{"id":297,"date":"2026-04-30T09:25:20","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T09:25:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/30\/is-trump-losing-the-support-of-his-maga-base\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T09:25:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T09:25:20","slug":"is-trump-losing-the-support-of-his-maga-base","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/30\/is-trump-losing-the-support-of-his-maga-base\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Trump losing the support of his Maga base?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In an interview with NBC News in January 2026, Donald Trump said<\/a>: \u201cMaga is me. Maga loves everything I do.\u201d Until recently, this statement was true. But over the past several months, cracks have begun to appear in the loyalty of the US president\u2019s \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d base.<\/p>\n

Two of the movement\u2019s most prominent figures \u2013 former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene<\/a> and conservative political commentator Tucker Carlson<\/a> \u2013 have voiced their discontent with the leader they previously lavished with unconditional support.<\/p>\n

Greene\u2019s falling out with Trump was rooted in her advocacy for releasing the investigative files related to late child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. But it also centred on her discomfort with US support for Israel and a sense that Trump had abandoned his \u201cAmerica first\u201d<\/a> campaign promises.<\/p>\n

In December 2025, Greene told CNN that \u201cthe dam is breaking\u201d<\/a> on Trump\u2019s grip over the Republican party. As an example<\/a>, she pointed to the 13 Republicans who voted with Democrats that month to overturn an executive order that allowed Trump to fire federal employees. Greene resigned<\/a> from the House of Representatives in January.<\/p>\n

Carlson\u2019s more recent break with Trump was equally dramatic. \u201cI don\u2019t hate Trump,\u201d he told<\/a> the Wall Street Journal in an interview released on April 25. \u201cI hate this war [in Iran] and the direction this US government is taking.\u201d Carlson went so far as to apologise to the public for \u201cmisleading\u201d them into voting for Trump in 2024. <\/p>\n

In a week when an attempt to assassinate Trump is once again headline news<\/a>, we are reminded of Carlson\u2019s take on a previous attempt on the US president\u2019s life in 2024. Carlson had invoked<\/a> \u201cdivine intervention\u201d to explain Trump\u2019s survival of that attempt, declaring \u201csomething bigger is going on here\u201d. <\/p>\n

At that point, the president had religious-right elites firmly on his side. This fervour has dissipated<\/a> in recent times. But are Greene and Carlson representative of a broader problem for the Maga movement, or are they just a pair of high-profile defections and nothing more?<\/p>\n

Putting \u2018America first\u2019<\/h2>\n

The grievances and concerns outlined by Greene and Carlson are real. When Trump ran for president in 2016, he broke with Republican orthodoxy by denouncing<\/a> the Iraq war as a catastrophic mistake. He promised to extract the US from costly foreign wars and put America ahead of global policing commitments.<\/p>\n

His first-term record was somewhat mixed, but the key takeaway was that no new major wars were initiated. On the 2024 campaign trail, Trump repeated these earlier<\/a> pledges. He said he would end<\/a> the Ukraine war within 24 hours and keep the US out of new conflicts. Trump has clearly reneged on these commitments.<\/p>\n

The Iran war is broadly unpopular with the US electorate. Polls show that more people are against the war than support it. On average, 15% more people oppose<\/a> than back it, and in some recent surveys that gap is even bigger, with up to 27% more people against than in favour. About 75% of US adults also now describe the economy<\/a>, which is being affected<\/a> by higher prices, as \u201cvery\u201d or \u201csomewhat\u201d poor. <\/p>\n

This dissatisfaction is visible among Republicans voters, though probably not to an extent that suggests support for Trump is in danger of imminent collapse. Recent polling<\/a> by the Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research indicates that, while dropping by 13 percentage points compared to a year ago, 38% of Republican voters still \u201cstrongly\u201d approve of Trump\u2019s presidency.<\/p>\n

At the same time, there are some signs that Trump\u2019s core Maga base remains largely steadfast in its support, despite the very vocal dissent from some. The same poll found that roughly 90% of Americans who self-identify as \u201cMaga Republicans\u201d approve of Trump\u2019s overall job performance. Another survey by NBC suggests<\/a> that 87% of these people currently approve of his handling of the war in Iran. <\/p>\n

While these surveys are unlikely to capture the full range of sentiment within the Maga movement, they still indicate that Trump retains a solid core of support from members of this group. However, if the conflict drags on and economic pain deepens, the room for elite dissatisfaction to percolate down to the base is likely to widen.<\/p>\n

Presidential ambitions<\/h2>\n

There may be other reasons explaining why Carlson, in particular, has broken with Trump. As Jason Zengerle, a journalist at the New Yorker magazine and the author of a biography of Carlson, put it recently<\/a> when discussing Carlson\u2019s reversal on Trump: \u201cHe\u2019s also sort of making a political move.\u201d Various media outlets have suggested that Carlson<\/a> may be eyeing a 2028 presidential run. <\/p>\n

Some commentators, including White House counterterrorism adviser Sebastian Gorka, have drawn parallels<\/a> between Carlson and Pat Buchanan. In the 1990s, Buchanan challenged President George H.W. Bush over the Gulf war and reshaped<\/a> the Republican party\u2019s ideological trajectory even without winning its presidential nomination.<\/p>\n

Greene has floated Carlson for president. In a social media post in March, she wrote<\/a>: \u201cI SUPPORT TUCKER. Trump doesn\u2019t even know what Maga is anymore.\u201d Carlson, for his part, has publicly dismissed<\/a> a presidential bid. <\/p>\n

But this rebranding exercise, of attempting to seize the Maga label from Trump and attach it to a new vessel, is a significant development. It suggests that \u201cAmerica first\u201d is no longer exclusively synonymous with one figure.<\/p>\n

The looming question is whether this seed of elite discontent can grow into something organisationally meaningful before 2028, when Americans elect their next president.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Clodagh Harrington does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In an interview with NBC News in January 2026, Donald Trump said: \u201cMaga is me. Maga loves everything I do.\u201d Until recently, this statement was true. But over the past several months, cracks have begun to appear in the loyalty of the US president\u2019s \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d base. Two of the movement\u2019s most prominent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}