Pearl River There’s a long string, but eventually the fire will get to the dynamite, and the whole thing will blow and collapse on itself. The MAGA masters keep fanning the flame, thinking, I guess, that it will never blow, but there are a couple problems: numbers and facts. No matter how much they spin it, or how much smoke they blow, eventually the reality is inescapable.
Some of the MAGA problem is a “crying wolf” problem. As the parable established long ago, if you keep crying wolf, and there’s no wolf, who is going to believe you when there is a wolf. The modern revision of the parable might shorten the number of times the cry can be made when from the beginning it all seems absurd. Trump’s efforts to end birthright citizenship by fiat are one thing, preposterous on its face, but claiming he might have the personal power by edict to deny someone their citizenship, as he seems to be considering for Rosie O’Donnell, the once upon a time TV personality, is just plain cuckoo. Perhaps, his threat to raise tariffs on all Brazilian imports by 50%, because one of his autocratic buddies, Brazil’s former president, Bolsonaro, unlike Trump, is having to face the legal consequences of trying to foment an insurrection when he lost the election, is even crazier. Can he really believe when people are forced to pay $4 and $5 bucks for a cup of coffee, that they won’t be asking, “who the hell is Bolsonaro, and why am I paying for Trump’s buddy?”
The problem with numbers, is the MAGA masters can’t assume any Americans ever paid attention in class, when it was math period. If you claim you are going to deport millions, if not all undocumented immigrants, the math eventually catches up with you, just as it caught up with Elon Musk’s claims of how much money he was going to save the government. Take the mayhem, Trump, Noem, and ICE have wracked in Los Angeles. A judge has now said they can’t use their main tactic of doing a sweeping “brown” roundup, but even with such extreme and illegal measures they tout they have arrested 3000 in the area. Experts estimate that in the Los Angeles area, numbering more than 10 million, that 10% are undocumented, which would be one-million immigrants without papers. 3000 is like 0.0003 or 3 one-thousands of a percent, even when ICE is fishing in a big pond with lots of fish. Support for immigrants being in the US has risen to almost 80% with opposition down to 20%. Majority leader Scalise got an Iranian woman in New Orleans, illegally for almost 50 years, released from ICE after protests from her upper middle class neighbors and friends brought him low. Hospitality and agriculture interests are telling him to stop now. How long before this will be performative, not policy. The politics have moved past MAGA.
There was a headline in the Times about how MAGA was being divided by the collapse of the various conspiracy theories around the rich sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein. Attorney General and Trump puppet Pam Bondi, who had fanned this fire with promises of transparency to reveal the facts, now had to admit, “sorry, folks,” there’s no there. There’s no client list. Nothing was hidden. The MAGA problem is simple. You live by the sword; you die by the sword. You fuel conspiracies, and you will find that conspiracies will eventually engulf you, too.
The MAGA masters didn’t think this through all the way. Once you erode the credibility of so many institutions, the law itself, and everyone who was part of any of it, you have to have a replacement. It’s not enough to then think you can say, “trust me,” or that Trump’s current popularity with some parts of the population is absolute and everlasting. The worm turns.
The problem, for all of us, is finding what then fills the vacuum.