Washington Merry-Go-Round

IMMEDIATE RELEASE 28 June 2025
WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND
Today’s Events in Historical Perspective
America’s Longest-Running Column Founded 1932
Promises, promises, too many promises
By Douglas Cohn and Eleanor Clift         
 
WASHINGTON – Donald Trump won the presidency by promising everything to everyone who was receptive to his messaging, but the most significant of those conflicting promises created chaos in his MAGA base.
He appealed to the America First isolationists, pledging “no more endless wars.” Now he has bombed Iran and set off a firestorm at home.
Trump’s talk show favorite, Tucker Carlson, warned that U.S. intervention in the war between Israel and Iran “could effectively end Trump’s presidency.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., a super Trump fan, conveyed her displeasure on social media: “MAGA is not for foreign wars. We are not for regime change. We are for AMERICA FIRST. The United States should not be involved in fighting nuclear-armed Israel’s war with Iran.”
Meanwhile, traditional Republicans with hawkish views, such as South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, could not be happier that Trump has taken military action to dismantle Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Trump’s challenge is to keep his coalition together despite these differences. It is why he is in such a hurry to turn the conversation to the efforts underway to secure a diplomatic end to Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
Keeping MAGA happy undergirds his efforts to meet a self-imposed Independence Day deadline for Congress to pass his “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which exposes more divisions within the MAGA movement.
Billionaire Elon Musk, tasked to find billions in waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government, delivered nothing significant except disarray. After calling Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill a “disgusting abomination,” and urging everyone to oppose it, Musk left Washington.
The bill’s proposed changes to Medicaid will result in 10.9 million fewer people having health care coverage, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. Rural hospitals in Red States will be especially hard hit. Millions more will find their costs rise as the GOP tries to make the math work by squeezing out what it can from health care programs to finance tax cuts that were meant to expire after 10 years.
However, tax cuts for the wealthy are the mainstay of the bill, a fact that appeals to that group of Trump supporters, who, unlike Musk, revel in it.
It is amazing that Trump tolerated Musk for as long as he did. Also, Musk’s vocal opposition to tariffs did not stop Trump from pushing them despite any evidence that they would work the way he wants.
Trump’s tariffs are welcomed in Rust Belt states, where they keep out competition from China’s electric car industry. In the farm states in the middle of the country, it is another story where farmers are being hit with reciprocal tariffs on their grain exports.
Even Trump’s immigration policies, as popular as they are with his base, have created differences within MAGA. Trump promised mass deportations of people who are in the country illegally, but when those deportations involve farm workers doing backbreaking work at minimal wages and hospitality workers in the hotel business, which is the Trump family business, Trump leans toward giving these people a break.
On the other hand, MAGA movement guru Steve Bannon says they must all go; they broke the law.
When MAGA voters discover what is in store for them, they might have a surprise or two for Trump in next year’s midterm elections. Republicans running for the Senate and House will be compelled to take a stand on these issues, and, in doing so, alienating a portion of the MAGA base, a portion that just might voice their displeasure by sitting out the elections.
Politics like tidal waves are often altered by seismic events, and as the competing tectonic plates of the MAGA movement begin to move, a Blue Wave may be in the offing.
 
See Eleanor Clift’s book Selecting a President, and Douglas Cohn’s latest books The President’s First Year: The Only School for Presidents Is the Presidency and World War 4: Nine Scenarios (endorsed by seven flag officers).
Twitter:  @douglas_cohn
© 2024 U.S. News Syndicate, Inc.
Distributed by U.S. News Syndicate, Inc.
END WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND