On Deadline: White House, Angelo Carusone discusses how MAGA media doesn’t “know how to deal with regretful Trump voters”
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From the June 12, 2026, edition of MS NOW's Deadline: White House
NICOLLE WALLACE (HOST): Angelo, let's go back to the voters. "F you." I'm so conflicted about bleeping out and sanitizing anything when it comes to Trump, right? The conversation inside his coalition is never sanitized inside MAGA media, but for anyone with kids at home, we believe that it's obvious what he was saying. And his own voter describing himself as a three time Trump voter, which means he voted for him 15 months ago, saying the economy is in the gutter. Asked, you know, to stand by that, he comes back and says, yeah, it's in the gutter.
So, this is the reality. This is the lived reality for people Trump used to care about, his own voters. You know, he was in a sort of monogamous communication loop with them in the first term, and throughout his four years out of office. He has broken that covenant, right? And it seems that the only people he's in a chat with now are people like the guy NPR reported on, the convicted child molester who somehow knew before Todd Blanche says he knew about a $1.8 billion slush fund for the insurrectionists. How do you assess the intimacy which used to be really a political phenomenon, which has turned into distance between Trump and his voters.
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): Yeah. I mean, look, that was a source of his strength. I mean, obviously, the apparatus around him that he could use, the media apparatus that he could use to amplify, but his connection to that zeitgeist allowed him to then, you know, amplify stories and messages and capture that gut feeling that then enabled him to build power on what used to be considered the fringes. And also pulling people that maybe, you know, wouldn't have been there in the first place. So, you're right. That is a really important part of this story, and it speaks a lot to what his political power is going to be going forward.
And then there's the larger question, which is what does this mean? And the first thing I'll start with is -- and this is where the tension comes in in these discussions is that -- it's true. The regrets are piling up amongst Trump voters. They are just consistently piling up, and we're hearing this in some places of talk radio a little bit here and there, obviously, in focus groups and polls. But regrets don't equal defections. And I think sometimes people say, well, then it doesn't matter. But it does, because they don't have to defect. They don't have to become Democratic voters for it to make a difference. They just have to not participate and continue to politically support Trump and those that are enabling Trump. And that's an important part of regrets. It makes a really big difference.
The other thing that makes a big difference is that -- is the narrative. That is another piece of Trump's thing. We talked about this a lot, his narrative dominance. And when you have so much regret amongst Trump voters, amongst MAGA voters, amongst MAGA audience, MAGA media doesn't have a plan. They don't know how to deal with regretful Trump voters, so what they end up doing is ignoring them. And that gets back to the core of your question, which is, what does that do? Well, if you're being ignored, you just get more mad. And then everything that gets said gets further and further detached. That gap becomes wider, and wider, and wider.
This is a trend we've seen going all the way back to the way they handled the Epstein stuff at first. They turned a crack into a full-blown fissure. And that's the feedback loop that he's in now with his audience. And, so, these cracks then, these regrets with the audience, they get more mad because, you know, Fox and the hosts, they just ignore them. They make them mad, and so does Trump, but then the effect is it just continues to brew up, and then the personalities have to start to slowly start to shift.
You heard Jesse Watters say something negative about Trump this week. That is insane. That's incredible. That never happens. I'm not going to give him any credit. That's a big deal though. You know, he's like the sycophant's sycophant. I mean -- the fact that he was saying something critical and not caveat it is a big deal because it is a small reflection of that audience, because when Trump's gone --
WALLACE: What was it? What was it about?
CARUSONE: He was criticizing about Iran, just like Mark Levin is doing it, and Benny Johnson said the same thing, you know, a month ago, 30 days. Benny Johnson said, don't worry, gas prices are gonna be $2 by the midterms. He was heralding Trump's power and his success and his skills. This week, 30 days later, he's saying that it's -- he was sort of lamenting how bad everything is and saying that, you know, if gas prices do not return to pre-war levels as we get closer to the midterms, he's going to be angry and very upset and fearful. That is a big shift to happen in 30 days. Now, it's just a one-off. You know, these comments themselves don't add up to a lot, but it does have an effect on a larger story that Trump is telling.