On Deadline: White House, Angelo Carusone discusses infighting in MAGA media and how it's splitting the Republican Party
Carusone: “It’s as much about what they believe as it’s about how they grow their own respective businesses and audiences”
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From the April 9, 2026, edition of MS NOW's Deadline: White House
NICOLLE WALLACE (HOST): The things that figures on the left and in the mainstream media have been saying for nine years now that the corruption is out front and in front of everybody, that the violations of norms are now policy, that the conduct seems to quote Marjorie Taylor Greene, quote, insane, and that no one can keep straight in satire or in straight political journalism. Which crisis is distracting from which?
ANGELO CARUSONE (GUEST): Yeah, I think a couple of things. One, you know, the effects of all these are cumulative. I think that sometimes people are looking for a moment where, you know, they make this critique and then something suddenly changes. And as you noted in the intro, even though they are hitting Trump and they are criticizing Trump, they are still careful to say, "but I would probably still vote for him." Right? They're not willing to go that far. They're not. And that's okay for now. What's significant about this, though? The so what is that because the effects are cumulative, it's not just that they are sort of wearing away, right? It started with policy critiques. That's where it's been for a while. And as you noted, it's starting to get more personal. They're starting to acknowledge that there's something at the core here that's wrong. There's issues of judgment. There's issues of character. That's all brand new, right?
That's what happens when the effects are cumulative. So that's one piece. It starts to tear down the veneer. And for a figure like Trump, not himself, he relies a lot on kayfabe. He's a character. He's a character. That's why he gets away with so much, because he's a character in this larger story, which means he's a media creature. So not only if you tear away and you start to strip away at some of that storyline, it makes it harder for people to carry water for him. But when they are critiquing him, even if they're not willing to go so far to say they would change their vote, they're not carrying water. They're not unified. They're not telling his story, which means he doesn't have narrative dominance. So as bad as everything is, it could be a heck of a lot worse if the right wing was all in lockstep behind him, backfilling and reinforcing every single claim that he went out there and made.
And so when you look ahead to the significance of it, yeah, he's going to make some real plays on the election it seems like. He's going to try to attack and undermine it. But if the entire apparatus that he's assuming is going to help backfill it and reinforce that isn't willing to do that in lockstep, it makes his position and the cards that he plays a lot weaker. And again, it's going to take time, bit by bit as they chip away. I'll just give one piece of caution, though, because as they are criticizing Trump, it's worth going back to what took place in October, that fight with Nick Fuentes and the Heritage Foundation that embroiled much of the right-wing.
What they were dealing with was where the new power was emerging. And that's in groypers. And the undercurrent of a lot of these critiques about Trump. They're as much about Trump as they are about channeling and organizing that new groyper phenomenon that is increasingly gaining traction and kinetic energy within the larger Republican base. And so they're tapping into that because that's a growth opportunity for them. And I don't think it's an accident that it's all new media figures on the right that are beginning to make these claims. It's as much about what they believe as it's about how they grow their own respective businesses and audiences. And so there's a little bit brewing here that's percolating that could be a lot scarier and darker on the other side of this.