I Spent A Week With Trump Supporters. The “MAGA Civil War” Is A Hoax
The only infighting is among conservative commentators
Last week, I flew down to Phoenix, Arizona to attend AmericaFest, Turning Point USA’s biggest event of the year.
It was my first time attending an American conservative event.
If you read legacy media headlines about the event that was organized by the late Charlie Kirk prior to his assassination, you might think that it was a cesspool of division.
A POLITICO headline said “MAGA infighting erupts at Turning Point USA Conference.”
A Huffington Post headline said “Conservative Infighting Explodes at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest.”
A New York Times headline said “Turning Point’s Annual Gathering Turns Into a Gripefest.”
A CBS headline said “Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest puts conservative rift on display.”
These headlines reflect a broader narrative built around two claims. First, that there is a “MAGA civil war,” with the American conservative movement supposedly more divided than ever. Second, that there is growing discontent with Donald Trump among Republicans.
One of the main alleged causes of both is foreign policy. More precisely, it is claimed that the MAGA movement is dead evenly divided over Israel, and that supporters are angry with Trump for spending too much time overseas, including in the Middle East, and not enough time focused on issues at home.
But what if I told you there is no such thing as a MAGA civil war, and that this is nothing more than another legacy media hoax.
MAGA is united. They still love Trump. And are not anti-Israel.
The only division is among the elite commentator class.
Fighting Among The Commentariat
The headlines about infighting among speakers at AmericaFest are true, to a certain degree. There was infighting and division, but it was only among the speakers.
On opening night, right after Charlie’s widow Erika Kirk called for unity, Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro went scorched earth on former conservative commentator turned radical conspiracy theorist Candace Owens, as well as fellow conservative commentators Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, and Megyn Kelly.
“No Tucker Carlson, it is not an excuse to go silent on Candace’s targeting of TPUSA, or to mirror her bullshit lines of questioning because you love Candace personally. The same holds true of Megyn Kelly… And when Megyn said this week, ‘my goal and my job here is to try to understand, yes, where Candace is coming from on this,’ and says she sees no purpose in inserting herself, ‘into this on one side,’ that is a moral and logical absurdity,” Shapiro said,
Shapiro also slammed Bannon as “a PR flack for Jeffrey Epstein.”
Responding to Shapiro later that night, Carlson said, “By the way, ‘shut up, racist’ is the number one reason I voted for Donald Trump, because I’m just sick of it. ‘Shut up, Nazi’ is no different from ‘shut up, racist.’ It’s a little more annoying, actually.”
When asked about Shapiro the next day on stage, Kelly said “I don’t think we are friends anymore.” Kelly then went on to blast Shapiro as “Israel first” in a Vanity Fair interview.
Bannon in his speech railed against Shapiro. “Now, Benji Shapiro sat up here last night, and he was all, you know, ‘It’s all about the truth.’ Ben, I’ve known you a long time, brother. You can’t handle the truth.”
He followed up by saying Shapiro is “the farthest thing from MAGA” and a “cancer.”
Based on all of this, you would assume the movement is fractured.
But that is actually not the case.
Unity Among the People
On the ground, speaking to regular attendees, I got a sense of unity, and not of the division seen on stage.
At a reception one night, I was with multiple American Gen Z conservatives, whom the media claims are “increasingly anti-Israel.” So I asked them their thoughts on Israel.
One told me about a biblical need to be pro-Israel. Another said it was obvious that Hamas is the evil actor, and that radical Islam is a far greater threat to America and the West than Zionism could ever be. Others said that while the Middle East is not their issue of interest, they do side with Israel over Hamas.
I heard very similar things from older, Baby Boomer attendees, at the convention centre.
Several people told me they agreed with Shapiro’s overall messaging, and Shapiro did get the loudest cheers. That said, others told me they wished he did not call people out by name the way he did, due to that being divisive.
I also did not meet a single person who was a fan of Candace Owens.
Everyone I spoke to also told me they were satisfied with President Trump’s performance. There was only slight criticism. For example, one woman told me she wished Trump would send out fewer incendiary Truth Social posts.
A Straw Poll Confirms It
Do not just take my word for it.
A straw poll conducted by Turning Point USA after the event found that 87 percent of attendees believed Israel was an ally of the United States, with just 13 percent saying it was not an ally.
The top threat to the United States according to the attendees is radical Islam, which Tucker Carlson has dismissed as not a real threat.
I will add that everyone I spoke to at AmericaFest told me they disagreed with Carlson’s recent downplaying of radical Islam.
The poll also found that 83 percent of attendees want JD Vance to be Trump’s successor.
A Big Disconnect
All of this demonstrates that the conservative commentary class in the United States is out of touch with the people it’s supposed to serve.
American conservative commentators fight endlessly about Israel, a topic that is discussed almost daily on Tucker Carlson’s show and frequently on Ben Shapiro’s show. Meanwhile, regular MAGA supporters are broadly united on supporting Israel. That said, Israel is also not a top priority for them. Domestic issues matter more.
Instead of focusing on these issues, the commentary class argues over foreign nations and increasingly about which commentators should be included or excluded from the MAGA movement.
This disconnect between the commentators and the people reminds me of the thesis put forward by Batya Ungar-Sargon in her book Bad News, which argues that legacy media journalists often have fundamentally different priorities from ordinary people.
The main reason for this gap is class.
That divide is now also happening to independent media, which was supposed to be a Of the people, By the people, and For the people alternative to elitist legacy media.
Conservative commentators in the United States make enormous amounts of money, and their daily lives look very different from those of regular Americans. Increased security measures in the face of a violent left also means they rarely interact face to face with ordinary people. In fact, the only chance AmericaFest attendees had to meet some of the speakers was at tightly controlled meet-and-greets, where you move quickly through a line, snap a photo, and are ushered along.
Ungar-Sargon also noted in a recent piece for The Free Press that conservative commentators and influencers are increasingly driven by clicks. As a result, they become more extreme and controversial, even when their base does not share these views.
“The brouhaha isn’t ‘splitting the right.’ It’s splitting the political and cultural right from the content creators who make their money off global, online audiences,” wrote Ungar-Sargon.
My takeaway from my trip to Arizona: The MAGA base is united, and ready for 2026 and 2028.
What remains to be seen is whether the commentariat class will join their base in uniting ahead of the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election, or whether they will prioritize petty infighting, which risks resulting in the Democrats regaining control of Congress in 2026, and potentially in Gavin Newsom or Kamala Harris winning the presidency in 2028.