MAGA Is Not as United as You Think
About this episode
Emily Jashinsky maps the gulf inside the New Right, arguing Trump now owns a MAGA coalition bigger and more ideological than himself, with JD Vance representing where the movement is headed and creating problems Trump can't disavow. She traces the Old Right's fusionism (Reagan, the Sharon Statement) giving way to factions around Oren Cass's American Compass, tech-world figures like Curtis Yarvin, and a Barstool conservative electorate alienated from NatCon elites, riven by infighting over abortion. Jashinsky locates the central divide in Yoram Hazony's 'privatized virtue' thesis: a spectrum from Project 2025's pornography ban to gentle family incentives. She concedes Klein's charge that the movement pursues virtue through unvirtuous means — from Springfield lies to January 6 — and warns it risks discarding classical liberalism while building a new elite. She expects personnel shortages to force a second Trump administration to rely on Project 2025 by default.