MAGA politics & policy update: Lying, corruption, incompetence, wrecking relationships

Lying, corruption & incompetence

Trump and MAGA elites aren't hiding their true intentions, corruption and incompetence any more. Sometimes, their screw-ups just can't be hidden.  

An article about Trump's failed attempt to fix the reflecting pool, Charges Dropped in Reflecting Pool Case as Prosecutors Say Work Was ‘Botched’, showcases blatant lying to the public and courts, and ghastly incompetence and corruption. Things are going just as expected. Trump's corrupted DOJ falsely accused an innocent person of vandalizing the reflecting pool. However, court proceedings required the DOJ to disclose evidence of vandalism. It turns out there was no vandalism. The repair job was completely botched. Charges dropped and MAGA prosecutors could not figure any way to keep persecuting the victimized defendant. Trump has called the repair job an astounding success.

The repair job on the water purification system failed leading to an algae bloom because Trump gave out a no-bid, non-competitive contract to a major Trump donor who had little relevant experience. That's blatant corruption. The repair job on the coatings that Trump falsely said were vandalized was also a no-bid, non-competitive contract to a different but also inexperienced contractor. There were two Trump repair jobs, the pool coating, and the water purification system. Both failed. That is pure incompetence. Link, link, link

Wrecking families and relationships

One of the cruelest and saddest aspects of Trump and MAGA demagoguery is the intense weaponization, polarization and divisiveness of politics. That was intentional. In addition to mass deceit of a significant portion of the public, a predictable result has been serious damage to millions of American families and to friendships. Damage from polarizing MAGA demagoguery is seen in both American families that are not recent immigrants families, and to immigrant families. 

One paper, Political breakups: Interpersonal consequences of polarization, described “political breakups” as losing relationships with friends, family members, romantic partners, or coworkers due to political differences. It's a real thing. data from 2025 indicated that ~37% of Americans reported having had a political breakup, mostly with friends. The researchers simply say that political polarization is driving many Americans apart. 

As expected for immigrant families, Trump family separation policy rips families apart. The 2024 paper, Mental Health Implications of Family Separation Associated with Migration Policies in the United States: A Systematic Review, makes clear that damage to many affected families is often quite serious. The data indicate that family separation or fear of it may result in depression, anxiety, behavioral and emotional issues, sleep disturbances, and stress or distress in both affected children and parents. 

A 2024 article Time published, How Estrangement Has Become an Epidemic in America, stated that ~10% of American families are estranged from a close relative(s) due to political differences. About one-third of American adults reported feeling uncomfortable at a family gathering in the past year because of a relative's political views. Link, link

Trump's divisiveness is intentional. He is not just divisive but anti-democratic. He normalizes personal authoritarian rule, attacks institutional constraints. He and uses his public office and public trust as resources to exploit for private gain. 

Although Obama was divisive, that was unintended. That was largely due to the fact that he was a Black man. Racists and bigots were enraged at his election and re-election. He was thus a polarizing president but nonetheless still accepted democracy, the rule of law and civilized politics. That is unlike Trump who relies heavily on dehumanization and demagoguery against immigrants, political opposition and democracy itself. Link

A poll that might be meaningful

Context

Polls are sometime misleading. The farther away the election, the less predictive the poll. Polls can miss because of sampling error, nonresponses, weighting choices, or wording effects. It’s usually best to treat a single poll as a snapshot, not rock solid truth. Despite weaknesses, polls are usually only practical way to for the public get a feel for public sentiment. Poll data is sometimes reasonably accurate. Some people believe that their personal experiences and knowledge accurately reflect majority public sentiment. Nearly all of those people are wrong too often to be taken seriously because personal opinions are not reliable substitutes for systematic polling.

The CNN poll

A recent CNN poll, Americans doubt Trump is paying enough attention to the country’s most pressing issues, released data that feels reasonably accurate and unusually important. Several data points seem to reflect a new, growing understanding of Trump. They are (1) Trump’s public approval is 34%, (2) 73% say he is out of touch with ordinary Americans, (3) 66% say he he does not put the country’s good above personal gain, and (4) 57% say he lacks the stamina and sharpness to serve effectively. Collectively, those data points suggest that a significant portion of the American people have MAGA policy fatigue coupled with an apparently major public rejection of his character, self-dealing (corruption), and fitness to govern. Apparently, Trump’s incompetence and corruption are finally sinking in with a lot of people.

Source

For people who have been arguing Trump’s extraordinary self-centered corruption and incompetence for years, this looks like a little bit of long-overdue vindication. But is it also frustrating that it has taken so damned long for this partial public awareness of what has been and should have been obvious at least since 2017. Will this public understanding make any difference in terms of defense of democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties against Trump and his corrupt authoritarian MAGA onslaught? There is no way to know. This may already be too little, and too late.

Q: Is it reasonable to assert that (1) even with this poll’s mild wording, most Americans now see Trump as venal, self-interested, and unfit, and (2) CNN’s data analysis treats this as evidence that “late-stage Trumpism” is losing its grip because public skepticism is no longer limited to one scandal or one issue, but instead it extends to Trump’s core persona and abuse of power?

Info sources:

Key Points to Remember About Polling in the Run-up to Election Day — Pre-election polls can be helpful in thinking about what to expect on Election Day, but they are not predictions of the election outcomes.

Election polls are 95% confident but only 60% accurate — we have found that the actual vote total for a given candidate fell within the 95% confidence interval for just 60% of the polls. This degree of accuracy was reached only when the polls were conducted in the week before an election; accuracy was worse for polls conducted earlier. ….. when laypeople read about poll results, they tend to overestimate the poll’s accuracy

We’ve Officially Entered the Twilight of Late-Stage Trumpism — It’s all there in a new CNN poll, and it’s heartening to see: Large majorities are sick of Donald Trump’s vanity, venality, and megalomania.

Trump Holds the American People in Total Contempt — To say that President Trump is corrupt is to somehow understate the size, scope and magnitude of his corruption. ….. Trump’s corruption, which is so vast as to be a new phenomenon in American politics. The president and his family have leveraged his office to the tune of nearly $4 billion.

Source: Data as of Jan. 20, 2026

The Frustration Files: Trying to explain the authoritarian threat to people who see threat

Source

Poll data indicates that most Americans believe there is serious threat to American democracy. Despite that understanding, most still really do not get it. Most still believe that their positions and protections are safe. They cannot see the major losses to their own wealth, power and protections that Trump, MAGA elites and allied demagogues are quietly, constantly inflicting on Americans and the public interest.

Simply put, MAGA politics and policy doesn’t just steal money. It takes money and power by deceit, coercion and whatever other means will work. It uses stolen money to stay in power, and it uses that added power to steal more. MAGA is engaged in a vicious cycle of corruption and tyranny.

On the propaganda front, MAGA politic and policy is all about pretending to be for the average person, while being for the elites at the expense of average people. Nearly all those Trump and GOP voters really, sincerely believed they were voting for their own interests and defense of democracy and the rule of law. By now it is clear they were horribly wrong because they were badly deceived.

The hard thing to explain here is that MAGA's authoritarian kleptocracy is usually incremental and bureaucratic. It is usually not flashy and cinematic. It usually works by exploiting existing institutions such as courts, banks, tax agencies, the media, finance, and election rules. Average people experience fragments of the damage spread out over time. There is no single obvious catastrophic takeover in a few days. That slow burn through the core of democracy and rule of law makes it easy for morally rotted, corrupted politicians or media figures to say “nothing major has happened”. They say that while knowing full well that democracy and the rule of law is being gutted, causing wealth and power to flow from us and the public interest to them and allied special interests.

Q1: Is it plausible to believe that many or most rank and file Trump and MAGA voters were and still are deceived and betrayed by MAGA demagoguery, lies, slanders, crackpottery and irrational emotional manipulation?  

Q2: Is it plausible that many Americans recognize corruption, inequality, and democratic fragility in the abstract while still underestimating how directly MAGA forces are eroding everyday rights, bargaining power, civil liberties, public wealth, and economic security?

Info sources: 

Can Educating Citizens about Democratic Backsliding Increase Engagement with Democracy? -- “Research shows that citizens in democracies often struggle to recognize when their own democracy is under threat, as leaders will try to justify undemocratic actions as necessary to protect democracy or reduce corruption ..... Our research offers a  first step in demonstrating that informing people about how democratic backsliding unfolds increases awareness of threats to democracy, but much more research is needed to understand how to translate that awareness into real-world action.” 

Why a growing number of Trump supporters are experiencing voter’s remorse -- Twenty percent of Trump supporters with postgraduate degrees expressed a reluctance to vote for Trump if given a second opportunity. ..... 31% of independents who voted for Trump in 2024 would not vote for him again in an election do-over

Threats to American Democracy Ahead of an Unprecedented Presidential Election -- More than three-fourths of Americans (77%) believe that the country is going in the wrong direction, compared with only 22% who believe the country is going in the right direction. ..... Majorities of white Christians — including white evangelical Protestants (77%), white mainline/non-evangelical Protestants (60%), and white Catholics (57%) — believe American culture and way of life has mostly changed for the worse.

The Effect of Increasing Wealth Inequality on U.S. Democracy at the State Level -- Wealth has become so unequally distributed at this point, and has increased so wildly throughout the last 25 years, that we are living in a totally different reality than even in the 1990s. I don’t think we realize that enough. At the very top, some people are simply above any consequences for their actions.

Americans Sound the Alarm over Corruption and Democratic Erosion -- Of all the possible threats to the United States, Americans rank government corruption and weakening democracy as the top two most critical threats to American interests, signaling anxieties over the health of the political system itself.

The role of racial bigotry and racism in MAGA politics and policy

Context

A NYT Magazine article (not paywalled), What the Crackup of the Heritage Foundation Says About the Post-Trump Right, raises the issue of how and why the GOP radicalized over time. The article reports that after Trump took office in Jan. 2025, Heritage was pushed aside. Heritage was the source of Project 2025 and the still-secret 180-Day Playbook that was given to a few MAGA elites on how to implement Project 2025. After Trump was sworn in, Heritage tried to get back to the center of power, but it sank into a vicious, still ongoing in-house conflict. The old guard of establishment experts were swamped and attacked by a surge of radical younger MAGA authoritarian kleptocrats. Those MAGA operatives are hell-bent on remaking Heritage into their own version of a Trump-style organization. Their tyranny and kleptocracy tactics are (1) being online all the time, (2) being ruthless in fighting culture wars, and (3) vehement in rejecting the dogmas of postwar politics grounded in evidence-based pro-democracy, pro-rule of law conservatism. This new generation of MAGA elites isn't evidence or reason based. It is almost completely wealth and power ideology-based.

That is the tyrannical and corrupt moral rot now taking control of most of America's non-left political universe. As far as these young MAGA crusaders go, things need to get a lot better to attain their vision of what they want Heritage and the GOP to be. These young MAGA elites are waging war on democracy, the rule of law and civil liberties. They want things to get a hell of a lot worse than they are now. MAGA's war isn't remotely close to being over. 

The rise of extremist MAGA authoritarianism & kleptocracy

That's a complicated story. Multiple factors were and still are in play. Factors include elite and social polarization, deeply aggressive and corrupting donor politics, a corrupted rule of law for MAGA-aligned elites and corporations, wage stagnation and inflation with economic pressures, corrupted media ecosystems, and uncompromising GOP institutional hardball. But also among those major factors was and still is immigration. Just beneath the surface intense anger and fear about legal and illegal immigration are powerful emotional drivers of racism and race bigotry.   

Racism and racial bigotry

MAGA demagoguery has played on and enormously amplified bigotry and racism among a minority of Americans, nearly all of whom are aligned with Trump and MAGA authoritarian politics and policy. Racism and racial bigotry are important components of MAGA's wealth and power movement, primarily for culture war extremists. Racial animus helps keeps fear and anger alive for a lot of the rank and file. Some of the elites have the same nasty feelings, mainly those in the Christian nationalist theocrat crowd. Absent religion, most oligarchs and dictators like Trump generally don't care much about immigration, with their focus on wealth and power, not culture war or race. When the autocrats and oligarchs do care about non-white immigration, it is used politically to emotionally mobilize voters, e.g., by fomenting irrational or baseless anger, fear, resentments, feelings of threat or victimhood, etc. 

Trump and allied elites repeatedly use immigration as a political weapon. There is solid evidence that Christian nationalism overlaps with white supremacy and anti-immigrant sentiment. There is a significant Christian theocratic cadre among MAGA elites. Clearly, the issue cannot be reduced to religion alone. Sometimes the elites use immigration and race for public influence to serve their own labor, status, and control goals. Racial culture war goals can thus be secondary.

What appeared to be a significant crystallizing stimulant to racial animus in the MAGA movement was the election and re-election of Obama. That set millions of Americans on edge. To make matters a lot worse, MAGA demagoguery ruthlessly exaggerated racial resentments and fears with and fabricated white threat and victimhood narratives. Empirical evidence from research and reporting consistently link MAGA politics to white grievance, racism, and hostility to immigrants. That is particularly true for the movement’s rank and file. 

The bottom line is that racial animus and Christian nationalist ideology are central to MAGA’s mass politics. Oligarchic and autocratic interests exploit those grievances to consolidate elite (and allied corporate) wealth and power. Thus, not every elite actor is motivated primarily by racism. Even without immigration politics would not vanish absent religion.

Regardless of when Trump exits from politics, the MAGA movement and its element of racial bigotry and racism are not going to go away.

Q: Is racism and racial bigotry a significant factor in the rise of MAGA authoritarianism, or is it trivial or completely non-existent?

Info sources:

Racial resentment fueled Jan. 6 rebellion and opposition to House probe, scholars find -- In their analysis, the resentment syncs with support for former President Donald Trump and a message at the core of his Make American Great Again (MAGA) movement: that white people are unfairly losing out to groups that are getting advantages that they haven’t earned and don’t deserve.

The Deepening ‘Racialization’ of American Politics - Obama was a lightning rod. Trump is a lightning strike 

Barack Obama legacy: Did he improve US race relations? -- America's racial problems have not melted away merely because Obama has spent eight years in the White House. Far from it. Indeed, the insurmountable problem for Obama was that he reached the mountaintop on day one of his presidency.

Race and Politics in the Age of Obama -- Race has rarely mattered more in US politics than it does now. The election of President Obama has laid bare the racial divisions that continue to fracture the United States. ..... Many hoped that the election of the first black president of the United States would signal the end to what may rightfully be called the continuing significance of race.

Defining Oligarchy: The Fusion of Wealth and Power in American Democracy -- [Oligarchy] represents a form of governance focused on preserving the political and economic influence of the wealthy by securing the approval of the rest of the population.

Is the U.S. becoming an oligarchy?

How Christian Nationalism Promotes White Supremacy: An Examination of Racial Stereotypes -- Findings suggest Christian nationalism promotes White supremacy more by promoting a higher view of White Americans (the “prototypical Americans”) than promoting a lower view of racial minorities.

MAGA movement - American political movement -- The MAGA movement, often referred to simply as MAGA, or Make America Great Again, was founded on the belief that the United States was once a “great” country but has lost this status owing to foreign influence, both within its borders (via immigration and multiculturalism) and without (via globalization, or the increased integration of multiple national economies). 

A systemic approach to the psychology of racial bias within individuals and society -- systemic factors operating across levels — from the interpersonal to the cultural — contribute to the production and reinforcement of racial biases in children and adults. We consider the effects of five systemic factors on racial biases in the USA: power and privilege disparities, cultural narratives and values, segregated communities, shared stereotypes and nonverbal messages.

Research States That Prejudice Comes From a Basic Human Need and Way of Thinking -- prejudice stems from a deeper psychological need, associated with a particular way of thinking. People who aren’t comfortable with ambiguity and want to make quick and firm decisions are also prone to making generalizations about others.