CNN
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“I will give you everything,” Donald Trump famously intoned during the 2016 presidential campaign.
And for his most ardent MAGA supporters, a more unshackled and unchecked second Trump term has carried the promise that he might actually deliver on many of his more controversial proposals – often things he failed to do in his first term.
The reality is proving much more complicated.
In recent days and weeks, the Trump administration has repeatedly bowed to the realities of governing. It’s done things – on Jeffrey Epstein, on Russia’s war in Ukraine, on deportations, on government spending and on Iran – that risk alienating the MAGA base that brought Trump to the dance.
None of that is to say the president is about to lose his base; such predictions have long proven overzealous. And MAGA supporters often take their cues from Trump, readjusting their principles on the fly.
But everyone has their limits. Trump’s giving them reasons to be suspect about his and top administration officials’ intentions. And there’s been at least some evidence of a brewing backlash.
The most significant example this week is Epstein.
The administration has repeatedly failed to deliver on its promises of significant revelations about the Epstein case, dating back months. The case has for years been the object of MAGA fascination and conspiracy theories, which hold that Epstein’s trafficking of underage girls implicated powerful figures who could soon be held to account.
But this week, there were further disappointments for the base. Not only did those promises fall flat as the administration effectively concluded the matter, but the Justice Department’s final conclusions in two key cases contradicted what Attorney General Pam Bondi had said in hyping the documents.
Bondi responded to a reporter’s question about a client list by saying she had one on her desk; the DOJ now says there was no client list. (The White House claimed Monday that Bondi was somehow referring to other documents — a line that Bondi echoed during a Tuesday Cabinet meeting.) And Bondi said there were tens of thousands of videos of Epstein with children or child pornography; the DOJ’s conclusions say nothing of the sort.
The problem for the administration isn’t just that it failed to deliver anything significant; it’s that it did so in a way that could lead MAGA supporters to believe it’s now in on the fix. Bondi suggested there was much more to these revelations than the administration has now produced, and prominent figures including now-Vice President JD Vance and now-Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino have for years linked the lack of publicly disclosed “client list” to a cover-up.
That has and will seed suspicion.
Much of that suspicion for now is being geared toward figures who aren’t Trump. That includes Bondi (who some MAGA figures like Laura Loomer say should be fired) and unnamed law enforcement officials who people like Fox News host Jesse Watters baselessly speculate might have covered things up.
But the situation is a powder keg in a MAGA universe that has for years believed Trump was about to rip the lid off a conspiracy of child sex traffickers that included powerful figures. That’s not just the case with Epstein, but also with the QAnon conspiracy theory – a theory that animated a large portion of Trump’s base. Trump and his allies have cultivated a conspiratorial base, and they’re now reaping what they sowed.
Trump sought to move past the topic on Tuesday while addressing questions at the Cabinet meeting, suggesting it was unimportant next to other weighty issues of the day.
“Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?” Trump said, adding: “People are still talking about this guy? This creep?”
But this is hardly the only example of a development that could cause the MAGA base to question whether Trump is really set to deliver for them.
On Monday, Trump announced that he was reversing a brief pause on weapons shipments to Ukraine. The pause had initially caused many key MAGA figures to celebrate, believing Trump had finally cut off Ukraine. (A March poll found Republicans opposed continuing to send Ukraine weapons and financial aid by a nearly 2-to-1 margin.)
Trump then on Tuesday offered some of his most supportive comments yet on arming Ukraine, praising Ukrainians’ “courage.”
“We’re going to step up these contractors now that make [weaponry], and they’re brilliant, but they make it too slowly, and we have to step them up,” Trump said at his Cabinet meeting, where he also decried what he called Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “bullsh*t.”
Trump has also again signaled that he wants to exempt many undocumented longtime farm workers from deportations, despite his promises of mass deportations. The issue has divided his administration between those who believe in true mass deportation and those who worry about the economic effects of draining a key source of labor. The administration has provided a series of mixed messages in recent weeks.
“I did not vote for this,” Newsmax host Todd Starnes posted Monday on X, citing all three of the above examples.
Many echoed that phrase.
Other recent examples appear less likely to truly alienate supporters, but have certainly complicated matters.
Last week brought a significant setback in Trump’s professed campaign to cut government spending. The Trump agenda bill that ultimately passed Congress would balloon the national debt by trillions, according to multiple estimates.
It’s not clear that either Trump or MAGA truly care that much about the national debt. But it was a remarkable reversal from an administration that made Elon Musk’s efforts to rein in government spending its early calling card. Musk pledged to cut as much as $1 trillion. He has now made this about-face from the administration the linchpin of his new third party effort, the America Party.
The story is somewhat similar with Trump’s recent strikes on Iran, which flew in the face of much of the MAGA movement’s emphasis on “America First” and non-interventionist foreign policy. Many key movement figures initially balked at the idea, and some like Tucker Carlson have continued to do so.
Of course, that example shows how these episodes often pan out. Many MAGA influencers who criticized the idea of striking Iran beforehand ultimately came on board. Polls showed a sharp rise in Republican support for the US strikes after they happened.
The episode reinforced something we have seen throughout the Trump era. His supporters care a lot less about the details of policies and actions than the fact that Trump spearheaded them. If he does something, it becomes a good idea, because they have largely unflinching faith in him.
But that’s always subject to change, especially when it concerns the policies and issues they hold near and dear.
And Trump has recently set about testing just how much the base is willing to tolerate him departing from the MAGA line.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
