What does MAGA want and how do we give it to them?
Figuring out MAGA's real desires
The infamous scene of Donald Trump coming down the golden escalator in 2015 before announcing his campaign is still intact for many individuals, but how many remember what was said in his speech? I didn’t. It was uninteresting to me at the time, and Trump’s actions since then have overshadowed any potential curiosity.
Lately, though, I’ve been contemplating the things MAGA wants out of a second Trump presidency. It’s been difficult. To the average Democrat, it seems Trump can do anything and MAGA will support it. To find the thing that made Trump’s MAGA movement constant through impeachments, guilty verdicts, a pandemic, insurrection, near-death experience, and too much more to name, I decided to watch the speech for the first time—hoping to understand their desires.
The MAGA constant
Trump began his 2015 speech in his typical self-congratulatory fashion by soaking in the size of the crowd and criticizing other Republican candidates for not having air conditioning. The two first policy points he brought up were defeating ISIS and unsuccessful trade deals with China. Two fair points of contention at the time. However, something he said in the first few minutes stood out in my hindsight:
“When did we beat Japan at anything? They send their cars over here by the millions and what do we do? When was the last time you saw a Chevrolet in Tokyo? It doesn’t exist folks. They beat us all the time.”
He quickly moved to Mexico and immigration, claiming they were laughing at us and our “stupidity” while beating us economically. Trump’s message wasn’t just about showing strength—militarily and economically—to our adversaries, but also about getting what they were owed after being taken advantage of by allies.
MAGA wanted to play the same game everyone else had been operating under.
Transparency with a side of jobs
Though a big fan of the United States, it’s true we have problems. MAGA knows we have problems, but they’re after something more. They wanted to feel like someone was taking their concerns seriously. Trump not only accomplished that; he made them feel like he was one of them.
There are two main things I don’t understand about MAGA in 2015 or 2025: 1) the means they use to improve situations and 2) the burden of proof necessary for everyone else to show them improvement has been made.
For instance, MAGA often claims to want transparency in government. People don’t know where their tax dollars are going, how much of it is going to specific departments, what those departments do, who makes up the personnel, etc. The left-leaning retort is to explain that most of this information is publicly available on the internet. But MAGA is after something more than transparency: they want to know they were right.
Transparency to MAGA isn’t insights into the interworking of our institutions; it’s someone telling them they’ve been right about the corruption and inefficiencies in those institutions. That’s why when Elon Musk claims U.S.A.I.D. is sending $50 million in condoms to Hamas, MAGA credulously soaks it up. It’s also why multiple heads in the Admin can’t get themselves to concede their mistaken Houthi group chat messages in a congressional hearing. For Chrissakes, Trump still calls Russia-gate a witch-hunt even though multiple people in his inner circle were convicted of crimes relating to that inquiry—and he pardoned them in 2020.
The thing about transparency is that it’s not enough in itself. A government could theoretically be quite evil, but it’s transparent. I think there’s more to it than that. MAGA can’t bring themselves to trust individuals or the highly critical dynamics that compose the institutions, so they throw all their trust into one person (and his yes-men) who they feel they can trust while inducing a proxy war with the swamp-like bureaucratic departments.
A consequence of this heap of trust in Trump is it leaves them open to being abused and manipulated by him too. One may presume that some creative policy and strong enforcement mechanisms would be a starting approach to improve the government, but MAGA isn’t too concerned with policy fixes: they also want revenge.
It was at about the 14-minute mark of Trump’s 2015 speech that he finally alluded to his own abilities to solve the problems underlying the MAGA movement: “Our country needs a truly great leader… we need a leader that wrote Art of the Deal.”
He said he’ll bring back jobs, manufacturing, and the military (whatever that means). After another 10 minutes of criticizing others for failing to solve problems, he promised to bring jobs back to the US from Mexico “probably before” getting inaugurated. Trump made similar promises in 2024 for the Ukraine-Russia war. I don’t know if MAGA really thinks he could achieve such a goal, but the perception of strength is their real craving.
Let’s take manufacturing jobs as an example, as it was allegedly one of MAGA’s biggest concerns a decade ago. Though it may be obvious why MAGA would be concerned with losing jobs, it’s clear they weren’t too concerned with Trump’s inability to improve the situation. Even if we don’t assign Trump responsibility for some of the effects of COVID, though we should, US manufacturing job growth was less than impressive.
Trump rarely talked about jobs in 2024. The new Admin has illegally purged thousands of federal workers from their departments. Of course, jobs being lost to foreign competitors and jobs being intentionally cut by the federal government are indeed different things. However, if the latter was part of MAGA’s original aims, why did they only start focusing on it in 2024? In fact, the Biden Admin fired roughly the same number of federal workers as the first Trump Admin.
I’m no economist, so these numbers may not be the best to demonstrate MAGA’s eternal dissatisfaction with the estbalishment. But I think if they wanted Trump to bring back lost jobs from Mexico by implementing tariffs, not only did he not solve the problem, he was outdone by a lifelong Democratic politician—the figurehead of the thing MAGA ostensibly sees as a perpetrator of the problem itself.
Don’t ask, don’t tell MAGA about policy
Around the 25-minute mark of Trump’s speech, he explicitly shares one of his substantive proposals: “Every car and every truck and every part manufactured in this plant that comes across the border, we're going to charge you a 35% tax.”
It’s good to know Trump and MAGA have always known tariffs were a tax. The point of tariffs has always been the same to them: punish other nations who are taking advantage of us—a tool of revenge. When the political salience of the concept soured over time, they changed their tune but not their tactics, making it difficult for people to criticize their proposals because they aren’t willing to acknowledge what it really is they want.
Did MAGA care whether it was 15%, 25%, or 35%? Trump promised to halve prices in less than a year and a half into his second term in 2024 without further explanation. Since his victory, he’s changed his tune once again: now saying that bringing down prices will be hard and forewarning his supporters of difficult times ahead—all while starting new trade wars with our largest partners.
It’s not just about the economy. Cultural issues too are a major part of the MAGA movement. But when we take a deeper look into the issues they care about, it’s very hard to figure out what exactly it is they want. It’s also strange to see them cheer in the face of worsening conditions.
When it comes to things like abortion and healthcare, MAGA has lost. Trump constantly ragged on Obamacare in his speech, starting at minute 8. He attempted to repeal it in his first term but was stopped by a non-MAGA Republican. And in one of the 2024 debates, he unforgettably told Kamala Harris he had “concepts of a plan” for healthcare. Now, he’s planning on cutting Medicaid in order to renew his tax cuts. He has failed on this issue in every way imaginable, but MAGA doesn’t think so. On abortion, I think it’s fairly obvious of a loss when the group claiming killing human fetuses is murder prescribes each state allow murder through majoritarianism. If Trump and Republicans do ever try to ban abortion outright, their majority status would instantly be in jeopardy.
Immigration is another one that has been a big concern for MAGA folks. Trump mentioned his thoughts on immigration numerous times throughout his first speech and subsequent political career. What is ironic about this being such a big concern for MAGA is that illegal immigration was at its lowest level in modern history when Trump was elected in 2016. When he left in 2021, it was the highest level in over a decade!
MAGA fully believed Trump was the best person to fix the immigration problem, even though he made it worse the first time and never explained a policy in 2024 other than mass deportations—an irrelevant idea to the problem of illegal immigration enforcement at the border. So, once again, Democrats are left asking what the hell it is MAGA wants.
I think the explanation is possibly that MAGA doesn’t care too much about policy; they care about perception. Large numbers of immigrants coming into the country, seen as unfair and detrimental to the forgotten Majority, represent the underlying problem that the world is moving on from their view of the good ol’ days. MAGA may see the average illegal immigrant crossing the border similar to Japan taking advantage of us through auto trade— a symbol of the US’s charity that they no longer want to pay for.
Bad philosophy and bad honesty
One of the problems with MAGA — and many other groups — is that they rely on empiricism for much of their ideas about the world. They go to the grocery store and think to themselves, ‘Wow, this is expensive’ and leave thinking their one experience in this one store on this one day is an infallible indication of the nation’s overall economic health. When people see videos of Hispanics crossing the border, they think that in itself means there’s a big problem with border enforcement. But even this explanation isn’t sufficient.
On January 6th, we watched Trump tell his followers to fight like hell, march to the Capitol, and take back their country with strength. We watched as MAGA followed his orders, breaking down the barriers into the building, all while assaulting police on their way. They chanted to hang the Vice President, brought weapons, and ran after congresspeople. Many Republicans thought he should be impeached and even convicted. MAGA, however, was watching a non-violent, weaponless protest of people genuinely concerned about election interference. MAGA supported him when he promised to pardon those same delinquents they watched assault police and take over a federal building with sitting legislators inside.
What can someone do to demonstrate progress or the lack of effectiveness in MAGA’s ability to solve problems they care about?
Make America Something, but I don’t know what
Trump’s final words in his 2015 speech truly represent all that we can know about the ideology of those in the MAGA movement: “The American dream is dead. But if I get elected president, I will bring it back bigger, better, and stronger than ever before. And we will Make America Great Again.”
A cynical premise with a conclusion of messianic prophecy.
MAGA doesn’t care about the technicalities of the asylum process. They generally understand they’ve lost on abortion and healthcare— or should. They still feel slighted by allies. They don’t care if Trump committed crimes or if Biden didn’t. They care a lot about who killed JFK but they’re not too worried about Trump’s relationship with Epstein. MAGA doesn’t tolerate gender theory but they push for creationism to be taught in schools with the Ten Commandments on the wall. Clinton’s emails traumatized the movement for years and now they’re ignoring one of the nation’s worst national security fumbles. They think January 6th was an inside job and Russia-gate was a hoax, but Black Lives Matter is their best comparison. They spent nearly a decade investigating Democrats and whined when Trump was found guilty of crimes. MAGA thinks corruption is rampant but refuses to acknowledge innocence or guilt on merit. They think the American dream is dead, but they despise progressives telling the world the American dream is only attainable for the privileged. Make America Make Sense!
I don’t really know what MAGA wants but I think they favor the perception of strength through chaos, fear, intimidation, deception, and manipulation, more than solving problems with creative, substantive solutions to be ever-corrected. Why would they want to solve the problem? Well, the problems are the reason for the movement! For Trump to solve immigration, MAGA would lose a major advantage. For MAGA to stop trying to cut Obamacare is to accept the progress made by a Democratic Admin. The perception is much more important to MAGA than solutions. They want to Make America Great Again, but they want that mantra to be the reason for doing the things they accuse others of, rather than addressing the problems that led to their movement in the first place.