Into the Twilight of the Trump Era

What becomes of MAGA as Trump’s hold over the movement is weakening, his ability to integrate its different factions is waning? A deep dive into the state of the fever swamp

By Thomas Zimmer, November 23, 2025

Before we get into it, can I bother you for a minute?

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I admit, until quite recently, I remained skeptical the Epstein scandal (if you’ll allow the use of this rather euphemistic term) would really hurt Donald Trump. It was clear Trump was struggling to shake it off when it roared back onto the agenda in the summer. But when things quieted down between July and November, it once again seemed like Trump was getting away with it, his supporters were falling in line.

When the government shutdown ended on November 12, however, it all exploded. After a pressure campaign by Democrats and, remarkably, some of MAGA’s more prominent political figures, Congress almost unanimously passed (Opens in a new window) legislation demanding the release of the files stemming from federal investigations into Epstein, forcing Trump to sign the bill immediately. It seems undeniable now that Trump’s power has been eroding, his hold over his own movement is weaker than it has ever been since he became the standard-bearer of the political Right almost exactly a decade ago.

This time, he was not able to impose his will, even though he so aggressively tried. Instead, MAGA Republicans broke with him over Epstein, even going directly and publicly against him. Not only are prominent MAGA figures actively preparing for a post-Trump future: They seem to have decided that the best way to position themselves was to signal distance from Trump, rather than to rise through sycophancy and fealty.

Something has shifted in the relationship between Trump and MAGA. As hesitant as I am to write this, I believe we are now entering the twilight of the Trump era. But do not misread this moment: This is no revolt of the “moderates” on the Right that is bringing Trump down, no uprising of the decent. As Trump’s power to integrate the different factions of the MAGA coalition seems to be waning, all the energy in the struggle for control of the Right remains with the more extreme, most conspiratorial factions. Whatever form MAGA takes in the coming post-Trump era, the idea that American politics will soon experience a return to “normalcy” is dangerously fanciful.

“Teflon Don” no more

As Trump emerged as a contender for the Republican presidential nomination over ten years ago, the media quickly applied the nickname “Teflon Don” (Opens in a new window), capturing the perception that this man seemed to rise unscathed from one scandal after another that would have ended anybody else’s political ambitions. The nickname was most infamously applied to New York mafia boss John Gotti in the 1980s when several trials against him ended in acquittals. But it turned out it wasn’t quite true that nothing ever stuck to Gotti: In April 1992, he was finally convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. And Donald Trump was never quite immune from the effects of his many scandals either. While they didn’t bring him down, they always tended to hurt his public standing; there has always been a dynamic with Trump where people like him less the more they actually hear about him, the more he is actually present in their lives. Then again, nothing ever seemed to affect his hold over his base or threaten the personal loyalty that binds the MAGA faithful to him; as a political movement, MAGA has been defined by an authoritarian cult of personality that has grown ever more bizarre; and over the past decade, the Republican Party has ostracized anyone who dared to stand publicly against Trump.

Until now? Trump’s rise on the Right was fueled by conspiracy theories. He entered the political scene as the most prominent proponent of the racist “birther” conspiracy, claiming that Barack Obama had forged his birth certificate and therefore had no right to be president at all. It was never about the details of Obama’s biography but about declaring the first Black president an illegitimate “Other” who could never represent “real America.” That was one part of Trump’s appeal on the Right: He would mobilize whatever force necessary to restore a white Christian patriarchal order and relegate those “Others” to a lesser status. The other part crystallized in his promise to “drain the swamp,” weaponizing a widespread anti-elite sentiment that had radicalized on the far right into the truly deranged fever dream of a satanic cabal of pedophiles controlling the country. Trump was supposed to be the messiah who would deliver the nation. He had trafficked in those very elite circles, of course, but that only meant he knew what America was up against; but he was never, as the MAGA base saw it, one of “them” – he shared their disdain for these elites, was animated by the same grievance. That’s what made him “authentic” in their eyes.

Trump’s involvement with Epstein and the way he has acted to prevent the release of the “Epstein files” that had long acquired mythical status among his supporters have directly undermined this “authenticity.” All the many deranged things Trump says and does: The racism, the sexism, the many forms of bigotry, the assault on basic decency and dignity – to his disciples, Trump was just lustfully owning the Libs. The more open and brazen his transgressions, the more he seemed to be taunting that “system” they detested so much. But his secrecy around the Epstein stuff, that’s different. That’s what those evil elites do!

Will Trump lose his base?

On the MAGA base, the picture remains murky. How much potential is there really for this to sever the ties between Trump and his supporters? One way to approach that question is to get a sense of how many base Trumpists hold QAnon-esque views that might prime them to care about Epstein and view Trump’s behavior as a personal betrayal. We may not talk about QAnon as a distinct movement as much anymore as during the first Trump presidency. But just as Christian nationalism has become so pervasive that it constitutes something of a foundational ideology of Trumpism, we encounter core claims of the QAnon conspiracy far beyond the fringes of the Right. QAnon has festered, spread below the surface, seeped into the foundations of MAGA political identity. Two years ago, in the summer of 2023, the American Values Survey (Opens in a new window) attempted to measure the prevalence of QAnon by asking a representative sample of people whether they agreed with three tenets of the conspiracy theory: “(1) The government, media, and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation; (2) There is a storm coming soon that will sweep away the elites in power and restore the rightful leaders; (3) Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” These questions did not sanitize this inherently violent conspiracy theory – they capture how out there, how deranged and extreme this stuff is. And yet, judged by their answers to these questions, 29% of Republicans qualified as QAnon believers, up from 23% two years earlier – with the survey defining “believers” as: “Respondents who completely or mostly agreed with these statements.” As always with this kind of survey data, it is probably not productive to fixate on the exact percentages, which are inevitably influenced by the specific phrasing of the questions. But I see little reason to doubt the general magnitude of the problem or the devastating trends over recent years.

(As an aside: While support was lower on the Democratic side, the survey encountered the same trends there as well, as the number of Democratic QAnon believers had doubled – doubled! – since March 2021, from 7% to 14%. At least as worrying was the fact that over the same time, the proportion of Democrats who completely rejected QAnon had decreased from 58% to 43%. In general, these results are indicative of a deeply troubled society – a fundamentally unhealthy social and political culture. In a healthy political environment, all those in power, across party lines, would regard this as a national emergency and mobilize all available resources of the state and civil society in an all-out effort to reverse those trends. In America, that is evidently not happening.)

The fact that these beliefs are prevalent does not mean it is guaranteed Trump’s support will crater in these circles. QAnon types obviously have a high tolerance for cognitive dissonance and a remarkable ability to ignore whatever empirical evidence does not align with their claims – that’s what makes it a conspiracy theory. They might just continue to exempt Donald Trump from their rage.

We do not have much yet in terms of concrete empirical evidence regarding the impact of the latest Epstein developments on Trump’s base. But as Philip Bump has pointed out (Opens in a new window) recently, there seems to be a groundswell of frustration among his supporters. Already in August, even among Republicans, where his approval remains very high (in the mid-80s), only a minority was satisfied with how he was handling the Epstein stuff, about a third declared to be properly dissatisfied, and about 20 percent didn’t know where they stood.

If we attempt to map Trump’s base and how they might react, I believe most people will find a way to rationalize their continued support. I expect most of the people who are either committed to a specific ideological project – the ardent white nationalists, for instance – or have institutionalized ties to MAGA, perhaps via evangelical churches, to take this path.

But there will also be people who aren’t willing to take this leap with and for Trump. I know I am painting in broad strokes here, but it might be helpful to distinguish two groups: The highly engaged QAnon-types vs the low-information, low-trust people who certainly don’t like “the elites” and “the system” either but haven’t really centered their private and political identities around QAnon-esque assumptions and are generally not highly engaged in politics. Among those groups, some might pull back from politics entirely, too disappointed to care at all anymore as their chosen messiah turns out to be just another one of those corrupt elites. Others might radicalize further, perhaps concluding that if not even the MAGA insurrection could be trusted to vanquish the evil elites, the only thing left to do is to burn it all down, declare war on the system and all forms of organized politics.

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Who will lead MAGA after Trump?

While the outcome remains unclear, there is no question that the struggle for post-Trump supremacy among the different MAGA factions has begun in earnest. For the first time, political leaders on the Right are acting as if they expect Trump’s reign to end soon. This became particularly obvious when Trump pressured the four Republican Representatives in the House – Thomas Massie, Nancy Mace, Lauren Boebert, and Marjorie Taylor Greene – who supported the Epstein discharge petition. The White House seemed to identify Boebert and Mace, in particular, as the weakest links: Both had never displayed any political commitment but fealty to Trump and a desire to be what the mainstream media loves to call a “MAGA firebrand.” And yet, they wouldn’t budge. Mace wants to run for governor in South Carolina. She evidently decided that siding against Trump in this matter was not going to sabotage her plans – or perhaps even help her.

To some extent, this is just a “normal” political dynamic: This is what happens to lame-duck presidents, especially those who are unpopular. Anyone who wants to be anything in their own party starts to seek distance and strengthen their own profile by separating themselves from the president. The reason why this sort of “normalcy” is remarkable is that the Republican Party, under Trump, had almost entirely stopped functioning according to “normal” rules and conventions, acting like an authoritarian movement defined by a cult of personality instead. In that sense, this sort of “normal” jockeying for position is an indication of Trump’s hold weakening.

But there is also more going on. The overall vibe on the Right has not been great lately. The Republican Party’s resounding defeat in the November election is souring the mood; Trump himself is historically unpopular. Whatever gains he made with young voters and Hispanics, in particular, in the 2024 election he has squandered (Opens in a new window). It is obvious now that the much-discussed rightwing “realignment” was a myth. And it’s not just about election results and poll numbers either: The No Kings protests in October and the way the local population in urban centers is rising up to fight back against the immigration raids by masked agents of the state are evidence that societal resistance has been hardening. 

Against this background, the long-simmering MAGA Civil War has been heating up – several warring factions are now openly claiming the right to ostracize others from the rightwing coalition. There are different overlapping ideological camps: The America First nativists are fighting the tech right; the white supremacists who are propagating a more aggressive form of Christian antisemitism – think Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Nick Fuentes – are attempting to extinguish whatever influence neoconservatism may still exert and they are also fighting against the pro-Israel forces on the evangelical Right. Another axis in these intra-MAGA conflicts is more dispositional than ideological: Between those like Stephen Miller who have been itching to escalate the political conflict much more drastically, especially in the wake of Charlie Krik’s murder, and move to open repression of “the Left” vs those who don’t quite share this appetite for escalation or find it, at the very least, politically unwise.

The tensions between these different factions are not new. MAGA has never been a monolith. As Trump returned to the White House, a key question concerned MAGA’s internal dissent: Would the different factions get along and be able to cooperate within the regime? Or would their infighting and rivalries constitute a serious impediment to Trumpist rule? For the most part, over the past ten months, all factions got to enact their agenda and act out their fever dreams. All at the same time. They were integrated via escalation – by ramping up the fearmongering against a real or perceived enemy and by channeling all internal discontent into aggression towards that enemy. But as the revolutionary zeal tires out and the frustrations are mounting, this doesn’t seem to be working anymore. Most importantly, Trump himself has functioned as an integrating force on the MAGA Right over the past decade. Because he wasn’t tied to any specific ideological position (and didn’t care enough about any particular ideological program), he appealed to all factions simultaneously. But that doesn’t work in the Epstein case, as the fault line within MAGA became, for the first time: Are you with Trump or not?

MAGA is anxious

A nervous, anxious energy defines the Right today. Prominent MAGA figures (Opens in a new window) are publicly losing their nerves, whining about how Trumpism isn’t going far enough, how they fear the vengeance of their enemies as Trump is failing to destroy them.

Marjorie Taylor Greene announcing her resignation (Opens in a new window) will add to the bad vibes. On November 22, Greene surprisingly declared she was leaving Congress in early January. Why now, just after she achieved a big victory over Trump in the Epstein case? Much of this might come down to idiosyncratic personal reasons. Greene seems to be disappointed that Trump wouldn’t support her Senate aspirations in Georgia. It’s also probably not a coincidence that she stays just long enough in Congress to secure a lifelong federal pension after exactly five years in office.

If we assume there is more going on here, it is easy perhaps, to interpret her resignation as evidence that all the talk of Trump’s demise is premature. The list of Republicans breaking with Trump and being forced to resign is long; those who attempted to stay in GOP politics after falling out with Trump, like Liz Cheney, found out that winning a Republican primary as Trump’s declared enemy has basically been impossible. However, Greene doesn’t fit the list of Republican establishment figures capitulating before Trump. She comes from the hardcore MAGA camp herself. Her retreat is not a sign of MAGA ascending, but, more likely, of the MAGA coalition fracturing. I certainly think it is still very difficult for any individual in the Republican Party to win a primary without Trump’s endorsement. He remains the single most influential force on the Right. But the front line has shifted, from MAGA vs “normal” Republicans to MAGA vs MAGA.

Greene’s resignation letter (Opens in a new window) is quite revealing. For defending the movement’s real Christian-nationalist, America First, anti-“globalist” convictions, Greene claims, she was “cast aside by MAGA Inc and replaced by Neocons, Big Pharma, Big Tech, Military Industrial War Complex, foreign leaders, and the elite donor class.” Look beyond the whiny self-aggrandizement, this is one long complaint about MAGA not living up to the promise of toppling the elites, instead becoming part of “the Political Industrial Complex of both Political Parties.” We have not heard something like this from one of MAGA’s most prominent proponents yet. The different factions are no longer aligned behind Trump, integrating them by personality cult or raging against “the Left” isn’t quite working anymore.

Twilight of the Trump era?

There is no realistic path that leads to a quick restoration of “normalcy,” no magic bullet that solves the problem of Trumpism. The Republican Party has been remade in Trump’s image, by forces that pulled the party ever further to the right long before Trump entered the political arena. The political culture on the Right is a militant, paranoid, authoritarian disaster.

Whatever comes next, the movement that controls the levers of state power remains acutely dangerous. What does an authoritarian leader do when he feels his grip on power weakening? Last time Trump was in such a situation, he tried to nullify the result of a democratic election and incited a violent insurrection. One path forward for MAGA, the one people like Stephen Miller desperately demand, is to escalate: Provoke more “emergencies” as pretext, follow through on the threat to criminalize all political and societal opposition for which the regime has given itself a pseudo-legal basis (Opens in a new window) in September, hope to re-integrate the different factions on the Right by radicalizing the “counter-revolution.”

Trump’s rise was not some accidental aberration or the result of a momentary delusion. The forces that made it possible for him to take over on the Right won’t simply disappear as we are entering the Twilight of the Trump era. There are no “moderates” left in a position to recapture the Republican Party. The pressure on Trump isn’t coming from whatever is left of the GOP establishment. In the Epstein case, it came from the MAGA faction so truly bound to their conspiratorial beliefs (or so fully captured by the conspiratorial part of the base) that they overrode their allegiance to Trump. The radicalizing dynamic that has shaped the Right still applies. We are now witnessing the next step on that trajectory.

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