The MAGA Games Continue

Day 27 Is Another Wild One

This was supposed to be the week of Squid Game 2, and Beast Games (if you have kids, you know).

But who knew that an unscheduled breakout of MAGA Games would rival them?

Day 1 was the unexpected explosion. I covered that yesterday.

Day 2 (Day 27 of my running account of the Trump era), the shrapnel still reverberated around the right-wing universe.

Vivek Steps Back

First, Vivek Ramaaswamy, who started it all, pulled back and attempted to move on—although others didn’t want to let him.

But on his way back to “work,” he couldn’t help but try to reframe the narrative (a direct assault on “Friends,” prom queens and sleepovers) that had gone so badly.

How do you unite a fractured right? Vivek knows. Just pretend you had been attacking drag queens, Cardi B and woke history and everyone will like you again:

Musk Goes All In

But Day 2 wasn’t about Ramaswamy, it was about Musk.

There’s doubling down. And tripling down. Maybe quadrupling down.

And then there’s what Musk did yesterday.

First, he lashed out at those criticizing his views on immigration as “contemptible fools” who must be removed from the Republican Party:

He then agreed with a tweet that called some in the MAGA movement the “retarded right.” (Honestly, it’s painful to even type the word in quotes).

Late in the day, he went further—suggesting those who disagree with him perform a physiological challenging task, before declaring outright war on them…

Elon’s War

Apparently, phase 1 of Elon’s declared war is to kneecap the Twitter accounts of numerous conservatives (who he has apparently been amplifying for months to help Trump win the election):

Deprived of their blue checks and artificially inflated voices, the vanquished immediately questioned whether Musk was truly committed to free speech after all. Hmmm. 🤔 Let us know when you get to the bottom of that mystery.

That ushered in Phase 2 of Musk’s war…going undercover!

Incredibly, in some chat room where his new enemies were all whining about their new status, Musk appears to have joined under a false name (no, not John Barron) and lectured them for being “ungrateful mf’ers” for having amplified them all this time:

All this deplatforming prompted right wing extremist Laura Loomer to say she now sympathized with the recent NY assassin:

Civility?

By day’s end, it occurred to some on the right that this brouhaha might not help their cause. So they began to pat themselves on the back that the entire blow-up has been civil debate at its finest.

Yes, telling Americans of Indian descent to return to India, profane name-calling, censoring opposing views, and saying you now sympathize with an assassin will definitely rival Lincoln-Douglas as one of our nation’s finest debates.

A couple other moments stuck out amid all this.

“Disheartened”?

Another set of reactions also emerged on Day 2.

Some in the MAGA alliance expressed dismay at the “persistent and dehumanizing attacks” and the perpetuation of “racist tropes without consequence.” It seems to be a “pattern,” one disappointed commenter posted (between tweets of Elon in a Superman outfit), before asking: is this “an undercurrent that the party I unwilling—or worse, uninterested—to confront?”

Um — it’s not an undercurrent, my friend.

More like an under-tsunami.

And Trump?

Finally, perhaps most stunning of all, Donald Trump seems to have said absolutely nothing for an entire day. (Perhaps because he realizes that these two extreme factions of his coalition, in the end, can not co-exist.)

And for that, Vivek, we thank you.