MAGA Is Getting A Divorce
Slowly, then all at once.
This free post is sponsored by Incogni.
Protect your privacy with Incogni.
Use code RICK55 for 55% off Annual Plans and start removing your personal data today.
She was the last of a series of man-on-the-street interviews by NBC’s great Jon Allen at a Pennsylvania gas station, deep in Trumplandia. Her name? Amanda Robbins.
They were all MAGA, but the cracks and worries over the war were creeping in. Some of the Fox talking points were there, some of the reflexive defenses of Trump were present, but there was a brittle edge to it all, a fragility we’re not used to seeing.
Sunglasses on, leaning near her mid-size SUV at a gas pump in Millersburg, PA. When Allen asked what she’d say to Donald Trump right now, she didn’t offer the reflexive, defensive crouch we’ve come to expect. She didn’t offer aesthetic Republican discomfort.
No, she went for the jugular.
“You’re a worthless pile of shit,” she said when asked to address Trump. The words landed with the weight of a decade’s worth of accumulated resentment.
She wasn’t an “infiltrator” or some political false flag. She was of the tribe. She told the camera, with a haunting mix of bitterness and clarity, that she had voted for him three times. Three. Times.
Demographically and socially, she should have been a dead-ender, one of the faithful who would follow the motorcade off a cliff. But something broke. It wasn’t just the $3.54 on the sign behind her, though the cost of living is always a potent catalyst.
It was the stinging realization of a betrayal one time too many. Her closing line was the most telling: “Apparently, I’m an idiot.”
Oh, Amanda. We know it hurts, but you get it. You really do.
For a decade, since those early focus groups where voters insisted Trump was the richest, most successful man to ever breathe, we’ve lived under a spell. 80 million believed then, and about 55 million believe now, that he would both enrich them and punish their enemies. People were so entranced by the mojo that they would deny the reality slapping them in the face.
But that era is passing. The necromantic grip of his decaying claw is slipping.
Make no mistake: there will be a hardcore of sycophants for the next 50 years. Well into the 1960s, there were still Germans who believed that if only the Generals hadn’t betrayed the Führer, the dream would have survived. MAGA is mutating into something perhaps more dangerous, a movement led by people who are more educated, more worldly, and less burdened by Trump’s obvious cognitive decline…but fortunately, they lack his singular, transgressive charisma.
The cracks are widening because the “protection” Trump promised has turned into a predator. If you described Trump’s current platform to his base without using his name, they’d recoil: massive tariffs, that sales tax on the working class, has hit them hardest. The war with Iran is an unpopular foreign entanglement where their sons, not Barron Trump, will go to die. Healthcare subsidy cuts are threatening the Obamacare benefits that his base loves to hate, but equally, they base relies on.
You can’t eat a trans bathroom ban. No ICE deportation army ever filled a pothole or lowered the price of gas. You can’t pay a mortgage on digital rage over imaginary liberal demons. When the economy was robust, it was easy to let those things be the only things.
This free post is brought to you by Incogni.
Every day, data brokers profit from your sensitive info…your phone number, social security number, your date of birth, the password you use all the time, even though you know you shouldn’t.
Why? Because your privacy is big business, and these shady data brokers sell it to the highest bidder. And who’s buying it? If you’re lucky, it’s just companies targeting you with ads.
One way Incogni protects you is by getting your phone number off the dark web.
It may seem simple, but your phone number is one of the top security vulnerabilities scammers and hackers exploit. The BBC recently reported on a call center in Asia where scammers laughed as they stole $250,000 from someone whose number ended up on the dark web. I don’t know about you, but $250,000 is real money.
I was a client of Incogni before they sponsored this Substack, and I can tell you from personal experience, they absolutely get the job done. It’s why I’m proud to recommend Incogni.
I was blown away by how many data brokers had my most personal information…and thrilled to watch Incogni scrub my personal data from the web, confronting hundreds of data brokers. Incogni helped me get my digital life back.
When I added Renee to the plan, she saw a massive dropoff of spam emails and calls, almost overnight.
And unlike other services, Incogni helps remove your sensitive information from all types of brokers, including those tricky, ubiquitous People Search Sites.
The attraction was never about what he was doing; it was about to whom he was doing it. But when the doing starts hitting the voter at the pump in Pennsylvania, the high of owning the libs wears off. Trump sensed this instantly; note how quickly he pivoted his war rhetoric to “they tried to kill me.” He knows he can’t sell the war on its merits, so he has to sell it as a personal vendetta to rally the tribe.
Even the MAGA media feels the shift. Watch an hour of Fox News lately, and you’ll see the anchors looking squirmy, less confident. The old talking points, the ones they used to dust off and deliver with a smirk, aren’t landing the same way.
America’s relationship with Trump has always been grotesque. He was the guy every father feared his daughter would bring home: narcissistic, abusive, and mendacious, yet holding a strange power over her mind. I was lucky that my daughter never had that problem, but it falls into the shotgun-and-shovel category of fears for most girl dads.
We aren’t at a full divorce yet. That hardcore 25–30% will stay until the bitter end. But we are officially sleeping in separate bedrooms. Even the Republican establishment is staring at the ceiling, praying for the day the papers are signed and the house is sold.
I’ve watched MAGA followers willingly break friendships, marriages, and families for a decade.
Watching that Amanda Robbins in Millersburg, PA, and hearing the bitter self-incrimination and recrimination in her voice as she called herself an idiot, felt like watching a ghost realize it’s been haunting the wrong house. The damage will take a generation to heal, but the wind has changed. When the criminality is finally held to account, we can stop pretending this was a “middle finger to the establishment” and admit it was just a long, painful scam.
And here’s the part they don’t want to say out loud: the bill is coming due. Not just for Trump, but for everyone who carried his water, laughed at the cruelty, and called the con a revolution. The war, the lies, the corruption, the cheap theatrics of grievance as governance…it all ends the same way every grift ends, with the mark staring into the mirror and realizing the joke was always on them. Amanda Robbins just said it first.
Millions more will follow. And when they do, there won’t be enough Trump flags to wave, enemies to hate, or conspiracies to hide behind. Just the cold, hard truth that they were played by a washed-up con man who promised them greatness and delivered nothing but ashes.
This free post was sponsored by our friends at Incogni.
"The attraction was never about what he was doing; it was about to whom he was doing it. "
Then some of them realized it was them he was doing it to, in spades.
"Even the Republican establishment is staring at the ceiling"
And thinking of England, no doubt. Remember, Donny is a "Minute Man".
"And here’s the part they don’t want to say out loud: the bill is coming due."
Wait until they're coughing up blood thanks to pollution; and maltreatment because the Trump 'medical' establishment would sell thoughts and prayers to a 4th stage cancer victim. Wait until the uncontrolled mortgage industry starts squeezing, and in the board room, laughing; all the while bundling worthless mortgages together once again for the market. Wait until they discover that the 'Christian education' their children graduated from is equivalent to a 9th grade public school education from Florida. And wait, in their declining years, when they discover that the social net that Trump purposefully frayed is broken, they don't have Medicare or Social Security benefits, and their children, if they have any, aren't interested in having crazy mom or pop around their own children.
Great article Rick! “A washed up con man”. What a great description of Trump. All Trump cates about is enriching himself and his family. He is leaving the country in financial ruin.