, if all that happens, there’s still Bondi. She could just say, No, I’m not going to do it. Yes, that would be defying an act of Congress. Do you really have trouble picturing her doing that?

Of course, if this gets to that point, we’ll have a major national scandal on our hands, for one simple reason that will be crystal clear to a comfortable majority of the American people: If Trump and his goons are going to those lengths to keep these files from being made public, then he must obviously have something bad to hide.

This, however, is different. He’s not defending anything that could remotely be called a principle, and he’s not slaying any America-hating dragons. He’s just covering up his own potential monstrous crimes. Given the way we’ve already seen this issue divide MAGA land, even some percentage of Trump’s hard-shell base will surely see the difference.

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The Felon Lashes Out at Republicans” Demanding Release of Epstein Files

For someone who claims to be innocent of any wrong doing in the context of the Epstein files, the Felon sure is acting very guilty and like someone who has a great deal to hide. Plus, there are reports his name appears in the recently released Epstein emails over 1600 times. Perhaps more dangerous for the nation, he seems desperate to generate distractions to get the media reporting on other stories. The Felon has order the Department of Justice to investigate Democrats even though former prosecutors found no basis for any charges. Perhaps most dangerously, the Felon may well be on the verge of launching a poorly thought out war on Venezuela, allegedly because of drug trafficking, but truth be told, it's all about distracting the media and the public.  Such military action would cost lives - possibly some American lives - not that the Felon cares as demonstrated by the strikes against fishing boats where no proof of drug smuggling has been provided. As for Republicans pushing for the release of the Epstein files, the Felon is downright apoplectic and hash lashed out at Marjorie Taylor Green and Thomas Massie among others.  A piece at Salon looks at the Felon's growing desperation.  Here are excerpts:

President Donald Trump [The Felon] is continuing to distance himself from the fallout of the latest release of Jeffrey Epstein‘s emails, blaming Democrats and criticizing Republicans calling for a full release of the Epstein files.

Trump took to Truth Social today to vent his frustration, calling his involvement with Epstein a “hoax.”

“Epstein was a Democrat, and he is the Democrat’s problem, not the Republican’s problem,” Trump wrote. “Some Weak Republicans have fallen into their clutches because they are soft and foolish,” he said, calling out members of his own party.

Republicans are indeed breaking ranks to join a bipartisan bill demanding the release of the Epstein files. The effort, led by Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Rep. Ro Khana, D-Calif., is gaining traction, so much so that House Speaker Mike Johnson has promised that it will be voted on “next week.”

Massie said that the bill faces an uncertain future, requiring two-thirds of the House to vote in favor to prevent a veto from Trump.

“But if we are somehow able to get two-thirds vote here in the House, that puts a lot of pressure on the Senate, and also, if the Senate does pass it, that’s a very serious step for the president,” Massie told CNN. 

A senior White House official, speaking with CNN, said that Trump and Johnson met and discussed the looming vote before the speaker’s announcement on Wednesday.  “It was made clear to President Trump, and he understands that this is an inevitable reality,” the official said.   

Still, Trump is on the defensive, saying that “Democrats, not Republicans,” are the ones who are involved with Epstein, and calling for an investigation into influential Democrats.  “I will be asking A.G. Pam Bondi, and the Department of Justice, together with our great patriots at the FBI, to investigate Jeffrey Epstein’s involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, J.P. Morgan, Chase, and many other people,” a Thursday post on Truth Social read. 

“This is another Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, with all arrows pointing to the Democrats,” Trump said.   

Again, if the Felon is totally innocent, why the desperation to keep the Epstein files from being released?   I believe we know the answer: the Felon is NOT innocent.

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