The Uncertain Future of the GOP

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I'm Michael Loinger. In advance of the midterms this fall, the man who once spoke nightly to the MAGA establishment on the movement's favorite TV channel says he's done with the GOP I would not support the Republican Party. There's no chance I would support the Republican Party.m not going to support the Democratic Party. I don't know what I'm going to do. This is Tucker Carlson speaking on a right wing podcast last week, citing frustrations over Donald Trump's handling of the economy, his war in Iran, and support of Israel. You know, how could you support how could I or any American voter support a political party that's not loyal to the United States that puts the interests of a foreign country above those of its own citizens Carlson's apparent pivot echoes the move by white supremacist podcaster Nick Flentez, who has also disavowed the administration for similar reasons. But their turn away from the president and the party is just one form of growing discontent in the right wing podcast circuit In a recent piece titled The Maga Stars Freaked Out by their O Movement, Vox senior correspondent Zach Beeachcham described a crop of conservative personalities who now fear that their base has grown too bigoted and too conspiratorial According to Beeacham, their disgust with MAGa's transgressions is ironic because they helped create the party as it is today Zach, welcome back to OTM. Hey, I'm always happy to be back So you have a thesis about the current state of the Republican Party. You say that MAGA's pursuit of transgression has begun to spin out of control, even among some of the people who thought they were steering the ship You say, quote, It's a real life version of the famous sketch on Tim Robinson's Netflix show. I think you should leave. Can you describe that sketch for listeners who maybe haven't seen it Sure, I'm so glad we're opening with us There's a store, right, There's a car crash at the store and the car that crashes into this clothing store is shaped like a hot dog. dririver's gone. Somebody call the cops. We need to find that driver. You know what's driving me nuts It could literally be any one of us. No, it couldn't. You're dressed like a hot dog. And my basic Take yearsars, like this is really what's going on in the Republican Party right now. You have people who have been very clearly responsible for the party's Further and further to the right and towards a conspiratorial extremist state of mind now getting really upset that people are acting like a conspiratorial extremist party You wrrite about a handful of people who you cheekily refer to as hot dog men. who are prominent right wing commentators, activists personalities who had their own personal redlines here or there crossed by the MAGa movement. and are sort of squirming as they see their audiences embrace things that they don't like You point to Ben Shapiro. He's the conservative far right content creator who's kind of started to fall out of favor recently. His audience has dropped off and his media company Daily Wire has had to lay off a bunch of staff. Why is he a hot dog man So when I was thinking of examples for this piece, I wanted to be pretty strict about who qualified. I wanted to be somebody not just who was on the right and generally upset about the state of the right, but whose actions and past statements had in very specific and concrete ways contributed to the problems that they are now promoting, right? So you can draw a straight line between this person's past behavior and what's going on right now. And I thought Ben was a really good example because he's been on this tear recently. And one of that I think is actually like really righteous in a lot of ways about the rise of a kind of influencer class. that takes sort of a conspiracist antis Semitic view of the entire world. right? And he focuses on Tucker Carlson, on Nick Fuentes, and on Candace Owens, where three of the right's biggest personalities in podcast world. And I think his critiques of all of them are right The problem is that Ben actually Created. some of this. and very specifically, he hired Candace Owens And sort of the late twenty ten s, Candace Owens was making a name for herself as a right wing provocateur. She had already said a bunch of pretty extreme things. in twenty twenty, for instance, she claimed that Bill Gates was doing secret experiments. on people in Africa and then said at one point that problem with Hitler was basically that he tried to do stuff outside of his borders, which is ignoring the whole thing killing German Jews on Mas And in a New Yorker interview recently, he says that he actually liked most of the inflammatory stuff that she said back then. In twenty twenty one, what we saw was a fairly I wouldd say mainstream conservative who said inflammatory things, obviously. and who had been telling us that she inflammatory things that you like ome that I would say most of them that I liked, some of them not as much. And that seems to be part of why you hired her, right? She got attentions or saying inflammatory stuff You're saying that Shapiro can't Fan ignorance about Candace Owens's pass flirtations with anti Semitism and claim, oh, this is a new thing because She has been saying antiemitic stuff all along. Anti Semitic sort of not quite. She's sort of pushed in that direction, but not quite, but conspiracism, which is much of his current critique of her. He's really upset W Canda Owens, for example, for her sort of dark insinuations that Erica Kirk was behind her husband's assassination in league with Israel somehow Candace Owens, as you may have heard me refer at the top of the show Evil twisted human being Now the reason I say that today is because Candace has spent the last several months Atacking the widow of Charlie Kirk, Erica Kirk, Owens has always been a conspiracist. She's always been someone who pushes the boundaries in an extreme direction. And yet it's the insistent lack of self reflection of acting like they're all trying to find the guy who did this when he's wearing a hot dog suit, you know, that really is at the core of this phenomenon. Okay, let's talk about another Hot doog man, Christopher Rufo Yes, another good example. Chris Rufou, if you're not familiar with him, is probably the leading right wing activist on cultural issues. He's behind a lot of the push against DEI and against critical race theory. if you can remember that panic from a few years ago,' very sort of effective at pushing discourse to the right and often it plays very fast and loose with the facts in doing so. For instance, he attempted to validate The lies about Haitians eating cats and dogs in twenty twenty four during the campaign and wrde some long investigations claiming to find evidence of it that did really nothing of the kind So Rufo recently has been like Shapiro, very upset about the rise of this sort of anti Semitic conspiracist influencer class. And I want to be clear, I think it's right for both of them to be upset about this. but my concern is not with the substance of what they're saying, but the deeper logic that underpins it And so Earlier this year when Joe Kentu was a high level counter tterrorism official in the Trump administration resigned, Rf over a piece critiquing Kent's resignation letter, which was re pretty out there, right? For instance, can describes the recent US couounter ISIS campaign as somehow being a war for Israel which makes no sense whatsoever and very much smacks of anti Semitic conspiracy theorizing. and Rufffo was right to seize on that as a problem Except in the very same piece, where Ruufffo is bemoaning Kent's state of mind, he notes that he campaigned for Joe Kent when he ran for Congress Right, Kent ran for Congress twice in twenty twenty two and twenty twenty four. in Washington State Joe Kent was always this guy. Back then, he called Nick Fuentes for social media advice during his campaign. He hired a proud boy as a campaign consultant. He did an interview with a neo Nazi podcaster That's where he comes from. It's what his base was. And it's part of why he lost both of those elections to Congress, right a consonservative Washington district It was beyond the pale, even then. Yeah, yeah, it wass just too crazy. And yet it wasn't for Rufo. How much is this new tone from Christopher Rufo and Ben Shapiro a reaction to a genuine ratcheting up of bigotry and conspiracism versus how much of it is just this sort of anxiety about the vibes in the MGa movement right now, where it feels like It's It's not as fun as it was, maybe during the campaign, you know I mean, I think there's sort of two interrelated strands here. Like one is a sense of failure as you suggest, right? Like the Trump administration's not going well. At this point, that should be obvious to basically everybody Trumps approval rating I saw a poll where he was at thirty percent recently, which is astonishingly low. though that's not an average or just one poll, but his numbers are really quite bad There's not any real policy accomplishments that you can point to and be like, look at this really impressive thing that they've done. And they're staring down the barrel for a really, really bad midterm People are already starting to say that ex other faction is responsible because no one can say Trump is at fault for this, right? So there's a certain level of infighting between people blaming each other for what is ultimately like the result of the big guys's decisions The second part of it, I think, is a sense of a loss of control and an uncertain future Right I do believe that both Ben and Chris are Guinely. upset But it's not just that it bothers them on a moral level. it's that the success of people like Carlson and Owens and Fuentis and their ability to win an audience and get some supporters and gressional GOP delegation, or least people who are aligned with them broadly is indicative of an inability. people like Rufo and Shapiro to be the gatekeepers in the Cervative movement to say, okay, we've come here We've gotten to this point with Trump, but we're not going to go any further than that. And that loss of power says something very troubling about the post Trump future. And I want to talk more about what this tells us about the GOP in twenty twenty eight Let's talk about another example, Joe Rogan In your piece, you write about a recent episode of his podcast where he starts fretting over conspiracy theories about the Trump assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania during the twenty twenty four campaign It's funny when you listen to this episode Rogan gets very upset about the idea that anyone could believe That Trump There was some kind of conspiracy involved in the Butler shooting, right? And it's not clear exactly what about it that makes him upset about it. He seems to say it's dumb. Like how could anyone who understand guns believe anything like this And then there's a photo of a bullet whizzing by his face Anybody that thinks that that staged is out of their f In mind. And I'll grant him that The problem is like within L than roughly a minute in the tape in the audio, he goes on to talk about how maybe the guy who tried to shoot Trump had been programmed by MK ultra like mind controlled by the government? Well, Timberchette who I had on the podcast, Congressman. Yeah. He thinks that guy was like some sort of an MK ultra type deal. And he says he thinks they still do that You think someone's still doing it. I've always thought that. I'm trying to steal. MKLro was an old defunct program the government tried out during the Cold War to try to manipulate people's mental state. This is the famous like LSD mind control operation Yeah, and Rogan is saying that maybe the remnants of this program programmed someone to try to want to shoot Trump and it's just That is way dumber than thinking that the Butler assassination was staged. Like it's way crazier. yet He seems to think there's some kind of like smell test that this conspiracy theory passs, that the Butler was staged by Trump one doesn't And I think what he's upset about is in this case, I mean, I'm reading between the lines here, is that people are starting to believe a conspiracy theory that is not Joe Rogan approved, that does not fit with whatever his idiosyncratic view of the world is about what does and doesn't make sense sort of on a gut level. And as a result, he gets real mad, right? Again, this goes back to the lack of control, right? It's that people are having unauthorized thoughts, whichich is funny because it's like how these people described Their approach to the world, right is like, oh, the mainstream media won't let you think the kind of things that we' saying. We're telling you the truths that the man has hidden, right? And then all of a sudden, when there are quote unquote truths that are being aired on social media or alternative platforms that they don't likely get very upset about this. There's like this kind of trope now referring to Joe Rogan as speaking out against the Trump administration as kind of breaking with the Trump administration when It becomes too extreme. Last month, he said he didn't like the idea of the White House hosting an outside UFC event And then he appeared on camera as an analyst at the event. So I guess he changed his mind Many in the press like to use him to prove a point about how MAGA is contradictory, how Trump is failing at his agenda It just doesn't seem like he has any appetite for courting a sustained break with the White House. That would be difficult for him. I'm going to be a little Um Its a little mean here, but I think it's are warranted Unless and until it becomes good business for Joe Rogan to break with Donald Trp he's not going to do it What about Mark Levin? You say he's a hot dog man. Who is he? and what has been his redline So Mark Levin is an old school talk radio host on the right who has a very long history of saying extremely provocative stuff and has been a hardline Maga guy, really, really on board with what the Trump administration has said And If you listen to Mark Levin shows, it's just the most vitriolic, angry, over the top, mean biting commentary on anyone who disagrees with him. He's got a kind of like Rush Limbagh vibe to him Yeah, you know, when I first heard him, I thought he was like Timu Rush Limbau U basasically. I mean actually when I first heard him, Timu didn't exist at that point. this is a long time ago. but now that's the language I would use today, right? You've got the sort of imitator And then recently, he's on this podcast and or radio show and he's talking about how there's this new breed of Republican conservative aligned podcastters and influencers who make their money by just being crazier than anyone else and they do it for the financial inentatives and it's just like Have you listened your own showoat? I a kick Carlson's ass He's not that smart. Do you listen to yourself talk I'm going to get into the gutter with these guys because that's where they are I can't debate them I'm not interested in debating them. I'm interested in exposing them. and I said and I'll seeope. His show is not about trying to educate anybody. It's about trying to be an ideological extremist who castigates his opponents in the most aggressive possible terms. That's not trying to educate people, that's political infotainment. That's your whole thing. And now that somebody has figured out a direction to take it in that you don't like, that you don't approve of, you're very upset. It truly beggars belief that he could say this with a straight face You start her piece with this quote from Representative Thomas Massey in twenty seventeen, who describing Trump's rise said that his supporters weren't voting for libertarian ideas. They were voting for the craziest son of a bitch in the race. Yeah, I mean, he's right. And he knows it better than anybody at this point because he just lost his reelection bid to a Trump backed candidate And this happened, despite the fact that Massey had gone out there all the time saying he voted with Trump ninety one percent of the time. He didn't oppose Trump or really try to get in his way. He just sort of bucked him on a few issues, like the Iran warar and the Epstein stuff. He was really out front Talking about Jeffrey Epstein and the files And yet, He still lost because voters couldn't tolerate. breaking with the presresident's agenda and anything that's smacked of cooperation with the Democrat It seems like that's kind of the logic on which the conservative political sphere operates, the base who determine primary outcomes are really interested in someone going further and further in a sort of anti liberal anti norms direction And it's just not obvious where this process stops. And I don't think that media voices have the level of authority necessary to prevent or change the basic orientation of so many of these voters. So when you're looking at twenty twenty eight And the scramble to succeed Trump and take the reins of MAGar, what's left of it How does this thirst for transgression inform your understanding of the current players I think it means that the field is completely open Right? The truth is that Trump is this almost unique disciplining force on the Conservative movement. Nobody has his charismatic authority with Maga voters And that's what is holding this fractious group of people who many of whom really hate each other are very, very different views of the world together. So what happens afterwards to me is honestly a complete mystery Right? if the pattern holds that we've been seeing and that we've been talking about so far The most logical next step would be ideological radicalization. would be the right going in an even more openly consonspiratorial and bigoted. mayaybe nominating someone like Tucker Carlson for president And that's possible. There have been rumors that he's positioning himself, but Do you really think that he's gonna to make a bid? or is that just kind of like a media gossip narrative? It's hard to say, right? He recently said that he's not a Republican anymore that he can't vote for the Republican Party, which certainly seems like a dumb thing to say if you want to run for the Republican nomination Or if you want to appeal to some kind of like growing disaffected non party aligned voter base, You got it, right? That's the other possibility, right? Is this is actually just setting oneself up for being able to say in twenty twenty eight, I told you this was going to be a disaster. I was right. I can swoop in and come back and save the party. U, rightight? That's certainly something that he could do And I can't dismiss that out of hand, but it's not just him, It could be somebody like him who fits that general profile So that's one thing. that's one possibility. Another is that Basically MGa infighting opens door to a return of the Republican establishment This is like the reverse scenario of what happened in twenty sixteen when there were like twelve establishment friendly candidates and Donald Trump roughly. and Trump won in part because the establishment guys all thought Trump was going to lose and so spend a bunch of time fighting each other and no one person getting out of the race rather than competing against Trump. You can imagine a version of that in reverse happening. that there are so many different MGa voices claiming to be the sort of true spokespeople for the movement that they end up getting in each other's way and there's somebody who's like wearing a sort of populular skin suit but nonetheless really reflects a ree twenty sixteen Republican Party sensibilities, and there are quite a number of those people in hiding in the GOP right now. Marco Rubio Marco Rubio would be a great candidate for this kind of thing, right of that. That depends on how much Rubio has authentically converted to Magaism, tough to say Ag, I don't I don't have Good enough sourcing in Rubo worldld to be able to say one way or another on that front. And there are arguments I could make both ways But he certainly would be a good candidate And then there's a third possibility, which I think is actually quite similar to what's going on in the Democratic Party right now, which is a kind of like a low boil internal conflict forever Right? Like in the Democratic Party today, since Hillary Clinton's defeat, there's been no unifing narrative or story that has explained what the party stood for other than being against Trump And that's been enough to win one presidential election and be a very effective force in midterm elections It's not enough to establish a new identity for the party or an ideological narrative it wants to cohere around. So you've got a bunch of different factions. moderates, you have sort of people more focused on social issues and identity politics. you have the Bernie type socialists All sorts of different wings that you can talk about, and no one of them has been able to consolidate control or authority And I think that could happen in the Republican Party. You get a lot of different groups in different subgroups with different interests, and they fight each other in perpetuity over control and over individual elections, but no one contest is decisive And so you have a GOP that's ideologically adrift for quite some time in the absence of Trump