On MS NOW's The Weekend, Angelo Carusone explains the cracks in right-wing media narratives
Carusone: “Trump does not have his finger on the zeitgeist the way that he typically does. He just isn’t as connected to that audience.”
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From the November 23, 2025, edition of MSNOW's The Weekend
EUGENE DANIELS (MS NOW HOST): Angelo, you spend a lot of time, probably more than anyone at this table, looking through right-wing media apparatus and kind of the world that is happening there. What we keep hearing from folks, whether it's here on MS NOW or other news organizations that are saying there's cracks in the MAGA base because Marjorie Taylor Greene is leaving and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah — but you spend a lot of time — is there actually cracks in the MAGA base, or is this something that we're over reading?
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): I think that, I wouldn't use the word base, right? The narrative is starting to unravel a little bit, and that's why it seems like there's this chaos or cracks. There is dissension. There certainly is. I mean, part of what we've been dealing with for so long is a consistent narrative coming out of the right-wing media. That's why we call it an echo chamber. And in a way, Trump has been the conductor for that chorus, which has helped him sort of not just have political power, but control the story. And what you're seeing in the last, you know, month or so are these cracks, Marjorie Taylor Greene being one example of that, the Tucker stuff with Nick Fuentes, lots of other examples. And I think what that — there are discrepancies. And I think it is reflective of two things. One, Trump does not have his finger on the zeitgeist the way that he typically does. He just isn't as connected to that audience and that's given him the ability to bob and weave and sort of control them and layer in things and sort of anticipate where it's going and that's why Marjorie Taylor Greene had a leg up on this.
DANIELS: Does it feel different this time? Because we've seen these cracks. You talked about Elon Musk. But like for years, since 2015, we've seen the Republican Party figure out how to love Trump again, whether it's Ted Cruz, who Trump called his wife ugly, to Marco Rubio who's now the secretary of state when he was talking about Trump's hands. Does this time feel different, the cracks, the dissension?
CARUSONE: Yeah, it does, it does. And now that does not mean that Trump is not dangerous. That's not to diminish his political power, his destructiveness. There's clearly a lot of it there. But what's different this time is sort of a much more — a forward looking idea. And they're all sort of looking beyond 2028. I mean, Tucker even did it explicitly, something they don't talk about. He was doing an interview with Paul Dans not that long ago where they were talking about it's time to start thinking about what happens after Trump. But that is like taboo — a year, six months ago, three months ago, that would have been taboo. But now that is a topic that they all want to think about and that's been the difference. So now I think it's fair to call him a lame duck. They would not have called him a lame duck a month ago. And Marjorie Taylor Greene is one part of that storyline unraveling. And I also think it's reflective on the larger media is that we all love a heel turn and we have to be careful.