Opinion | MAGA After Trump

We’re going to be very soon reaching a point where you need to stop looking at Trump’s approval rating to know how popular MAGA is. And here’s what I mean. Trump, I think, at this point, we’re now in the 10th year since he came down the escalator and announced his presidency, so in the 10 years — -Oh my God, I can’t wait till that phrase is dead. I am just like, I would like to burn that escalator to the ground. I just like imagining a calendar with — it’s like B.E. and A.E. -Before escalator. Oh, gosh. -I mean, so does Trump, Jamelle. So does Trump. -So we’re in the year 10 A.E. So in the year 10 A.E., I think a lot of Trump voters — that is part of their identity now. It is fixed. And from now on Republicans are going to be running without Donald Trump on the ballot. And so I think that the Trump position is going to be an artificially high indicator of the popularity of MAGA policies, that the actual indicator of MAGA policies is going to be much more indicated by in some senses, although I think issue polling is often kind of quasi garbage. But if you start to see overwhelming numbers in issue polling and then ultimately in the outcome of the midterm elections, and I think a lot of Republicans are — it’s starting to sink in that the rules that apply to Trump or the rules that don’t apply to Trump still apply to them.