The MAGA movement that President Donald Trump created keeps pushing back on him, from his administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files to his comments this week regarding visas for foreign workers.
Trump says that he decides what it means to “Make America Great Again,” but the repeated disputes underscore how the ideological purity of his followers is increasingly at odds with the president’s own flexibility on policy.
He has largely adhered to his “America First” agenda, particularly in areas such as border security and his persistent urging of NATO to contribute more to its own defense. But Trump has governed not altogether differently than other Republican presidents, emphasizing the Reagan doctrine of “peace through strength” and favoring business-friendly policies to spur economic growth.
That disconnect has translated into growing discontent with Trump and an opening for Democrats to challenge him. He received backlash for giving Argentina a $40 billion bailout, viewed by some of his followers as a betrayal, last month. And most recently, Trump came under fire over H-1B visas, a program that permits U.S. employers to sponsor foreign workers for specialty occupations.
“Does that mean the H-1B visa thing will not be a big priority for your administration?” Fox News’s Laura Ingraham asked Trump in an interview earlier this week. “Because if you want to raise wages for American workers, you can’t flood the country with tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of foreign workers.”
“Look, I agree, but you also have to bring in talent. When a country…” Trump started saying.
“We have plenty of talented people,” Ingraham interjected in a rare testy change with a friendly cable network.
Trump is also being challenged on a front entirely unrelated to policy, with the return of House lawmakers reviving a controversy over Epstein, the late convicted sex offender alleged to have run a trafficking ring for the country’s elites.
Four House Republicans, including self-described MAGA supporters Lauren Boebert (R-CO) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), signed on to a discharge petition earlier this year to put pressure on the Justice Department to release the entirety of its Epstein files. The petition, which gathered the 218 signatures required to bring the measure to the House floor, is expected to receive a vote sometime next week.
“The Epstein issue will show us if they’re able to go further,” Doug Heye, a former spokesman for the Republican National Committee, told the Washington Examiner, judging that Trump’s right flank could steer the president on policy matters as well, “if they picked and chose their battles carefully.”
The bill to release the files is unlikely to pass the Senate and has already been rejected once. Yet Boebert’s decision not to remove her name from the petition, in particular, is remarkable considering Trump called her this week regarding Epstein before inviting her to a meeting in the White House’s Situation Room to discuss her concerns.
“That’s a defining factor of transparency, having discussions, having discussions with members of Congress about various issues,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters during a briefing this week.
Greene has also been increasingly critical of Trump as the party begins to look beyond his presidency, prompting the president to declare that she had “lost her way.” Greene has been especially focused on the cost of living and claimed that Trump was ignoring the issue in favor of foreign policy.
In the wake of Trump’s interview with Ingraham, former White House chief political strategist Steve Bannon dedicated much of his War Room podcast to criticizing his comments and those of his Cabinet officials.
Trump has also faced criticism for his housing chief’s proposal of 50-year mortgages, with the MAGA Right claiming the policy was devised to help large banks.
Bannon later told Real America’s Voice anchors that they were witnessing the MAGA movement “mature.”
“Some people are losing their minds about this,” he said. “I think it’s great that people are all bounded together and saying, ‘No, no, no, no, this is what we stand for.’”
Trump defended his leadership of MAGA during his interview with Ingraham, arguing, “MAGA was my idea.”
“I know what MAGA wants better than anybody else,” he said. “MAGA wants to see our country thrive.”
The White House similarly defended Trump as “the proud and undisputed leader of the MAGA movement,” asserting that “he continues to maintain historic levels of support among Republicans.”
“That’s because President Trump is delivering on all of the core promises he made to the American people, like ending Joe Biden’s illegal alien invasion, carrying out the largest mass deportation campaign ever, and ending DEI in our federal government, and we have the hottest country ever as a result,” White House spokeswoman Liz Huston told the Washington Examiner.
Specifically regarding Trump’s comments about visas, a White House official underscored that the president “is protecting American workers by restoring accountability in the H1-B process, ensuring that it is used to bring in only the highest-skilled foreign workers in specialty occupations and not low-wage workers that will displace Americans.” That includes making employers pay $100,000 for new applications.
Lee Miringoff, the director of the Marist University Institute for Public Opinion, said that although “there is some discontent among MAGA supporters,” a decline in Trump’s support since he first took office is “more pronounced among independents, non-whites, and younger voters” — “the groups that gave him the boost” in 2024.
Dan Schnur, a Republican-turned-independent political analyst, also noted that even more traditional Republicans appear to be “learning how to pick their spots with Trump.”
TRUMP CONFRONTED AGAIN BY EPSTEIN PROBLEM THAT WON’T GO AWAY
“It’s still extremely rare that they will directly confront him, but they are starting to figure out when they can steer the president in their direction without getting a full frontal attack from him in response,” said Schnur, John McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign communications director.
In particular, congressional Republicans have expressed concern over Trump’s plan to import beef from Argentina and the possibility that it could hurt the U.S. cattle industry.
