The MAGA movement is tearing itself apart just weeks before the midterms, with donors, advisers and influencers turning on each other.
US President Donald Trump said Kimberly Guilfoyle will no longer serve as ambassador to Greece after allegations that she offered access to administration officials in exchange for money and favours.
The heat is on the White House.
The Republican Party’s hopes of retaining the balance of power in the US Congress after November’s midterm elections have all but evaporated.
It’s the economy, stupid.
American voters are upset about the soaring cost of living. And yet another war.
US President Donald Trump rose to power by convincing voters that their nation’s political and economic systems had ceased working for them.
He’s failed to convince them they’ve started working again.
Mr Trump, 80, sees things differently.
He believes the Republican Party and MAGA’s electoral strife has been brought about by poorly targeted campaign spending, failed redistricting attempts among state electorates, and fewer than expected illegal voter deregistrations.
And that’s not his fault.
He just can’t get good help these days.
“What’s really happening is a circular firing squad,” an anonymous White House adviser has reportedly told Reuters.
Mr Trump’s advisers, cabinet members, influencers and voters are turning against themselves. They’ve got a lot to be unhappy about.
That’s shifting the Administration’s attention away from the economy and its Democrat opponents just weeks out of the November vote.
Polls now suggest the Democrat Party will win the House of Representatives in November. The Senate, however, remains too close to call.
“It’s my opinion that I have brought down the Greek ambassador,” former MAGA donor Eric Deters said in a video statement late last week.
“It’s my opinion that Susie Wiles is going to go.
“It also may end the JD Vance-Marco Rubio ticket after you hear the phone call that I’m going to play.”
While US voters have been struggling with soaring grocery and fuel costs, the Trump Administration has come under increased scrutiny over how its affiliates are cashing in.
Major Republican donor and MAGA Freedom Fest organiser Eric Deters last month abruptly cancelled his Kentucky celebration of all things Donald Trump. He’d sold just six $US1000 VIP tickets after banking on at least 100.
That made Mr Deters angry.
He insisted he would “never ever, ever, ever, ever” run a MAGA event again.
He threatened to expose “a real anti-Trump story”.
Then he released screenshots of text messages with Trump-appointed Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Guilfoyle.
One reportedly asked for $US100,000 to be paid into her personal American Express account. “It won’t show up anywhere if you wire money to American Express,” Ms Guilfoyle appears to reassure him.
Mr Deters alleges the private payment was a “pay-to-play”, or “quid pro quo” appeal from “a wicked grifter”.
“What a nightmare you’ll literally cost me my ambassadorship stop writing,” Ms Guilfoyle appealed.
It did.
“We have asked Ambassador Guilfoyle to resign,” President Trump’s new Press Secretary Katie Zacharia said during her first and only media conference last week.
“She has been a wonderful asset to the team, and we wish her well.”
That’s not the end of Mr Trump’s staff problems.
“Chris LaCivita and James Blair are outside consultants. They do not work for me,” President Trump insists in a social media post.
“I do not have any idea who else they work for but will, on reflection, ask them and, if there’s a conflict, I will terminate them, immediately!”
The two top personal advisers inadvisably put profit ahead of politics.
Mr Blair runs President Trump’s political campaign finances.
Mr LaCivita was the 2024 co-campaign manager.
Both were supposed to be busy funnelling funds to vulnerable Republican campaigns ahead of the imminent US midterm elections.
Instead, both travelled to Bosnia-Herzegovina earlier this month at the invitation of its staunchly pro-Russian government.
Both “were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars each through a Washington-based law firm that was retained by Republika Srpska’s government to provide counsel on voting issues,” the New York Times reported.
That misplaced loyalty has angered Mr Trump.
His embattled White House Chief of Staff agrees. Insiders say Susie Wiles blames the campaign financier for the Republican Party’s electoral chaos.
Mr Blair, for his part, blames the White House Office of Legislative Affairs, run by Trump appointee Katie Bailey.
But Chief of Staff Wiles is herself facing internal criticism for her role in the Administration’s growing list of woes.
Mr Trump overrode her last week by appointing Ms Zacharia as Press Secretary. Ms Zacharia lasted just five days on the job.
“Susie is here, and she’s going to be here for a long time,” Mr Trump assured his Chief of Staff a day later.
“I won on the border, and I won on groceries,” Mr Trump told US media after his electoral win.
“Very simple word, groceries. You know, who uses the word? I started using the word – the groceries.
“When you buy apples, when you buy bacon, when you buy eggs, they would double and triple the price over a short period of time, and I won an election based on that. We’re going to bring those prices way down.”
The opposite has happened.
Despite emphatic promises to the opposite, Mr Trump has engaged in a bold new war in the Middle East. That “five or six” week operation is now in its eighth month with no end in sight.
As a result, the price of diesel has surged 66 per cent in the past year. This has flowed through to every shelf product requiring road transport, not to mention farm machinery.
That war also produced other unanticipated global price shocks in fertiliser, helium, aluminium, and plastic ingredients. Not to mention soaring shipping costs.
Mr Trump suspended sanctions on diesel imports from Russia last week in a bid to lower prices ahead of the November elections.
He insists it’s all Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s fault.
“He wants to make problems for the world,” Mr Trump accused.
“He wants to make problems for our farmers, our ranchers with diesel fuel because Russia supplies a large portion of the diesel fuel throughout the world.”
This has upset “Trump’s Rasputin”, Laura Loomer.
The far-right MAGA activist cannot understand why her President has turned against the embattled freedom fighter.
Donald Trump’s MAGA movement appears to be tearing itself apart.
Its aggressive social and economic agendas overlap too much.
Like Ukraine’s freedom fighter President, ‘White House Loyalty Enforcer’ Ms Loomer is Jewish. By breaking ranks over President Trump’s deal with President Putin, she risks becoming the target of renewed MAGA-sourced antisemitic attacks.
Meanwhile, Black MAGA social media firebrand Candace Owens is also daring to criticise President Trump. This time for his bungled war on Iran. She blames Israel for leading his Administration astray.
But she represents a group that elements of MAGA ideology also target. Black and female senior US military personnel have been sidelined for promotion under US Secretary of War Peter Hegseth’s Pentagon.
Racial vilification is surging across the United States. In part spurred on by a pre-dawn Homeland Security Investigations raid on Minnesota Democrat Representative Ilhan Omar’s home. The Trump Administration is challenging the Somali immigrant’s citizenship status.
Meanwhile, the Administration’s popularity among Black and Latino voters has plummeted. That’s a problem for Cuban-heritage Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. Not to mention high-profile pro-Trump influencers including Mexican-heritage Nick Fuentes and the mixed-race Muslim Andrew Tate.
Mr Trump last month fired up MAGA’s anti-LGBTQ+ cohort by demeaning South Carolina cisgender Democratic nominee Annie Andrews. MAGA enthusiast Elon Musk followed through by funding a fresh round of national anti-LGBTQ+ election campaign adverts.
That line of attack has implications for Vice President James Vance’s key sponsor, billionaire surveillance firm Palantir CEO Peter Thiel and his financier husband, Matt Danzeisen.
And Mr Thiel leads a loose alliance of tech billionaire oligarchs in providing the funding for MAGA campaigns – like those run by Mr Blair and Mr Deters.