Who is 'The Movement'?
Movements survive their leaders... and Trump's MAGA base will be no exception.
Press freedom and freedom of speech are being threatened everyday in the United States. Billionaires like Musk and Trump want you to believe that a free press isn’t critical to a democracy. Companies like Fox, CNN, and other mainstream media companies pander, and in some cases have even paid Trump in a preemptive surrendering (looking at you Paramount). I need your support to keep this tiny little space pumping out work. From video explainers, to articles, it would be a huge help if you could subscribe. Thank you so much.
This should act as a warning for those who are claiming that “this movement won’t survive” if Donald Trump gets 25th’d, or somehow removed from office, or just becomes a lame duck earlier than anticipated because the Christian nationalist and right-wing extremist GOP Trump base decides they want to move on from him.
I saw this comment on a TikTok video by creator Brenna Pérez (@perezbrenna).
“Cults do not survive a change of leadership. I don’t care if they planned this - it’s not going to work.”
There is a lot of this going around right now in the internet and in general. A sense of a momentum shift as Trump wades through Epstein waters. For the first time, a true sense of fracturing with Trump and his literal cult following, has emerged as the Epstein files campaign promise is being broken by Trump (super shocking, I know). His supporters aren’t letting him hear the end of it, and the democrats, whether serious about it or not, are stoking the flames and baiting the Republicans to release them. It was again a campaign promise, and as one Trump supporter I spoke to recently who has been a supporter since his first term about it said, “Trump’s done. Everyone’s turning. This was a major issue for the movement.”
It was the first time I’d ever seen that comment from someone so committed and steadfast in the MAGA world responding in that manner. They were quick to reiterate that Trump wasn’t the leader of “the movement”, and that there were others who were better or smarter, but Trump’s advantage was that he had the medias arm and that that was the only reason he was ever chosen, and why he is still around today. In the litany of mis and disinformation they (the person I was speaking with) were spewing at me about this subject, that stood out. And we are seeing it en masse.
What stuck out to me the most, though was their very specific words of choice. “The movement.” It felt very Handmaid’s Tale to me. “Under his eye” kind of vibes.
When people talk about the Trump base, and how unabashed and steadfast they are in preserving their loyalty to him and him only, it often ends up in you realizing that no matter what you say to them, they will not budge. Conversation after conversation, argument after argument, speech after speech. They are unmoved. Unconvinced. If anything, they just dig their feet in more every single time someone decries Trump and his agenda, or some kind of news comes out that isn’t friendly to this MAGA movement. And I think that’s sort of the point. There is no convincing them. I don’t believe there ever was. The country has been riding down this treacherous MAGA train since 2015, when Trump beat Jeb! Bush in the New Hampshire primaries, all be sealing the fate of the legacy power names in politics to whatever degree they were successful (some not so much) - The Bush’s, the Clinton’s, Christie, Cruz, Rubio. Once the train left the station, it wasn’t coming back.
That’s not a congratulations, or an acknowledgement of some kind of achievement. That’s just literally what happened. And we can see it now in real time. For those who have been screaming from the rooftops since Trump lost in 2020, him losing almost felt like delaying the inevitable. There was no one else who was going to take his place. But it wasn’t because Trump was the train. It’s just that he was the conductor. He said the quiet parts out loud first, and said them the loudest. He said fuck institutional norms and decorum, it’s not doing us any good anymore. He picked at every single insecurity and rotten part of the apple in people that he could get his hands on. That resonated with people immensely. It gave the loud minority a fucking megaphone they haven’t had in a very long time. And unfortunately it’s dragged otherwise normal, sometimes even intelligent people into the cult.
So, as the American middle class has been getting ripped off for almost a half a century, at the direction of conservative policies mind you, they have watched their roads get worse, their schools budgets get cut, their VA benefits and veterans support not taken care of, multiple wars costing in the trillions of dollars, their manufacturing jobs leaving, and their pensions, 401Ks, and financial padding lost during a financial crisis, the Covid pandemic, and millionaires and billionaires get richer as their taxes get lower. Trump capitalized off of that anxiety, and off of American’s worst traits as a collective society, and put the pedal to the metal on all of them.
Moving backwards for a second…
The United States benefited from decades of pre and post World War II progressive policies. Listing only just a few, we had voting rights including women’s suffrage, the civil rights movement which included the Civil Rights Act, economic reforms like child labor laws enacted, strong labor unions, the federal trade commission, the 40 hour work week. Public health and social welfare were finally considered at a federal level. We ended up getting Medicaid and Medicare. We had Roe V. Wade. We even had environmental wins, with Theodore Roosevelt being one of the leaders for the national parks and forests. As someone from New Hampshire, I’ve heard the stories about how it was completely deforested. I was of the generation who benefited from this and was able to see the White Mountains with green and trails as far as the eye could see. There are scores more of progressive policies that today are being ripped out from underneath us.
Meanwhile in the background, far right-wing, Christian nationalist and conservative movements have been chipping away and chipping away for years. Coalition building, raising billions and billions of dollars, forming foundations like the Heritage Foundation, who were directly involved in making the manifesto like document called Project 2025. Adding some context, that document was written in 2023, but is the 9th installment of the “mandate for leadership” series, dating back to 1981.
Trump is not the leader of this movement. He is the figurehead. He’s not the first figurehead of a movement, and he won’t be the last.
But here is the thing - Trump is not the leader of this movement. He is the figurehead. He’s not the first figurehead of a movement either, and he won’t be the last. Not for the MAGA cult, not for conservative politics, not for any movement.
That is an especially important distinction, because it lays the groundwork for understanding what the conservative movement has been for over 40 years, and what it will continue to be when he inevitably is no longer part of American politics. Project 2025, The Heritage Foundation, and many others are pulling the levers of power, and are attempting, and succeeding, at creating a vacuum of it within the executive branch. Trump’s claim that he knew nothing about Project 2025 was a clear and obvious lie. So it’s no accident that over 60% of the project’s goals have already been successfully implemented in the first 6 months of his presidency.
What makes this all so dangerous is that they all lined up behind Trump. From politicians like Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio, Jim Jordan, Tom Cotton, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, to right wing personalities like Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon (who was apart of his first presidency), Stephen Miller, and the scores of other personalities who have been steadfast in their push for a right wing, Christian nationalist country, they found their megaphone and fell in line right away. I’ve honestly barely scratched the surface and the list is exhaustive.
Suffice to say, they are either working in the shadows, hiding behind banal corporatized names like “The Heritage Foundation”, or worse, they are currently working inside of the White House. And you need people in power to actually conduct official business. You need lawmakers, and you need candidates for the highest office. And it doesn’t stop at the President. In fact that’s typically where it starts.
And as it turns out, there is one person in particular that found his way to first in line to succeed him. J.D. Vance. This wasn’t an accidental pick for Vice-President. He’s a yes man. He went from “I am a never Trump guy” to the VP of the United States, on the same ticket as Trump himself. Vance went from Hillbilly Elegy to touting Trump policy and defending him and making a mockery of the Oval Office in the meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. The most damning evidence of this complete power grabbing 180 was the NY Times article by Education Reporter Stephanie Saul.
In it, a treasure trove of evidence that Saul poured over, shows a once halfway understanding Vance, and the transformation in his rise for power. Saul reviewed over 90 emails and text messages, spanning from 2014 to 2017, according to the article. It goes into detail how Vance betrayed his once friend Sophie Nelson, a former law school classmate of Mr. Vance, and where it all went wrong.
Vance’s turn into the lap dog of the Trump 2.0 presidency is laughable, but it’s also frightening. It shows a person who was and is willing to exploit everything that he held dear, for pure, raw power. He has completely embodied the Trump doctrine. And he has become a religious person as well, even so far as being confirmed into the Catholic church, and in doing so, wrote about his journey in a Catholic journal called The Lamp. In and of itself, that is irrelevant individually. But Vance has sharp ties with the Christian nationalist movement. According to a 2024 article by PBS News Hour, it underscores a sharp shift in policy, and a philosophical journey that began as a college student and grew to what he is today.
GOP vice presidential candidate JD Vance attended a town hall organized by top Christian nationalist leaders. The event’s host, Lance Wallnau, is a leading figure in a far-right movement that wants to erase the separation between church and state.
-PBS News Hour Report
If you’re asking what point I am trying to make, fair. My point is, J.D. Vance is the very likely going to be the far-rights pick for the next President of the United States. Seeing how quickly Trump’s most fervent supporters turned on him over one campaign promise (albeit one of the most important ones in their eyes), and understanding that that holds no bearing on the fact that “the movement” has no plans of stopping their momentum, it only makes sense that Vance is the person next in line. He’s the Vice President, he’s under 40 years, he’s a Catholic with ties to Christian nationalists, and he’s a ‘yes’ man.
And even if he’s not, it won’t matter. The movement doesn’t hinge on one person, it hinges on the collective idea of “the movement.” It is any one person who desires a white, Christian nationalist, anti-immigration focused government that is hellbent on “Making America Great White and Christian Again.” While it may be true that not all 77 million Americans who voted for him feel like that, enough of them do.
Again, Project 2025 is designed to vacuum as much power as possible, as quickly as possible. I talk about this in my YouTube Video about Project 2025. This isn’t to garner short-term power. This is very much designed to be a new world order. Their plan to gut agencies like Department of Education, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), restrict voting rights, LBGTQIA+ rights, civil rights, continue to and EXPAND the militarization of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) with a massive budget increase so large it makes it one of the most funded agencies in the world, over most the world’s militaries, is very much their desire.
It would behoove us all to understand that Project 2025 and the conservative movement, has power in all three government branches right now, plus many cozy federal judges and Supreme Court judges. This allows for unadulterated power to continue this frenzy up until at least the 2026 midterms, or worse, the 2028 presidential election.
As stated at the beginning, I would caution, and even warn those who are sitting on their seats waiting to cheer if Trump gets dethroned as the leader of the MAGA movement and the GOP, that his eventual end will not mark the end of that movement. That will be up to everyone else.
Press freedom and freedom of speech are being threatened everyday in the United States. Billionaires like Musk and Trump want you to believe that a free press isn’t critical to a democracy. Companies like Fox, CNN, and other mainstream media companies pander, and in some cases have even paid Trump in a preemptive surrendering (looking at you Paramount). I need your support to keep this tiny little space pumping out work. From video explainers, to articles, it would be a huge help if you could subscribe. Thank you so much.