On Deadline: White House, Angelo Carusone discusses how MAGA-adjacent influencers are turning away from Trump
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Fromt he November 11, 2025, edition of MSNBC's Deadline: White House
NICOLLE WALLACE (HOST): All the marble and all the gold in the world cannot plaster over the fact that the American people, by and large, are furious at Donald Trump over his failure to tackle their No. 1 issue: the rising cost of everything. Watch what happens when reality comes to bite Donald Trump in the you-know-what during an interview on Fox News, of all places.
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WALLACE: Laura Ingraham's a lot of things, but even Laura Ingraham knew the answer to the question she asked. And Trump could shush her all he wants. He did. But rising prices isn't a con job cooked up by Democrats, and Laura Ingraham knows that. The price of beef is up 14.2%. The price of coffee is up 15.3%. CNN reports this, quote, “Prices increased from January to September in five of the six overarching groups of grocery prices tracked by the federal government's consumer price index.” Donald Trump has never, ever, ever had a grasp of any of the facts, but particularly those around the cost of things for normal people or even the realities of the way normal Americans live. Here's what happened when Laura Ingraham brought up some of the pushback to an idea floated by Donald Trump recently — it's the idea of a 50-year fixed mortgage.
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WALLACE: Now, tell me you've never applied for a mortgage without telling me you've never applied for a mortgage. His inability to even get get the 30-year fixed thing of the answer right — go from, oh, you go from 40 to 50 — is a real slip of the mask. And it reflects this yawning gap now that everybody knows about, even his base between Donald Trump and every other living American. And it's becoming more and more of a liability by the day. On the same day that food assistance was set to expire for more than 40 million Americans, Donald Trump posted these pictures basically of his, like, DIY reno. Look what I did. I renovated the bathroom in the Lincoln bedroom. It's now covered in statuary marble instead of its historic design. Hours after that, he held an actual Great Gatsby-themed party. This is not some smear that the Democrats put on his party. It was actually called A Little Party Never Killed Nobody and had a Great Gatsby theme. That happened as 1.4 million federal workers went without a paycheck. And while that was happening, Donald Trump continued bulldozing and trying to build his giant gilded ballroom constructed on top of the now-demolished East Wing, a priceless part of America's collective history. That wreckage is to say nothing of the actual gilding of the Oval Office and other rooms at the White House with gold at a time when 77% of all Americans, regardless of who they voted for, say they're stressed out about their finances and their economic insecurity. Donald Trump and his crew of uber-wealthy Cabinet officials and billionaire tech bros keep telling us and showing us that they couldn't give a rat's behind that the American people are screaming at the top of their lungs about their economic anxiety. They make clear over and over and over again that they don't care.
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WALLACE: A wildly out of touch Donald Trump and Cabinet trying and failing to gaslight the American people on the cost of living. When it comes to his failure after 10 months in addressing the rising cost of living is where we start today. New York Times political reporter Nick Corasaniti is back. Also joining us, MSNBC political analyst, host of The Bulwark Podcast, Tim Miller's back. And president of Media Matters, Angelo Carusone, is back as well.
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WALLACE: Let me ask you, Angelo. We you introduced this theory this concept that I've been obsessed with since you said it, this idea of narrative dominance. And the only thing that was going to knock him off of that was always going to be a reality more compelling or more — with more magnetic pull, right, than the dominant narrative, or a politician. It seems that the latter hasn't really emerged, but the first may have.
How do you see this moment?
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS): Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, he certainly lost narrative dominance, and there are a lot of reasons for that, but a couple metrics. So one, we shouldn't discount the fact that this moment is happening after months of the Epstein stuff. And why that matters is that it was really for the first time, his own supporters, the people that had been percolating and simmering and pickled in the narrative that he had been telling, started to think for a second, well, wait a minute, maybe this guy is not going be straight with us all the time. And even if they didn't flip on him, it at least created some space where they'd be willing to entertain the possibility that, you know, that maybe their eyes and their experiences weren't lying to them and were more honest than what Trump was telling them was the case.
So then you sort of fast-forward to where we are now, and, you know, one of the metrics for — the other metric is the vibes. And the vibes in the right-wing media are not good right now. They're just not. There isn't a cohesive, coherent story. You see all these random sort of, like, grab bags and buffets of nonsensical ideas and proposals or reasons why things feel the way they do.
Even Steve Bannon, who tends to have the most cogent, you know, coherent argument for Trumpism and what's happening. You know, he's saying Trump has been nothing but focused on affordability, he's the guy who's focused on it all the time. Gives no examples of that except to say the most important thing he can do right now is deport more people in high-skilled jobs to help give some people in their late 20s and 30s with college debt jobs here. I mean, that's the best that they've come up with, and now this 50-year mortgage thing.
So, you know, the vibes there aren't great, and then you sort of then look at what's projecting on the future and you have a guy that's pointing out, even when Laura Ingraham was throwing him a bone, you know, all the gold that's on his wall, all the parties that Tim was referring to before. And that's the other piece of this narrative. One of the stories that Trump has always told these people is that just because I'm a billionaire that has my plane and my name on buildings, I'm just like you. I'm like you. I'm more like you than anybody else. I just have a lot of money. I'm the American dream embodiment.
And what that means implied in that is that I understand you. And what he's demonstrating right now is that he doesn't understand the minute he's disconnected. And that gap is only going to grow wider over time, especially when you don't have the rest of the right-wing media reinforcing a coherent story.
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WALLACE: Angelo, Tim Miller flagged that sound for us. That is a — if I describe him inaccurately, anyone of the three of you can jump on this — but he's sort of a MAGA-adjacent influential podcaster with a big following and carving out some independence for himself around the lack of focus on the thing that people care about, which is the economy, and explaining pretty accurately this pendulum swing. Now, I think he exaggerates either Bannon's influence or Bannon's focus on the economy. That's Bannon's history. That is not — that is not Bannon's path in Trump 2.0. And, Angelo, I wonder if you have any theories on why not. Is that what a pardon gets you?
CARUSONE: Yeah. I mean —
WALLACE: You don't criticize the boss? I don't know.
CARUSONE: Right. Yeah, I mean, he wants to be careful, right? I mean, he doesn't want to lose whatever little bit of influence that he has. He probably spent most of his capital getting Scott Bessent in place. And, you know, he sort of understands his lane here, which is — he doesn't have as much influence or power as he did the first time around. But what he does have is storytelling ability, and he hopes that he can carve out a persuasive enough narrative that it then sort of picks up through the rest of the revenue media and reverberates. And Tim pointing out the fact that he had echoed Bannon in the past as a reflection of the role that Bannon had played. It was a way to sort of influence the Trump administration by, you know, sending shockwaves through the rest of the the right-wing media and in particular these MAGA-adjacent people.
And as you know, with Tim Dillon, who's an example of a lot of other of these MAGA-adjacent figures is that they're themselves kind of like what am I doing here? You know, it's off. I don't want to necessarily jump to the Democrats, but, like, this guy is way not doing anything that I wanted. You know, he's all in with the tech people. He's not doing anything about the economy. It seems like he's making things worse. Now he's disconnected. People like him are not going to carry water for Trump, right? Like, Rush Limbaugh was always going to be Rush Limbaugh. Fox News is always going to be Fox News. Right? It cannot — they can't change. But these MAGA-adjacent figures, they're like weathervanes. They go where the wind blows.
They're not going to they're not going to tank themselves for the political fortunes especially of a lame duck. So that's not to be overly optimistic about it, but this is where it all sort of ties together. You know, right now, the rest [of] the right-wing media — which is deeply important for politics, we shouldn't discount that.
And Trump really — it's a chorus without a conductor. And when Trump is functioning as a conductor, he can get everything in line and help sell a story. But when he's off doing all these random things, having these parties reinforcing how disconnected he is, he's not serving that critical role either which diminishes his political influence. I don't think it's an accident that you're starting to see a little bit more friction. Let's not forget the Senate also said to him — and I don't want to herald it for this, but it's a reality — when he said end the filibuster, and they said no. Six months ago, would they have said no? I don't know. And and I think that's part of the example. You're seeing a little bit more friction here too. It's because he's not serving that conductor role, and that is so deeply tied to his political power.
WALLACE: Can I just ask you something about that, though? I mean, we focus probably to our to — or I focus to my detriment probably on on the political intersection in this space and their content. But the ones with the biggest audiences, to your point, I mean a lot of them go to listen to, like, the pyramid conspiracy theory. I mean, I got, like, hours of that, tuning in, doing my own research on this. And, I mean, how much is Trump just looking feeble? He's got bruises all over his hand. He falls asleep in a fat shot meeting. He's gilding the Oval Office. He flies around in, like, an actual bubble. His friend is, like, this weird eccentric billionaire. I mean, that describes all of his friends, plural. I mean, how much of it is, like, there's nothing cool. I mean, maybe they like the mugshot. Maybe they like that he was against the Democrats, and and it was sort of the the nemesis of my nemesis became cool. But there's nothing cool going on, and there's nothing, that intersects with culture the way maybe these guys thought he was going to as president.
CARUSONE: Oh, I think you nailed it. I mean, you know, a few months ago, right, he was the he was [at] an apex in the sense that he would show about these UFC rallies. You he was a reflection of what you'd want to be. He was aspirational in a lot of ways. He embodied, you know, sort of the hero of these conspiratorial narratives, and he sort of, you know, projected all this power, whereas now he's kind of becoming a joke.
And one example of that — I don't think it's an accident that just recently Dana White, who runs the UFC, is on some podcast saying, you know, I'm not as right-wing as people think I am. And, you know, he's not ripping on Trump, obviously, but what is he doing? He's creating an air gap. He would not have created an air gap a few months ago when Trump is, you know, showing up to raucous applause at his events. It's because Trump is no longer a reflection of the brand that he has been selling, that so many of these figures have bought into.
And that's really the power of QAnon and these conspiracies. Right? As Trump sort of plops in as the hero, but now with all the Epstein stuff, as you noted with with with all these tech people, it sort of seems like he's in on it or something's off. So it's not like they're going to turn on him, but they'll turn away from him.