MAGA has a problem, in the form of Donald Trump. Put simply: MAGA wants to define what MAGA (or “America first”) means, and Donald Trump wants it to mean whatever he says at any given moment.
I should offer a little definitional clarity and political nuance. Make America Great Again means different things to different people. The Trump coalition is not monolithic; it contains factions that do not necessarily consider themselves to be MAGA. But as shorthand, MAGA is an identifiably distinct bloc on the right, and it’s the dominant faction in the broader GOP coalition. Its internal diversity notwithstanding, it still has a worldview or ideology. And the MAGA faithful are increasingly frustrated by the fact that Trump doesn’t always share, or prioritize, that ideology.
They believed that if you could just “let Trump be Trump” he would follow their conception of MAGA.
But Trump told Atlantic magazine last month: “I think I’m the one that decides” what “America first” means.
“It turns out that personnel isn’t policy,” the executive director of the American Conservative, Curt Mills, told news website Semafor’s Ben Smith. The idea that “personnel is policy” is a Reagan-era mantra; put Reaganites in important positions and you’ll get Reaganite policies.