Simon Rosenberg flags something of interest, about how MAGA voters are unhappy with the way things are going.
Of course this represents an extraordinary betrayal of what the flim-flam confidence man promised the American people when he ran last year. This sense of betrayal is captured in a new and truly remarkable Washington Post story this morning, MAGA leaders warn Trump the base is checking out. Will he listen? A passage (gift link):
a growing chorus of faithful MAGA supporters who have begun raising concerns over what they see as Trump’s second-term shortcomings. In recent weeks, pockets of the president’s base — well-known for its unwavering dedication to Trump and his MAGA agenda — have accused the president of focusing too much on foreign affairs, failing to address the cost of living issues he pledged to fix, aligning himself too closely with billionaires and tech moguls, and resisting the release of more investigative files on the deceased sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.
Across the conservative spectrum, a steady drumbeat of commentators have warned that Trump’s coalition is weakened, and the party is headed for defeat in November’s midterms elections. There are concerns that the base won’t show up over frustrations that Trump hasn’t pursued the MAGA agenda aggressively enough. And others worry economic concerns could threaten his standing with the independent voters key in next year’s midterms.
Now let’s spend time with the comments for this story from Mark Mitchell, the lead pollster for Rasmussen, the most important of the right-aligned red wave pollsters, a man whose blood flows as MAGA red as anyone in America:
As Donald Trump ate his crab cake lunch inside the White House last month, conservative pollster Mark Mitchell tried to explain that there was a disconnect between what the administration seemed to be focused on, and what Trump’s passionate base of supporters want to see.
“Sir, you got shot at the Butler rally,” Mitchell said, invoking the “really strong optics” of Trump raising his fist in defiance after the attempted assassination in July 2024.
“You said, ‘Fight, fight, fight.’ But nobody ever clarified what that means,” Mitchell continued. “And right now, you’re fight-fight-fighting Marjorie Taylor Greene, and not actually fight-fight-fighting for Americans.”
The head pollster at Rasmussen Reports warned Trump that many of his supporters believe he hasn’t “drained the swamp” in Washington, and suggested the president refocus with a plan to embrace “pragmatic economic populism.”
“To the extent to which we were talking about the economic populism message, he wasn’t as interested as I would have hoped,” Mitchell said, adding that it was a “long-ranging conversation.”
And…..
Mitchell was invited to the White House by Vice President JD Vance, who follows him on X and has communicated with Mitchell about polling in recent months. Before lunch with Trump, Mitchell met with Vance, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Mitchell is not part of the president’s political operation, but Trump’s advisers were interested in hearing his outside perspective, a White House official told The Post.
Mitchell said Trump listened to his concerns and asked questions, but eventually pivoted to one of his favorite conversation topics: golf. He gushed about two of his golf partners, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and Fox News host Bret Baier, both of whom are the subject of MAGA-faction ire. Trump also bragged about how much money he had raised during a golf fundraiser for Graham the weekend before, a day after he declared he was rescinding his support for Greene.
In an interview, Mitchell suggested that it would have been better for the administration to acknowledge early on that repairing the economy would take significant changes and would not occur overnight.
“The very first thing they shouldn’t have done is lower gas prices one dollar and then say, ‘The Golden Age is here,’ ” he said.
And……
Many supporters like her have been turned off seeing what was once a full calendar of rallies in Middle America replaced with opulent events with business leaders, deal-signings with billionaires and travel to other continents. While meeting with Trump, Mitchell told the president his base of supporters wanted to see him “smash the oligarchy, not be the oligarchy.”
“Building billionaire-funded ballrooms and jet-setting around the world and trillion-dollar investment deals looks a lot like oligarchy stuff,” Mitchell told The Post.
Crab cakes, golf outings, fundraising, gilded ballrooms and oligarchy – just OMFG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Let me start by saying that I drafted this during Christmas week, which is to say before Venezuela and the brutal murder of Renee Nicole Good. Whatever might have been true then is almost certainly more so now. Hearing these comments is of course political crack for those of us who are viewing next year with something between hope and wild-eyed optimism/desperation. There’s a point I want to make about this but first have a look at this Politico piece, cut from a similar cloth.
The road to the tiny hamlet of Marion in northwest Montana is lined with the thick trees of the Flathead National Forest, with modern homesteads of trailers and modest homes dotting clearings here and there. Outside a timber frame café called the Hilltop Hitching Post, one of the only gathering spots for Marion’s population of less than 1,200, hunter Terry Zink pulled up in a dusty, well-used F-150 pickup and got out wearing a camo jacket against the early September chill, and a ball cap atop wire-rimmed glasses.
Zink, 57, is a third-generation houndsman who hunts big game, including mountain lions and bears. He also owns an archery target business. He’s a rural Montanan whose way of life and livelihood depend on public lands.
He led me into the Hilltop, where half the people inside knew his name, to a corner where we sat drinking diner coffee. “You won’t meet anyone more conservative than me, and I didn’t vote for this,” Zink said.
“This” is the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) deep cuts earlier this year to federal public lands agencies’ funding, and to the staff at those agencies who administer that funding and steward public lands and wildlife.
Zink voted for Trump but said he doesn’t agree with everything the president does. Zink clarifies he calls himself a “conservative” over calling himself a “Republican.” He doesn’t like Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric. “I prefer common sense in the middle,” he said.
He believes wolves need to be hunted to manage their numbers; abortion should only be legal in cases of rape, incest and to protect the mother’s life; and he’s an ardent Second Amendment supporter. He’s also a passionate advocate for public lands and wildlife. And the cuts have, frankly, ticked him off.
He is vocal not just about protecting public lands, but also about protecting the staff at those agencies. “We have to listen to our wildlife biologists. We have to be strong advocates for those people,” Zink said.
Hunting season had yet to open when we spoke, but Zink was already hearing from fellow hunters who had to cut their own way into trails to hunting camps after Forest Service trail crews were laid off en masse. He worries about wildlife management with agency scientists also terminated.
Zink’s story is just one example of how the DOGE cuts to public lands agencies are hitting rural, conservative communities — one of this administration’s strongest voting bases — the hardest. Starting in February, an estimated 5,200 people have been terminated from the agencies that manage the 640 million acres of federal public lands in the U.S. That number doesn’t include the many who took the administration’s buyout or early retirement offers also meant to cut staff. Further, Trump’s 2026 budget proposes more budget cuts and a reduction of nearly 18,500 more public lands employees.
We’ve all read enough “I didn’t vote for this” pieces to have a certain level of skepticism about them, but I found this one to be nuanced and engaging enough to cut it some slack. What both of them have in common is the notion that all of the Trumpian bullshit this time around may have a real dampening effect on Republican turnout in 2026, which combined with Democratic engagement and Latino retrenchment is another big problem for Republicans. And again, the awful and terrifying events since then magnify all that. What I would note is that Republicans didn’t have a turnout problem in 2018, at least not here in Texas. They went and set a record for off-year turnout as well, which was enough for them to hold onto statewide offices. But some backsliding, or even just softening, of their base turnout next year could mean the difference between yet another “better luck next time” and history being made.
Again, it’s early and all that. And Lord knows, we’ve clung to this kind of hope for longer than I can remember. All I’m saying is that this is another dimension to the picture for this year. We have very little control over it, much less than we have over turning out our people or convincing the persuadables to switch or come home. But it’s there and we should be aware of it. If nothing else, it may tell us we should be going bigger as we get closer to next November.