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Trump’s MAGA Voters Aren’t ‘Forgotten’ – They’re ‘Deluded’ and Want Revenge: Conservative
A noted conservative author and former professor of national security affairs is laying waste to the media narrative that Donald Trump’s MAGA followers are America’s “forgotten” people, concluding instead that they, just like their leader, are in it for revenge.
“Trump wants payback,” writes The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols, “so do millions of voters who have no one to blame for their sense of humiliation but themselves.”
“Trump and his right-wing media courtiers—who tend to the anger of the older, white middle class the way florists lovingly raise orchids—fed the GOP base a continual stream of rage, especially as Trump started to pile up electoral defeats,” writes Nichols, who has a PhD from Georgetown and taught for 25 years at the U.S. Naval War College. “These voters now want to get even with their fellow citizens not for what’s been done to Trump but for what they feel has been done to them. They were certain that 2016 would finally bring them the recognition and respect they craved. Instead, Trump set them up for a steady diet of ego-bruising rebukes from other voters.”
Nichols also points to a piece by another writer at The Atlantic, McKay Coppins, who “attended a Trump rally in Iowa earlier this month, where he spoke with a nice lady named Kris.”
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Kris is “a 71-year-old retired nurse in orthopedic sneakers,” Coppins wrote. She “was smiley and spoke in a sweet, grandmotherly voice as she told me how she’d watched dozens of Trump rallies, streaming them on Rumble or FrankSpeech, a platform launched by the right-wing MyPillow founder Mike Lindell.”
Asked if Trump should still be president, Kris told Coppins, “By all means.”
“And I think behind the scenes he maybe is doing a little more than what we know about,” Kris said.
Asked, “What do you mean?” Kris said, “Military-wise.”
“The military is supposed to be for the people, against tyrannical governments,” she explained. “I hope he’s guiding the military to be able to step in and do what they need to do. Because right now, I’d say government’s very tyrannical.”
Coppins added: “If the Democrats try to steal the election again in 2024, she told me, the Trump-sympathetic elements of the military might need to seize control.”
Nichols asks, “What can turn an ordinary person—a father, the pleasant older lady who lives down the street—into the family powder keg, or even a deluded seditionist who hopes the U.S. military will seize control of the country?”
He says, the “usual answer, when Trump ran the first time, was that these were ‘forgotten’ voters, people ‘left behind’ by globalization and a leftist political culture, who were hurling out a giant primal yawp of opposition.”
Nichols blames the media and politicians for that false narrative that has driven so much of American politics since Trump came down the escalator in June of 2015.
“These were never empirically sustainable explanations, but empathetic reporters and deeply concerned politicians went on listening tours to diners and gas stations anyway. When ordinary Americans would say shocking, indecent, and un-American things, their flummoxed interlocutors remained steadfast in the belief that more listening and more empathetic nodding would put things right in a few years.”
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He also chastises MAGA voters for the “alternate reality” they’ve constructed to explain the strings of losses they’ve had to endure, “including the 2018 Democratic-wave election, Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory, and the ‘red wave’ that never happened in 2022.”
Antiracism educator Tim Wise responded to Nichol’s piece, writing: “Exactly correct. The media refuses to admit it but the MAGA faithful are mean, vengeful people. Not decent, misunderstood, and ‘left behind’ people, but folks who are not decent.”
Condé Nast Legal Affairs Editor Luke Zaleski, unrelated to Nichol’s piece in The Atlantic, on Wednesday delivered a (possibly tongue-in-cheek) take on MAGA’s alternate reality.
“This is the actual story republicans are going with,” Zaleski wrote. “Trump built the wall and gave us world peace and then Democrats and China (Trump’s pal Xi) made up a phony virus that doesn’t make you sick—and trump caught it and made a beautiful vaccine that kills you and he saved us—before Joe stole the election and trump had to start an insurrection that didn’t happen that Nancy did just so they could make it look like trump did it even though he told the attackers he loved them and would pardon them and Obama secretly runs everything and the CIA and FBI do too and George soros and they started the war Putin started and are behind the Hamas attack as well and trump will stop it all in 24 hours.”
Read Nichols’ entire piece here.
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
