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Robert Klose lives and writes in Orono. His latest book is “Trigger Warning.”
Time after time, I have read about Democrats predicting the collapse of MAGA once it recognizes Donald Trump’s lies (more than 30,000 during his first term in office), his failed promises (prices continue to climb, the war in Ukraine still rages, the cutting of Medicare and Medicaid), and his general lawlessness (troops in the streets of American cities, illegal tariffs, detaining people without warrants or just cause).
What Democrats don’t realize is that Trump’s supporters are already aware of all this, but it has not shaken their allegiance. Here’s the nugget: MAGA is characterized by anger, and Trump is the avatar of this anger. He seems to wake up angry and allows his anger to govern his policy objectives.
Everything Donald Trump has said or done seems designed to hurt somebody: the mass firings of civil servants; the targeting of media outlets that are critical of him; the shake-downs of law firms he regards as enemies; cutting funds for cancer research; deporting student protestors and foreign scholars; mocking a disabled reporter; and perhaps most egregiously, shutting down the Agency for International Development (USAID), a shining light of American generosity and compassion which served some of the poorest of the world’s poor. (By one estimate, the loss of USAID will result in 14 million deaths.) And now Trump is on a targeted, unapologetic mission to prosecute his perceived enemies.
MAGA cheers all of this on, excusing Trump’s mendacity and personal deficiencies (which are legion) so long as the mean-spiritedness, which typically reflects their own, is directed at someone else. And some of it is so gratuitous. Take the removal of almost 400 titles from the U.S. Naval Academy’s Nimitz Library because they didn’t chime with Trump’s personal ideology, or the removal of Acadia National Park signs that refer to climate change. What purpose is served by these moves, other than gratifying the dark needs of a seemingly friendless, vindictive man intent on a politics of personal grievance?
Donald Trump, by his own admission, doesn’t read books. And according to the journalist Michael Wolff, he doesn’t listen to advisors. Without external input, the only tools remaining for Trump are impulse and gut instinct. These are manifested in his reflexive anger as crystallized in his incessant, often derogatory, and frequently profane, media postings. But rather than reflecting the considered views of a statesman, they amount to no more than rants with a consistent edge of malevolence.
But MAGA adherents generally have no objection because, again, they feel they have been hurt (in some obscure, hard-to-identify way), and now they want somebody else to be hurt. Trump is willing to do the hurting. Despite his lies, failed promises, and illegal actions, he’s their man.
The Democrats therefore need to be clear-eyed about what they’re dealing with. Hoping that MAGA will see the error of its ways and reject Trump’s cruelty and duplicity amounts to little more than crossing one’s fingers. It’s just not the way cults operate. The message of the cult leader is: Follow me, do as I say, and you’ll enjoy material and spiritual wealth beyond your wildest dreams. This is likely why Trump habitually speaks in superlatives — the greatest economy, the greatest jobs producer, the greatest president, and my favorite, “the best words.” Who wouldn’t want to be associated with such a winner, whatever his personal shortcomings?
Since conversion of the MAGA faithful is not realistic, I believe the only remedy is a resounding blue tsunami in the 2026 mid-term elections. I am heartened by knowing that there are more opponents than supporters of Trump. The challenge, then, is getting Democrats and independents to vote like their country depended on it, and to echo the words of Theodore Roosevelt: “Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president.”
