Is MAGA the New Mainstream?

We are potentially about to see an extraordinary realignment in American politics.

If Trump takes the White House—which seems incredibly likely bar the Democrats rigging the election again (a far more tricky proposition in 2024) or one of the many stochastic terror-inspired nut-jobs getting off a more accurate shot—then it is suddenly a very realistic possibility that MAGA becomes the mainstream.

I have already written about the significance of Musk and RFK Jr, but new rumours concerning Jeff Bezos and the Washington Post’s apparent change of heart on Trump, and the spectacle of Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, show us that we are in strange new territory.

First the ‘MSG’ event, which predictably the Independent is calling an ‘orgy of fascism’ (I’m picturing blonde chicks in Nazi uniforms, but that might just be me) actually showed us just how mainstream Trump has become.

Tony Hinchcliffe opened the rally with jokes that the Kamala campaign and various Twitter leftists didn’t understand, or pretended not to understand, which they indicated via the ingenious use of inverted commas around the word ‘joke’, as if that negated all evidence that Hinchcliffe was and is a popular comedian telling classically structured bangers to a happy crowd.

The left’s pathetic whining about Hinchcliffe’s set cemented their position as the modern Mary Whitehouses, with the distinction that Whitehouse may have actually been right about moral decline, while the leftist scolds just seem humourless and out of touch (who knew?). While this in itself is nothing new, with the centre of gravity shifting towards Trump, these people will increasingly look like cranks carping on the sidelines.

There are people on both sides claiming Hinchcliffe’s risqué jokes will damage the Trump vote. They are forgetting that a recording of Trump himself saying worse things in 2016 made no difference. People aren’t voting over a rude joke. There is too much at stake for that.

After Hinchcliffe, the masculine American spirit I discussed in my last article was on wonderfully garish display once again in the fine figure of Hulk Hogan. And we now know Trump also has The Undertaker’s vote. These two all-American titans may have sometimes been rivals in the squared circle, but they are now both confirmed warriors of MAGA.

As well as Hogan, influencer/salesman/self-help author Grand Cardone showed up to talk about his favourite topic—the destruction of the American middle class. And of course Elon Musk was there, unabashedly leading a chant of ‘USA’ in his own autistic genius style.

In other words MAGA has gone mainstream. And this has happened in conjunction with a deeper trend whereby alternative media has also become the mainstream, with Trump’s appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast representing the symbolic moment this shift finally took place.

With the support of the owner of Twitter 2.0, comedians with a huge online presence such as Rogan, Hinchcliffe, and Theo Von (who I once supported on tour, and yes I smashed it), as well as influencers like Cardone, Trump is riding the wave of the mainstream side of alternative media.

This shift has clearly been coming for some time, but what is perhaps more surprising is that even the so-called mainstream or ‘legacy’ media may be about to fall in line with Trump.

The Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post have now both refused to endorse Kamala Harris. Rumours suggest that Jeff Bezos insisted on this at The Post, telling a mob of leftist staff where to go in no uncertain terms. I don’t know if that particular detail is true, but it is certainly easy to picture, and according to news website Semafor, an editorial board member confirmed that staff members were ‘shocked, furious, surprised’.