Democrats appear to have new partners in calling out President Donald Trump’s alleged self-dealing in office: onetime MAGA mouthpieces.
In recent weeks, key members of the MAGA media ecosystem have criticized the president and his family members for using the office of the presidency to enrich themselves — particularly after last month’s release of the president’s financial disclosures, which showed he made more than $1 billion in cryptocurrency-related income last year and more than $2 billion total. One GOP strategist said the trend shows just how fed up some of Trump’s formerly most ardent supporters have become.
“We may be at the point now where for a lot of these Trump-adjacent folks, Trump fatigue syndrome has set in — they’re done with him,” Mike Madrid, co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, told MS NOW on Monday.
The day after the release of Trump’s financial disclosures, conservative commentator and former Fox News host Megyn Kelly also characterized the Trump family as “grifty” in an interview with Sky News Australia.
“There’s been, like, story after story about all the money his sons are making off of the government, these government contracts they’re getting, all that,” Kelly said. “I can’t stand that stuff and I love his sons, OK? So I say this as a true fan of theirs, but I didn’t like it when Hunter Biden was doing it and I don’t like it when the Trumps are doing it.”
The next day, both The Wall Street Journal’s conservative editorial board and the conservative outlet The Free Press published op-eds criticizing what they called Trump’s corruption in the White House.
“There is no modern parallel for the scale and shamelessness with which the president is enriching himself in office,” the editorial board of the Free Press wrote.
Soon after, conspiracy theorist Candace Owens and white nationalist Nick Fuentes called out the president and his family for their increasing wealth.
“Trump is not his own man, plain and simple,” Owens said in an interview on the “Shawn Ryan Show.”
“How much more does the Trump family need?” Owens asked later. “How much more money do you guys need? When is enough enough?”
“The president of the United States scammed his supporters out of $600 million,” Fuentes said on his show, referring to sales of the $TRUMP meme coin, which were also revealed in the newly released financial disclosures.
The entire “Trump movement,” Fuentes added, “is a scam.”
This is not the first time some of these figures have broken with Trump. Several right-wing MAGA media figures, including Owens, lambasted him for going to war with Iran in violation of his so-called America First agenda.
Allegations of Trump using the presidency to enrich himself are also not entirely new. Critics have pointed to the luxury jet the administration accepted from the royal family of Qatar last year, which members of the administration recently flew on for the first time. During his first term, Trump’s critics also accused him of using the presidency to make money off his properties.
Last month, The New York Times reported that the families of both Trump and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick have financial ties to at least 14 companies working with the federal government on mining deals. Experts have also raised concerns about investments by Trump’s sons in at least 10 companies with military applications, as MS NOW previously reported.
Polling suggests that corruption — and how Trump is handling it — is a growing concern for voters just a few months out from the midterm elections.
A survey of 2,000 voters conducted by the Brennan Center in late April and early May found that more than 90% of respondents characterized corruption as a big problem in government and politics.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll of more than 1,200 people conducted last month found that respondents ranked corruption as the third “most important problem facing the U.S. today,” behind the economy and unemployment and threats to democratic norms and values. That poll also found that half of respondents “strongly disapprove” of how Trump is handling corruption.
“The perception that corruption is a big problem facing the country — it’s definitely increasing as a concern,” Madrid, the Lincoln Project co-founder, said.
A.J. Bauer, a researcher focused on right-wing media and author of the book “Making the Liberal Media: How Conservatives Built a Movement Against the Press,” told MS NOW it is too early to determine how MAGA figures going after Trump on corruption could affect the midterms — and that that may not be their motivation at all.
“Realistically, I think it’s probably more an audience drive — it’s less thinking, ‘How are we going to benefit or harm the Republicans in the midterms,’ and more, ‘how do I get a marginally higher audience and click rate on my videos?’” Bauer said.
Regardless of intent, the MAGA movement’s influencers seem to be driving their followers from Trump’s Republican Party.
As conservative radio host and commentator Erick Erickson put it in a Substack post on Friday: “The people who promised to drain the swamp are cashing in.”
Zack Stanton contributed reporting.
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