Thursday, November 13, 2025

MAGA INFLUENCERS TURN ON TRUMP -- BUT NOT BECAUSE OF EPSTEIN

If you're MAGA, the most consequential news of the week had nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein or the reopening of the government. It was this:
President Donald Trump defended H-1B visas during an interview that aired Tuesday night, arguing foreign labor is needed at times because U.S. workers do not have "certain talents."

Trump made the remarks during a Fox News interview when asked whether his administration would prioritize the costly visas that allow skilled workers from overseas to temporarily work in the United States. He said the United States has to “bring in talent.”

When pressed by Fox News host Laura Ingraham, who said, "We have plenty of talented people here," Trump responded: “No, you don’t have — you don’t have certain talents. And you have to — people have to learn.”
How offensive is this to MAGA? Consider Anthony Sabatini, a former Florida state legislator who was so MAGA that he proposed naming a Florida highway for Trump two weeks after January 6. He now says:


The messages get nastier. Here's one from Andrew Torba, founder of the right-wing social media site Gab (which uses an anti-Indian slur in its first bullet point):


Here's a Twitter poll from Mr. Pizzagate, Jack Posobiec:


This is from a podcaster with more than a quarter million Twitter followers:


This one has more than a hundred thousand followers:


Here's a former Infowars correspondent:


And while I'm not sure the account where this appears is the authentic account of Aleksandr Dugin, the ultra-nationalist philosopher known as "Putin's Brain," it has approximately 375,000 followers:


More from the Dugin account:


So you can see where this comes from:


(I think Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is right when she says that Greene is angry at Trump because he put the kibosh on her ambition to run for Jon Ossoff's Senate seat in Georgia, but I think Greene's conspiratorialist paleoconservatism is increasingly at odds with Trumpism.)

MAGA influencers know that the economy sucks. They know that Trump is trying to cover up his relationship with Epstein. They know Trump takes advice from CEOs who don't think immigrants are evil. And they know that the GOP mainstream is pushing back against open anti-Semitism on the right. In The New York Times today, Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, shamelessly and unconvincingly proclaims that he didn't know enough about Nick Fuentes's racism when he defended Tucker Carlson's softball interview with Fuentes. I don't know which is worse: the fact that the Times describes this as a mere "gaffe" or the fact that Roberts will probably hang on to his job after this recantation. But the fact that he felt compelled to recant is clearly infuriating to many anti-Semitic influencers.

Anti-Semitism is probably the future of MAGA. I was poking around the right-o-sphere this morning and came upon this post from Rod Dreher, good buddy to J.D. Vance and Ross Douthat. He sees anti-Semitism as deeply embedded in right-wing culture, especially in Gen Z, a fact that was confirmed for him after a visit to Washington, where he hung out with Vance:
The claim that I first floated in this space last week, quoting a DC insider who said that in his estimation, “between 30 and 40 percent” of the Zoomers who work in official Republican Washington are fans of Nick Fuentes — that’s true. Was confirmed multiple times by Zoomers who live in that world.

... Even young Christians — especially trad Catholics, I learned — are neck-deep in anti-Semitism. They even use it as a litmus test of who can and can’t join their informal social groups.

Not every DC Zoomercon who identifies with Fuentes agrees with everything he says, or the way he says it. What they like most of all is his rage, and willingness to violate taboos. I asked one astute Zoomer what the Groypers actually wanted (meaning, what were their demands). He said, “They don’t have any. They just want to tear everything down.”
More:
I told one very smart and decent Zoomercon who despises the anti-Semitic turn in his circles that I’ve been hearing that fascism — actual ideological fascism, not the media’s idea of anybody to the Right of Lindsey Graham — is gaining traction among young white British males.

He said, innocently, “So what’s wrong with fascism?” He meant it, not in a challenging way, but in a way that conveyed the sense of we have to think about this now. He talked about how the disintegration of our culture is accelerating, and liberal democracy seems impotent to stop it. He went on to explain that if he had to choose between living under left-wing authoritarianism or the right-wing version, then that wouldn’t be much of a choice. To be clear, he wants neither, but he fears that the disintegration of our culture is going to put us all in the position to have to reconcile ourselves to one or the other.
I don't know the extent to which this influences rank-and-file Trump fans, but we may be heading for the moment when Trump is rejected for not being right-wing enough. Remember: Conservatives believe that conservatism can never fail. It can only be failed.
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