Buyer's remorse for MAGA voters?

Also, can you find any area of agreement with Trump policies? Someone can be wrong but still say something right. The questionable source of a truth does not negate the truth in question.

Donald Trump is barely past two months into his second term, and the level of vertigo is dizzying—or is that redundant? I needn’t go through the ways, from his cruel immigration deportations to his menagerie of clowns and incompetents appointed at the highest levels, to gobsmacking, neck-spinning reversals in decades of foreign policies, on to the Executive Order for a “National Strategy to End the Use of Paper Straws” Read that yourself.

So, this craziness got me to ask whether many of Trump voters are starting to question their faith in him. However, asking the reciprocal is also fair play: is there anything Trump has done that anti-Trump voters might find palatable? More on that shortly.

Any signs that some of MAGA is cracking?

Shortly after the election, I proposed that Democrats do not expend political capital trying to protect voters from Trump. Though largely as a result of uncertainty and division rather than as a grand strategy, this seems to be the opposition’s de facto modus operandi. The scores of lawsuits hitting the courts to stop the torrent of blatantly illegal or unconstitutional Executive Orders are coming from affected parties, i.e., advocates for immigrants or fired federal workers; the actual organized opposition, i.e., elected Democrats, has been largely impotent. Maybe that’s a blessing.

That’s because the effects of the Trump Administration’s policies are starting to be noticed by some of those who supported him.

Jennifer Piggott proudly hung a red-and-blue Trump campaign flag outside her one-story home during the November election race. Now, after she was abruptly fired from her civil service job, her days of supporting the president are over.

Or James Crain, an 82-year-old Vietnam veteran and lawyer in Knoxville, Tenn, who voted for Trump in November and applauds the president’s domestic policies.

But lately the self-described “staunch Republican” says the president’s foreign-policy positions are causing him to re-evaluate his support.

…His concern mounted with the news that Germany could pursue its own nuclear defense. He fears Trump will weaken America’s longstanding alliance with Europe and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

“I can see it coming apart, and if it does, we will be in much more danger than we are now,” he said.

Who could have expected that Trump’s threat to deport millions of Hispanic immigrants might cause problems? Jensy Machado

told NBC News he was on his way to work in Manassas with two other men when ICE agents stopped him.

The agents said they were looking for a man with a final order for removal who had given Machado’s home address. He denied knowing the man and offered to show them his ID.

The ICE officer “said just keep my hands up, not moving,” said Machado. “After that, he told me to get out of the car and put the handcuffs on me. And then he went to me and said how did I get into this country and if I was waiting for a court date.

“I voted for Trump last election, but because I thought [he would] go against criminals, not every Hispanic-looking … that they will assume that we are all illegals,” Machado told NBC News, adding “That’s what they’re doing now,” Machado said. “They’re just following Hispanic people.”

To be sure, I’ve cherry-picked these examples. Most Trump supporters have some version of this Trump voter’s rationalization:

Mike Evock, 55, an Army Special Forces veteran and three-time Trump voter in Roxboro, N.C., said the president is headed in the right direction, including by reducing spending and seeking peace in Ukraine. “Some people don’t see the big picture,” he said.

However, I have not come across a single example of a Harris voter who is thinking, “Damn, Trump is doing stuff I really like. He’s got my support now.”

I agree with some of the Trump Administration’s policies.

There, I’ve said it aloud. I could easily fill this space—which is technically unlimited—with all that I find abhorrent in what Trump (and Musk) have done, are doing, and plan to implement. In almost every way I find it wrong—indeed, often criminal—in how they are doing it. Nonetheless, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Bret Stephens, The New York Times’ resident true conservative columnist and long-time Trump critic, recently itemized Trump policies that he likes:

Getting control over the southern border. Strong-arming Mexico into finally surrendering top cartel gangsters to American justice. Finally getting serious about the Houthi threat to global trade. Getting tough on Iran. Abolishing counterproductive D.E.I. programs in the military and other federal agencies. Giving the administration at Columbia University an excellent excuse to get serious about the school’s antisemitism problem. Pushing for an extension of the 2017 tax cuts. Passing a spending bill that avoids shutting down the government (with a brave assist from Chuck Schumer).

If it weren’t for the fact that mentioning all this is like praising a fine meal prepared for me by Chef Hannibal Lecter, I’d almost be happy.

I can subscribe to Stephen’s list, except maybe the tax cut extension, which I think is driving much of the bowdlerizing of government programs, agencies, and people. Those “savings” provide some room for tax cuts without as much of an increase to the national debt.

The area where I can find some common ground with the Trump agenda is DEI. Politically, the focus of the Democrats has been divisive and more counterproductive than a winning policy. That comes through in the substantial erosion of support among the largest constituencies DEI policies are designed for: Black and Hispanic voters. Meanwhile, polling uncovers slightly more negative attitudes (43%) than positive attitudes (39%) toward DEI.

This was recognized long before the November election. According to a Gallup organization survey, “In 2020, the Democratic party held a 77-11 percentage point advantage over Republicans in that demographic, which has sunk to a 66-19 lead.” Similarly, there is only a 12-point gap, 47%-35%, in Hispanic adults supporting Democrats, compared with a 31-point lead in 2021 and a 36-point margin in 2016.

Why is that happening? My take is that the policies of the past 60 years that have worked to eliminate legal barriers that held down those minorities, as well as women, have taken hold.¹ In 2022, 46% of Black and 49% of Hispanic families were middle class. Yes, that still lags slightly behind the 52% of White families in the middle class. It does suggest that Black and Hispanic voters will increasingly be focused on the same issues that animate voters in general, rather than on racial differences.

I’m not here to make the argument for or against the need for DEI (which covers more than race), but why I agree that it has become too salient and does not serve the Democrats’ brand to harp on racial and gender disparities constantly. To their credit, the Harris/Walz campaign did turn down the volume, but Trump had plenty of history to hammer the Democrats with.

Trump and his enablers have gone about the DEI purge with thermonuclear energy that could have been accomplished with a 10-blade. Initially, vanishing the Tuskegee Airmen, Jackie Robinson, and Enola Gay from the Defense Department website should have been an embarrassment, but these folks seem to be impervious to embarrassment).

The Trump Administration could not be more cruel nor extralegal in its procedures, from its immigration roundup to its agency axing, which we can only hope the courts can mitigate.

There are a few other areas where Trump may be doing the right thing. An Executive Order calls on administration officials to create a maritime action plan over the next six months to revamp the American maritime industry. Another clean promotes geothermal energy. (Surprise?) And plastic straws. Yeah, not the best for the environment, but neither is methane from cow flatulence, but that doesn’t convince me to become a vegetarian.

Single-issue voting spells trouble

Where I am going with this is that any of us can choose sides without stipulating to every position that our favorite side espouses. For example, I thought Joe Biden’s mission to wipe all student debt off the books was grossly misguided. I won’t get into my reasoning here. I believe that some of his energy policies, such as limiting liquefied natural gas exports and mandates for electric vehicles that exceeded market acceptance, were unwise. On balance, however, his and a subsequent Harris presidency would hue much closer to the policies I favor than Trump or just about any other Republican today.

What I don’t get is our fellow Americans—some I know personally, others I just read about or see being interviewed—who give their support based on one issue that overrides anything else in that candidate’s portfolio. I’m thinking of you, longtime liberal friend who shall remain nameless, who said she was supporting Trump because of his unyielding support of Israel. Seriously? Just because Biden withheld some 2000-pound bombs and acknowledged the need for more humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza? Or the Michigan community of Palestinians who withheld support from Harris because of her tepid response to their demand for greater pressure on Israel. How has that worked out?

Of course, on the other side, there are those single-issue voters who didn’t like Trump but supported him in 2016 for his pledge to appoint anti-abortion Supreme Court Justices. (That did work out for them) and continued that support in 2024, while rationalizing Trump’s many “faults.” A KFF poll last March found that 12% of voters consider pro-life to be the single most important one that determined their vote in November. These are voters who would—and did—vote for Trump even if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue. Ignoring January 6th was a no-brainer for them.

The bigger picture

What I distilled from the foregoing is that there are many voters—I don’t have the data to put a number on it, probably too many—who only see trees and ignore the forest. Now, with Trump feeling full-bore power, we—as individuals and the media—are consumed by each tree. Depending on where we stand, the tendency is to break things down into categories like “good Trump” and “bad Trump” as we judge each controversy on its individual merits.

Jonah Goldberg², a bona fide anti-Trump conservative and editor of The Dispatch, agrees that “There’s much to recommend this approach. It’s the grown-up, judicious approach, and it’s a bulwark against the more rabid tendency to assume the worst, ignore inconvenient evidence, and refuse to acknowledge that there are good arguments for some things he does.”

So, what’s the problem with taking each tree for what it is and ignoring the forest? The problem is the forest matters too. Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, his scurrilous and sinister war of intimidation against law firms, his relentless pursuit of firing potential dissenters and installing loyalists—many appallingly unqualified for the job—throughout the government speaks to his actual motivations and worldview. Dividing everything into Good Trump and Bad Trump is an artificial distinction imposed on the organic whole of Trump. A Unified Field Theory of Trump ignores this artificial distinction.

At the forest level of analysis, Goldberg suggests that this theory of Trumpism explains the hold he has on MAGA and, to me, explains why finding a leader to take him down is so challenging.

The unified field theory of Trumpism is that Trump is right—about everything—and he has the final say on what counts as right, patriotic, moral, etc. Therefore, people who disagree are not merely wrong, they are enemies of Trump and by extension America. Against tariffs? You must not care about America’s soul! Believe in the rule of law? No man who saves his country can break the law.

At the risk of beating this metaphor to a pulp, returning to the forest floor, it’s going to be necessary to convince the ten or 20 percent of the MAGA faithful who cling to the unified field theory that they can find enough areas of disagreement with the Trump agenda to feel okay with admitting to themselves they can move on without having to buy into everything on the other side.

There are three special elections tomorrow (that is, April 1) that may provide some preliminary hints. Trump carried the two heavily Republican Congressional districts in Florida holding special elections for the House of Representatives by 67%-68%. The Democrats are unlikely to flip those, but if the margins are in the mid-50 range, that would be a positive sign. The election of a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, a state which Trump narrowly won in November, will be another indicator.

I don’t think I have many Trump supporters as subscribers, but if you are, let this community know in the Comments if you have reservations about his actions so far. And, for everyone else, is there any policy (again, separate from how implemented) that you might agree with, even a speck?

1. See

Breaking barriers and filling the pipeline

2. No known relation to Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of The SAtlantic and of recent noteriety from the Houthi Team chat on Signal.