JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
In recent weeks, it's become clear that President Trump's MAGA movement has developed some serious cracks over issues like Israel and Gaza, the case of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and even the passage of the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill. The MAGA voting base remains crucial to Republicans. They need those voters in the 2026 midterm elections, even though Trump isn't going to be on the ballot next year and he's constitutionally barred from running for president again.
So we just wanted to take a step back and look at the MAGA movement. Where will it go from here? And is there even a MAGA without Trump at the helm? Here to help us unpack all of this are NPR political reporter Stephen Fowler and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro. Hi to both of you.
STEPHEN FOWLER, BYLINE: Hey there.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: Hey, great to be with you.
SUMMERS: Domenico, let's start with you and just with the simplest of questions. Is there a MAGA without Donald Trump?
MONTANARO: Simple question, complicated answer (laughter) - I look at it this way. Like, politics is so much about personality now, it seems, especially with presidents, that it's tough to say whether a movement stays a movement without a leader, you know, without someone directing the ship, so to speak. Republican strategist Alex Conant says that that's going to be especially true if Trump remains well liked by the right.
ALEX CONANT: There is a populist movement with or without Trump in the United States, but Trump has never really been able to transfer his political support to other candidates. So whether MAGA or the populist movement continue to be successful after Trump, I think, is really unclear, and I'm actually skeptical.
MONTANARO: You know, there's certainly a right-wing populism, as he noted there, not just in this country but around the world that's led to a rise of leaders not dissimilar from Trump, you know, real culture warriors. We saw it in some respects with the Tea Party movement, though parts of it were also very concerned about economic issues, so it's not very clean. But it's a sentiment that's latent in a lot of corners of society and will be post-Trump. The question is whether anyone can really do what Trump has done - command attention the way he has and demand fealty the way he can and inspire these voters who have felt forgotten to go and vote Republican and stay loyal to Republicans.
SUMMERS: Stephen, what do you think?
FOWLER: I think it won't be for lack of trying. In addition to what Domenico mentioned about Trump being the leader of the movement, we have seen the Republican Party at the state and local level, the executive branch, the legislative branch, even the judicial branch, all align themselves with Trump's MAGA movement. And that's not something that's just going to disappear the day after Trump leaves office. So the infrastructure for the MAGA movement will be there. The question will be, who's going to kind of shepherd it, and will it stay in place?
SUMMERS: Stephen, I'll stick with you for a second here. How has Trump's time in office this time around been seen by his base so far?
FOWLER: Trump's remaking of the executive branch and everything intrinsically related to it has been shaped to his vision of things, and so far, nobody else has been able to fill that shape. And he's said and done a lot of things that he promised to do on the campaign trail and that parts of the party don't always necessarily like or agree with but have gone along with anyways - things like his immigration plan, the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill, tariffs, you name it. Trump has accomplished what his base of supporters want, and the people who come next are going to have different ideas of what the Republican Party looks like in the future.
SUMMERS: Domenico, something I've been thinking about, though, is whether there's a risk for Republicans to move too far away from Trump and MAGA.
MONTANARO: Yeah, I mean, he did win, right? So there's no question there's some political risk. I mean, look at what Trump has been able to build on the right, getting out voters who might not have otherwise voted if it wasn't for Trump. At the same time, the GOP has had huge problems in midterms when Trump is not on the ballot, so it's not like this populism has translated well to other Republicans. You know, they're going to be in a pickle because Trump has never really expanded support much beyond himself. And there are real questions as to whether those who crossed over to vote for him in 2024, who don't consider themselves MAGA - if they stick with the party because they may have been motivated by non-MAGA factors, like inflation and prices, to choose Trump, like we talked about all of last year. And if the party fractures into MAGA and candidates previously known as traditional Republicans, what's that going to look like?
FOWLER: And in thinking about that, these changes have pushed popular Republicans to not want to go to Washington. I mean, Brian Kemp, the popular governor of Georgia, is not running for a key Senate race there, and even in Georgia for the statewide offices, there's nobody running as a Brian Kemp Republican, for example. Everything is trying to align itself with Trump, even though Brian Kemp is objectively more popular in that state.
SUMMERS: To that point, Stephen, do you think that MAGA's ready to merge with the mainstream, or do you think it will ever be?
FOWLER: I mean, Juana, the midterms will be crucial. Right now, in key races, the flavor of Republican is loyal to Trump, even primarying some of those conservative Republicans who aren't seen as conservative in Trump's image. And there's also several marquee Senate matchups, including one in North Carolina, where the literal chair of the Republican National Committee is going to be the likely nominee.
If that doesn't go well, the politically homeless Republicans who have criticized or broken with Trump before might have an opening. But we've also seen that the MAGA movement doesn't blame Trump for the party's losses and issues. They're happy to find a scapegoat which could lead to even further rifts.
It's also worth noting that a lot of the most effective MAGA messaging over the last decade is geared toward being the party not in power. So if Republicans continue to control all the levers of power, it might have less effectiveness moving forward.
SUMMERS: So Domenico, if you're the Republican Party right now, I would presume you're thinking about succession planning. So give us a sense of what 2028 might look like. Do you think that we're going to see a situation where MAGA dominates?
MONTANARO: Well, even though it won't be Trump in 2028 - you know, he's constitutionally barred from running - it's still going to be about Trump, on the Republican side, at least. Republican strategist Alex Conant says that that will be especially true if Trump remains well liked.
CONANT: If he's still as strong in the Republican Party as he is today, as popular then as he is now, he'll pick the nominee, full stop. You know, and if he doesn't explicitly endorse somebody, I think it'll be whichever candidate is deemed the most allied with him or the closest with him, and it'll really just be a race to be the next Trump.
MONTANARO: But that somebody is never going to actually be Trump. And again, long term, it raises the question about whether he's fundamentally changed the party or if this is a phase - an important and consequential one but a phase nonetheless.
SUMMERS: NPR's Domenico Montanaro and Stephen Fowler, thanks to both of you.
MONTANARO: You're welcome.
FOWLER: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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