A year ago, Joe Kent, Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene were undeniably a core part of the MAGA movement that supported President Trump and helped propel him back into power.
Now, they’re either on the outs, or actively challenging Trump’s biggest policy moves.
Kent, who first came to prominence for primarying a Republican who voted to impeach Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots, resigned from his Senate-confirmed position in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence last week in protest over the Iran war. And Carlson, while he says he still likes Trump, has shared in and amplified Kent’s utter dismay over the issue, becoming a top voice concerned about the conflict.
Greene resigned from Congress after Trump disowned her over her views on foreign policy and the Epstein files — and unlike Kent and Carlson, she has become extremely critical of Trump, appearing on his least-favorite TV outlets, including CNN and "The View." That’s quite a change from when she emerged on the political scene as one of Trump’s strongest supporters, and from when she wore a hat that read “Trump Was Right About Everything" during Trump’s 2025 address to Congress.
Like Frankenstein’s monster, Trump’s MAGA-stein creation is now turning on him — and reshaping the antiestablishment right’s relationship with the GOP.
The White House and other Republicans supportive of Trump’s recent moves, of course, have routinely dismissed concerns about MAGA fractures in wake of the Iran war. They cite polls that show sizable majorities of self-described MAGA Republicans, of those who voted for Trump in 2024, and of Republicans in general saying they support Trump’s action in Iran.
Trump has insisted that he is synonymous with MAGA, and that he alone can define what it means.
“THEY ARE NOT MAGA, I AM,” Trump said on Truth Social last week of those criticizing conservative commentator Mark Levin, who has staunchly backed Trump’s war moves in Iran.
Let’s be real, though. Critics of the polling say that people self-identifying as MAGA are essentially signaling support for Trump, making them highly likely to support his policies — and as commentator Emily Jashinsky explained, "MAGA" is used as an “imprecise catchall for Trump's coalition, often meaning Rogan types, Rust Belt Obama voters, etc.”
A lot of figures considered important to the MAGA coalition wouldn’t necessarily claim the label. Radio host Megyn Kelly, for instance, calls herself “MAGA-adjacent,” but she appeared on the campaign trail for Trump in 2024.
There is clearly a segment of the antiestablishment right that helped create the MAGA coalition, helped sweep Trump into office, and sharply shifted the ideology and norms of the GOP that now feels disappointed and betrayed — a group that I’m thinking of as Shadow MAGA.
There seems to be broad agreement even among supporters of Trump’s Iran war that he’s broken campaign pledges by initiating it. A Politico poll that found Trump with 56 percent support for his Iran moves from self-described MAGA Trump voters also found a majority of those same MAGA voters say he broke his campaign pledge against starting any wars: 36 percent of respondents said the Iran war broke the campaign pledge, but that doing so was necessary given the circumstances; 19 percent said he unnecessarily broke the campaign pledge.
The war in Iran and debate about whether “America First” means foreign policy restraint or "anything in the U.S. interest goes" is only one part of Shadow MAGA. There is also frustration about the administration’s handling of the Epstein files, and concerns that the administration might be backing away from aggressively pursuing mass deportations amid public backlash over Immigration and Customs Enforcement tactics.
The Shadow MAGA disappointment goes beyond the influencers like Greene, Kent and Carlson. A 35-year-old Pennsylvania voter who told NBC she voted for Trump three times but is still feeling squeezed by affordability issues, which Trump has called a “hoax,” summed up her former support for the president: “That was my bad. Apparently, I’m an idiot.”
Some are bristling at longtime conservative figures claiming they are on the side of MAGA because they are supportive of Trump’s Iran actions
“Ask any of these guys, 'Yo, where were you on the stealing of the 2020 election? And where were you on J6? Where were you on the impeachment of Trump?'” Steve Bannon said on his "War Room" show on Monday. “You go back and look at the record — yeah, maybe they’re not so MAGA.”
The question is: Just how much influence will Shadow MAGA have on the GOP — both in its electoral success, and in its policy positions?
Campaign reporters and analysts have long warned that there’s certainly a risk that low-propensity voters, who made up Trump’s winning coalition in 2024, could simply not turn out for 2026, threatening GOP majorities in the House and possibly the Senate.
Beyond campaign strategy, Republican officials have long embraced Trump’s desires and whims, elevating and accepting the kind of antiestablishment figures they may have privately or publicly disliked — because Trump brought them in and liked them.
Without that dynamic, there’s less incentive for those GOP figures to embrace the kind of antiestablishment policies and priorities that animate Shadow MAGA — ideas that for years shaped the ideological direction of the party.
Further reading on the reshaping of the right: The MAGA Schism, by The Bulwark’s Andrew Egger… The end of Trumpism, by The Spectator’s Christopher Caldwell (with eye-popping cover art for the magazine)... The Number of MAGA Fractures Is Growing, by Politico’s Ian Ward…
