{"id":936472,"date":"2026-10-17T13:44:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-17T13:44:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/936472\/"},"modified":"2026-10-17T13:44:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-17T13:44:15","slug":"ive-spent-most-of-the-year-talking-to-maga-supporters-here-are-5-thing-ive-learned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/936472\/","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019ve spent most of the year talking to MAGA supporters. Here are 5 thing I\u2019ve learned"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n EDITOR\u2019S NOTE:\u00a0 Watch the CNN documentary, \u201cMAGA Ever After?<\/a>\u201d premiering tonight at 8 p.m. ET\/PT on \u201cThe Whole Story with Anderson Cooper.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\n The backlash President Trump has received from his base over going to war with Iran is unprecedented in the 10-year history of the MAGA movement.\n <\/p>\n

\n This, along with the economy, inflation,<\/a> his administration\u2019s handling of the Epstein files, and Trump\u2019s closeness to tech billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg and support for their building of massive AI data centers, is testing the loyalty of the president\u2019s base.\n <\/p>\n

\n I\u2019ve spent much of the last decade covering the MAGA movement and most of the last year traveling the country for the documentary, \u201cMAGA Ever After?<\/a>\u201d which premieres tonight at 8 p.m. ET on CNN.\n <\/p>\n

\n In the doc we meet some former Trump faithful who have broken with the president in his second term, along with those who remain as loyal to him as ever. We also ask what\u2019s next for the Republican Party as it comes to terms with the prospect of a post-Trump future.\n <\/p>\n

\n After speaking to hundreds of Republicans over the last few months, here are five of my takeaways:\n <\/p>\n

\n Four weeks into the war, I went to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas. Like just about everything in Republican politics, the annual gathering of the conservative faithful has transformed over the last decade into MAGA\u2019s image. The event has become a multi-day rally of the Trump base.\n <\/p>\n

\n It was notable then, among the dozens of people I spoke to, how vocal many were in their criticism of Trump.\n <\/p>\n

\n I met Trump supporters over 40 who said they\u2019d come to accept the belief that despite the president\u2019s years-long \u201cno new wars\u201d pledge, bombing Iran was needed. The threat from Tehran was imminent, they believed.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cUnfortunately, I think it\u2019s necessary,\u201d one woman said. \u201cHe\u2019s the only president that had the backbone to take it on.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n But for the younger male conservatives at CPAC, Iran was Trump\u2019s ultimate betrayal.\n <\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

\n \u201cI\u2019m not happy. I\u2019m not happy at all,\u201d said a 22-year-old CPAC attendee who had voted for Trump. \u201cPresident Trump ran on no new wars, and I feel like we\u2019ve been co-opted into a war that shouldn\u2019t be ours. It should be Israel\u2019s.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Trump has broken campaign promises before. So why was his decision to go to war with Iran the final straw for so many young men?\n <\/p>\n

\n Young men are not a monolith. But many of those young men who support Trump live in an information environment \u2014 not permanently moored to conventional orthodoxy of a single party \u2014 dominated by podcasters and opinion-shapers ranging from Joe Rogan and Piers Morgan to more right-wing voices like Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes.\n <\/p>\n

\n Young conservative men took the \u201cno new wars\u201d mantra most seriously because they are among the people most likely to be sent to fight. There\u2019s a genuine sense among them that the US should be doing more to help Americans than to fight wars. They\u2019re also increasingly focused on America\u2019s relationship with Israel.\n <\/p>\n

\n While older Republicans \u2014 more likely to watch Fox News than younger ones \u2014 are told the war is a good thing because Israel is America\u2019s ally, the Rogans and Tuckers of the world disagree. And they are not afraid to make that known.\n <\/p>\n

\n On the far-right end of the spectrum, a drumbeat of antisemitism animates much of this debate.\n <\/p>\n

\n Many of the young men who voted for Trump over the last three presidential elections were first-time voters who turned 18 over the last decade. They were sold on Trump by the likes of Rogan and conservative activist Charlie Kirk.\n <\/p>\n

\n But like Rogan, who was a supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders in 2016 before moving rightward to Trump, these men\u2019s future votes are up for grabs as they process the betrayal they feel.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThat sort of pisses me off,\u201d Delsia Bare told me. \u201cWhen you\u2019re from Appalachia, you\u2019ve always been backward and poor.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Bare was reacting to Trump\u2019s recent comment that communities that oppose the building of artificial intelligence data centers want to be \u201cbackward and poor.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Delsia, 54, was sitting with her mother, Ida, 82, at home on their family farm in Mason County, Kentucky. Mason is deep red; Trump won 71% of the vote in the county in 2024, and Delsia and Ida have voted for him three times.\n <\/p>\n

\n The mother and daughter made headlines around the world for turning down a reported $26 million from a big-tech company seeking to build a gigantic data center on their and their neighbors\u2019 farmland.\n <\/p>\n

\"Delsia<\/p>\n

\n It\u2019s a fight that is happening across the country as Silicon Valley rushes to build capacity for the data-hungry AI systems increasingly playing dominant roles in our lives.\n <\/p>\n

\n Trump, who was elected twice in part by tapping into the grievances of regular Americans, seems out of step with his base on this issue.\n <\/p>\n

\n Steve Bannon, dean of the MAGA movement, expressed the frustration most succinctly in an interview<\/a> with JD Vance last week when he demanded the vice president take action against his big-tech \u201coligarch sponsors.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n From freeways to power plants to prisons, the not-in-my-backyard phenomena is not new. But for Delsia and Ida, their fight against the proposed datacenter in their backyard has come to represent more than another public works project.\n <\/p>\n

\n They see it as a fight against the 0.1%, the tech billionaires who stood behind Trump at his second inauguration and now regularly meet with him in the Oval Office.\n <\/p>\n

\n And in their God-fearing, Bible Belt home it has also come to represent something spiritual: a fight against a new form of intelligence so unpredictable that even the people who are building it don\u2019t know what it might do next.\n <\/p>\n

\"Mark<\/p>\n

\n \u201cThat\u2019s anti-human, that\u2019s what AI is,\u201d Delsia said. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t have any morals and it can\u2019t be held to God\u2019s standards.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n A mom and daughter up against a multibillion-dollar tech company? This sounds like David and Goliath, I suggested.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cBut I\u2019ll remind you,\u201d Delsia responded, \u201cit only took one stone to bring down a Philistine. One itty bitty little stone in the right place can bring down any giant that there is on this planet.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Sadly for Vice President JD Vance, of the couple of hundred of members of the MAGA base I spoke with over the last six months, and the dozens I asked directly about potential Republican presidential candidates in 2028, none mentioned him with any great enthusiasm.\n <\/p>\n

\"Vice<\/p>\n

\n The name I heard most frequently was Marco Rubio \u2014 who wears several hats, including running the State Department as well as being the national security advisor. There seems to be a sense that the former senator from Florida has his head down and gets the work done.\n <\/p>\n

\n The lack of enthusiasm for Vance seems due to his association with the Iran war.\n <\/p>\n

\n When I\u2019ve asked why Rubio, whose is at the heart of U.S. foreign policy, doesn\u2019t seem tarnished as harshly by the war, the response is usually a shrug.\n <\/p>\n

\n Amid Trump\u2019s low poll numbers and all the challenges facing him and the Republican Party going into the midterms, it\u2019s easy to forget that there are still millions of Americans who remain extremely loyal to the president.\n <\/p>\n

\n Take Joe Black, a Trump supporter from Grand Junction, Colorado, who I first met three years ago at a Trump rally in Nevada.\n <\/p>\n

\n Joe told me ahead of the 2024 election that he wanted Trump back in the White House to bring down gas prices and to end foreign wars.\n <\/p>\n

\n When I visited Joe a few weeks ago, he acknowledged that the cost of gas was tough, but he was convinced that the president was right to go to war with Iran.\n <\/p>\n

\"Joe<\/p>\n

\n \u201cNobody likes war,\u201d Black told me. \u201cBut anybody who knows this Iranian regime, like for the last 47 years they\u2019ve just been bad guys going around bullying, blowing people up.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Even those critical of Trump in some areas, like AI, support him in others. Delsia and Ida in Kentucky also agreed that Trump made the right call in Iran.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe United States was good-hearted,\u201d Ida said of American foreign policy in the Middle East. \u201cWe\u2019ve taken care of all these nations.\u201d But \u201ctime after time they still chant, \u2018Death to America. Death to America!\u2019\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWell,\u201d she said, \u201cit\u2019s time we put a stop to death to America.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n In 2024, many Trump supporters pointed to the state of former President Joe Biden\u2019s economy and wars in Ukraine and Gaza as evidence of an America in decline and a world in disarray.\n <\/p>\n

\n They now confront gas prices that are higher than they were two years ag<\/a>o, inflation that is higher than it was when Biden left office, and a new war in Iran.\n <\/p>\n

\n But supporters like Joe Black say whatever is happening under Trump is better than the alternative.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cJust use your imagination for a second and imagine the world that we\u2019d be living in right now if Kamala Harris got in,\u201d Black said. \u201cJust think of what kind of a hellhole world this would be right now.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Barack Obama may have left the White House almost a decade ago, but I have heard his name on the campaign trail with increasing frequency in recent months.\n <\/p>\n

\n Asked about Trump\u2019s war with Iran, Joe Black quickly pivoted: \u201cObama was the king of killing people with drones,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n

\"Former<\/p>\n

\n The more difficult it gets to compare Trump\u2019s America favorably to Biden\u2019s, the more likely it is I will hear the name Obama.\n <\/p>\n

\n Trump loyalists say it\u2019s Obama who didn\u2019t love America \u2014 not the president who recently suggested he\u2019d allow Los Angeles and San Diego be bombed by an adversary.\n <\/p>\n

\n Trump loyalists say it\u2019s Obama who was pulling a fast one on the American people \u2014 not the president who is making billions of dollars<\/a> in crypto.\n <\/p>\n

\n Obama whataboutisms rarely survive serious scrutiny. But the feelings and the memories, real or imagined, his name invokes for many in the MAGA base feel very real. His election, to them, is America\u2019s true original sin.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EDITOR\u2019S NOTE:\u00a0 Watch the CNN documentary, \u201cMAGA Ever After?\u201d premiering tonight at 8 p.m. ET\/PT on \u201cThe Whole…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":936473,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[10355,43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-936472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-enterprise","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/936472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=936472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/936472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/936473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=936472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=936472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=936472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}