MAGA’s second chance (and the future of populism)

Tomorrow is MAGA’s big day. A lot is on the line. It’s faltered before; in fact, it has lost every election since 2016’s surprise, but here it is — once more at the altar.

The losses have not been entirely MAGA’s fault. Pandemic aside, the American news media and their friends in government threw everything they had against the movement for eight straight years, lying, undermining, suppressing, and cheating. The legacy press landed bitter blows and sacrificed its own popularity and credibility for the cause of beating Donald Trump. A win tomorrow would be the ultimate revenge.

Even if Trump loses, it would matter less for MAGA than you might think.

As one unnamed television producer put it, “If half the country has decided that Trump is qualified to be president, that means they’re not reading any of this media, and we’ve lost this audience completely.”

“A Trump victory,” he continued, “means mainstream media is dead in its current form.” His thinking perfectly illustrates the reason for his predicament: wagering it all on defeating a movement he and his friends hate. That ain’t journalism, and millions know it — and are tuning out.

Even if Trump loses, it would matter less for MAGA than you might think. While 2020 was painful, with the country in disarray and no clear successor capable of leading nationally, that's no longer the case. Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) has proven himself and, at 40, is a potentially generational political talent.

Moreover, 2020 proved the NeverTrump faction that considered itself an army in exile was really just a band of self-indulgent scammers and grifters, completely incapable of launching a counteroffensive, never mind retaking power. There would be no surge of support for former Ambassador Nikki Haley; no clarion call for the return of Liz Cheney.

But it’s not just politicians. While in 2016, only Peter Thiel and Tom Barrack were willing to take the stage for Trump, today they’re joined by Elon Musk, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Bill Ackman. Far from a peasant revolt, MAGA 2024 is a team comprising literally some of the smartest and most successful people in the world.

The last redoubt is Washington, D.C.: home of the Nikki Haley primary win and outgoing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). But even here, change is in the air.

As of this morning, a whopping 252 congressmen have no political memory of a time before Donald J. Trump. That’s more than 58% of the House of Representatives. The Grand Old Party is even more changed: 146 of its number now came to Washington with — or after — Trump, or more than 63%. On Inauguration Day, those numbers will grow.

The Senate is a different matter. More than half (65) came to Washington before Trump, including 30 of the GOP’s 49 members. That number, too, will shift Tuesday as men like Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) prepare for voluntary retirement and other, less willing men follow suit.

These senators and the power structures they control — including the position either John Cornyn (R-Texas) or John Thune (R-S.D.) will inherit when McConnell steps down this month — stand as the most powerful and obstinate gatekeepers in Washington. They can make K Street bend when they want. They can decide who is hired and who is not; they distribute the contracts; they decide whose calls get picked up and whose knocks are answered.

They control who is on the inside and who is on the outside. Despite everything listed above, these are the powers that will make sure McConnellism outlives Trumpism by a great many years.

Their enemy, of course, is the base — the same people MAGA Republicans are counting on to turn out on Tuesday. They’re the leaders of the party today and tomorrow — if they can keep it.

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New York: Press panics at Trump’s potential return

City Journal: How the clash between Kamala’s college-educated and Trump’s blue-collar coalitions could shape the balance of power in Congress

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The fire rises: The Federalist: Mexico is holding back a massive wave of illegal immigrants that will break after the election

The migrant crisis isn’t over — it's simply contained in Mexico. But it’s bursting at the seams, and the 2024 election might prove to be the end of the deal. Todd Bensman reports from Tapachula, Mexico:

The deal was to have Mexico deploy 32,500 troops to the U.S. border to round up untold thousands of intending border crossers from the northern precincts and force-ship them — “internal deportation” by planes and buses — thousands of miles to Mexico’s southern provinces and entrap them in cities like Tapachula in Chiapas State and Villahermosa in Tabasco State, behind militarized roadblocks.

Mexico closed off most of its freight trains to migrant free riders, bulldozed northern camps, and patrolled relentlessly for more deportee targets, as I was perhaps the first and only in the nation to report on Jan. 17.

The most likely purpose of these interactions besides the officially provided explanation about “ongoing efforts to manage migratory flows” and “additional enforcement actions urgently needed”? Best guess: to spare the Democratic presidential candidate the damaging political spectacle of mass border crossings for the duration of the coming political campaign season that was sure to feature illegal immigration as a key issue ...

Tapachula was bursting at the seams with an entrapped, growing population being deported into it from the north and with an estimated 500-1,500 new foreigners entering every day from Guatemala on the south ...

The misery index skyrocketed for both the immigrants and the city’s residents and managers as money-less people unable to advance north for months returned home, or begged, hustled for coins and food, slept in public spaces, and waited for Mexican asylum permits or American parole on the CBP One mobile phone apps that never seemed to materialize quickly enough.

Tapachula became a hellscape ...