As the midterm elections near, we are hearing a lot about a “split” within the Make America Great Again (MAGA) coalition, which got Donald Trump elected United States president in ۲۰۲۴. I understand the tragedy of MAGA a little differently: not as a split, but as a refusal by the best members of that coalition to abandon the solidarity we’ve formed between us.
I had the privilege of helping bring this coalition together in ۲۰۲۴. It was a collection of groupings traditionally pitted against each other: social conservatives, pro-lifers, devout Christians, devout Muslims, devout Quakers, disaffected leftists, young first-time voters – all coming together behind a Republican candidacy.
Together, we made history and delivered a moral mandate based on a humane concern for the human cost of unregulated borders, thoughtless warmongering overseas and the ruling-class politicking that had allowed a Jeffrey Epstein syndicate to go unpunished while the basic dignity of the “least of our brethren” went untended.
In the campaign’s final stretch, I visited Syrian Christian churches in Pennsylvania and met Americans whose families had personally suffered the worst of what Washington’s foreign policy can do. In those communities, we talked about Gaza, peace and Trump’s promises.
This miraculous, ragtag, all-American patchwork of people who supported Trump in ۲۰۲۴ truly became a people when they discovered their shared belief in the mission of electing a president who would break with the Washington establishment’s inhumane policies.
Today, that coalition is remarkably intact. What is instead happening is that there is a concerted effort to redefine what MAGA is.
In the weeks following the launch of the disastrous US-Israeli war on Iran, Trump announced “I am MAGA” and insisted on including in the brand the ideology of infamous neo-cons like Mark Levin.
As a result, MAGA has now become a blunt instrument of the same war-hungry elites the original coalition aimed to depose. The brand is now on course to be destroyed this November. That, however, says nothing about the goodness and power of the movement that stood behind Trump in ۲۰۲۴.
Perhaps one of the central factors that is driving this process of MAGA destruction is the decision to support, fund and protect Israel at any cost as it carries out a genocide in Gaza and various other atrocities in the Middle East.
And Election Day ۲۰۲۶ will represent the first time the public’s moral indignation fully makes itself felt. But, bafflingly, that’s also the one matter that our most powerful politicians have made a point of doubling down on ahead of the midterms.
Just a few days ago, The New York Times reported that David Milstein, senior adviser to US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and stepson of Levin, repeatedly suppressed or rewrote embassy reporting on Israeli violence against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Milstein allegedly even blocked reporting about the killings of Palestinian Americans by Israeli settlers and security forces. Nevertheless, he still retains his position.
I write this as an American conservative and a Catholic. But at a time when Washington is spending America’s moral authority to shield Israel’s government from accountability while treating Palestinian lives as negotiable, both my deepest-held convictions and my patriotism require that I stand against some of the loudest self-proclaimed “patriots” and “conservative Christians”. Not because I now reject what they claim to represent, but because I still embrace it.
An April survey by Pew Research found that ۵۷ percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents aged ۱۸ to ۴۹ viewed Israel unfavourably. Young conservatives have watched the same harrowing footage of the Gaza genocide as everyone else. Today’s new self-proclaimed leaders of MAGA – a movement that taught the youth to distrust official narratives – cannot reasonably expect them to stop asking questions.
Especially not when there are still plenty of prominent figures who have retained their integrity and still carry the original coalition’s banner.
Trump’s former counterterrorism chief Joe Kent courageously resigned over the Iran war and publicly described the Israeli and lobbying pressure that helped bring it about. Former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard bravely put on record that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon and had not rebuilt its enrichment capability since the ۱۲-day war of ۲۰۲۵, undercutting the “imminent nuclear threat” claim used to justify the war this year.
Former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and Congressman Thomas Massie stood against the Gaza genocide and the Epstein cover-up. Trump and the donor-class backers of his newly adopted neo-con agenda pummelled them: Greene resigned, and Massie lost his primary after a multimillion-dollar campaign to unseat him.
Conservative activist Carrie Prejean Boller defended Christian opposition to Israel’s violence in Gaza and the bigoted ideology of Zionism. She paid a price, losing her seat on Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission, but proved herself a true leader in our movement.
Conservative commentators Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones similarly used their influential platforms to stand up to Trump over the Iran war and against US backing of Israeli abuses of Palestinians.
And consider the comedians and podcasters: Joe Rogan, Theo Von, Tim Dillon and others. Trump’s son Barron was credited with the brilliant idea of bringing his father’s campaign to their audiences in ۲۰۲۴. They graciously opened their platforms: Rogan endorsed Trump, Von interviewed him and Dillon hosted JD Vance after he became the vice presidential nominee.
Now these same voices are condemning the bloodshed and broken promises. From Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank to Iran, Trump has squandered their goodwill.
These political and cultural leaders represent a preview of the future this coalition still has ahead of it. The candidates they eventually support – or themselves, if they run – will be easily recognisable to voters. And I and millions of others will be behind them.
Browbeating the voters whose support the Trump administration betrayed will have exactly the consequences you would expect. The original MAGA coalition will destroy a Republican Party that embraces the policies the movement aimed to destroy all along. On Election Day, the coalition’s moral indignation will fully make itself felt.
Don’t be misled by talk of a “split” in our movement. When the new “MAGA” falls, it will not be due to a disintegration of our coalition. It will be because our coalition is still going strong.
And we have not yet begun to fight.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
