Trump rally, Manchester, New Hampshire, January 2024. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
The fuel that sustains MAGA is right-wing rage. When right-wing propaganda can’t deliver enough rage, Trump’s popularity and approval ratings drop. Fox News viewers in the age 25 to 54 bracket were down 61 percent in November 2025 versus November 2024.
The job of the right-wing media is to constantly fuel the rage and demonization that it directs at anyone who stands in the way of the right-wing agenda. No ugliness is too ugly, and no lie is too great, if it generates rage. The corrupt moral nature of right-wing rage is such that it now even teaches that empathy is morally dangerous. That is, empathy for friends and family is virtuous. But empathy toward the wider world, because it leads to concerns about equality, fairness, and equal justice, is the very moral snare that liberals fall into. And liberals, of course, are evil.
But liberals are now out of power. Generating right-wing rage was easy when there were liberals with power who could be demonized — Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden. But a movement built on manufactured partisan rage runs out of fuel when the enemy disappears from view.
Some blame “outrage fatigue.” I don’t think that’s it. MAGA types are energized by rage rather than tired by it. Rather, this is a serious propaganda problem. If Democrats are powerless, then whom is the movement fighting? If Republicans control government, then why is life not magically improving? If Trump is president again, then why aren’t we great again? Without Democrats to blame, the rage machine becomes an ouroboros — a snake eating its own tail in search of the emotional intensity that its propaganda can no longer produce. The movement is starting to fragment as leaders who are addicted to rage and the politics of rage inevitably turn on each other.
Trump’s decline in approval ratings is partly emotional. Trump no longer provides the catharsis that MAGA types felt during the fuck-your-feelings and liberal-tears days. Trump is yesterday’s rage, warmed over, feeble, and increasingly unappealing.
None of this bodes well for MAGA’s future. But Republicans continue to have an enormous amount of power, and they will not hesitate to use it. They have two kinds of options. They can try to stay in power illegally with most of the country against them. Or they can smash a lot of furniture in an attempt to generate new themes of hysteria, rage, and fear that they hope will help them. They probably will do both.