If supporters of Donald Trump were to be studied — and I very much expect they will be for years and years to come — academics may be hard-pressed to find the connective tissue that unites them all together.
It’s clear they’re not with Trump for his ideology — he doesn’t really have one, not that hews to ideas espoused by the traditional political parties at least. His policies have been all over the map, and even within his own presidencies he’s reversed them substantively or abandoned them outright.
It’s not because he’s done anything heroic or admirable, other than get very, very rich using legally and ethically questionable practices — admirable, perhaps, to some.
And it’s not because he’s done anything particularly great for them. He’s broken most of his promises, and by nearly any metric, he’s made the lives of his own voters demonstrably worse.
But they do love him, in spite of all of this. They love what he represents, what he projects back to them, a version of America they miss, even though he cannot deliver it. And they’ve decided to believe that he truly cares about them, even though he’s taken their money to line his own pockets, he’s endangered their lives by pushing baseless conspiracy theories, and he’s threatening to send their children to another endless war.
The thing that has united Trump supporters, if anything, has been their enduring faith in him.
But for how much longer?
Thanks largely to Iran, deportations and the economy, Trump’s approval is at a second-term low, according to a trio of new polls out this week, which show him at just 33% to 36%.
And we’re starting to see one-time loyalists do something the MAGA base has never really done before: Question him.
They’re questioning Trump on his policies. From his decision to go to war with Iran, to the efficacy of his tariffs, MAGA media influencers are vocalizing their concerns about his judgment in ways we haven’t heard before. From a crowd that even managed to justify an insurrection against the U.S. Capitol, this sudden skepticism is interesting.
They’re questioning his morality. The Epstein files have rankled Trump supporters in a way that little else has, and his obvious efforts to cover them up have them raising questions about his involvement and what he knew. Trump’s infidelity, his payoffs to porn stars, the “Access Hollywood” tape, the sexual abuse adjudication — none of that managed to turn MAGA voters off the way Epstein has.
They’re questioning his sanity and competence. In the wake of Trump’s deranged threats to end Iranian civilization and his bonkers attacks on the first American pope and Catholics writ large, folks like Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly and Marjorie Taylor Greene are openly questioning his mental acuity and fitness for office. They didn’t do this during his impeachments, after his 34 convictions for fraud, or when his deportation goon squad killed two American protesters.
And now, they’re questioning his veracity. Several former Trump supporters have come out to question whether the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, in 2024 was staged or is being covered up in some way. That’s questioning whether Trump can be believed, something no MAGA star dared to do just months ago.
Whatever may be motivating these influential one-time MAGA devotees to break ranks, they could very easily give MAGA voters permission to do something they’ve not felt they could do before — question their faith in Trump’s policies, his moral compass, his sanity and his believability.
And if they start doing that, well, I’m not sure what’s left for them to buy into anymore.
S.E. Cupp is the host of “S.E. Cupp Unfiltered” on CNN.