A black nationalist friend of mine from back in the 90s sent me an MSNBC clip the night before the Kentucky race results came in, convinced it proved the MAGA movement was collapsing and that Trump supporters were finally abandoning ship. I held off responding until after the election because I wanted to see what the actual political reality would show. Ironically, Thomas Massie’s loss only reinforced the larger point: Donald Trump still commands enormous influence over the Republican base and the direction of the GOP. Watching the clip afterward, what stood out to me most wasn’t the argument itself, but how disconnected much of the corporate media still seems from the broader political realignment happening in the country.
Gotta’ love irony…
The video segment featured a former MAGA activist apologizing for supporting Donald Trump and claiming that Trump “enriched himself and his family” while betraying his supporters. He went on to say that people inside MAGA are quietly doubting the movement, that Trump is “losing support,” and that conservatives are nearing some imaginary breaking point where they will finally abandon him.
But this narrative keeps colliding with reality.
The media has been predicting the collapse of MAGA since 2016. They said Trump would never win. Then they said his presidency would implode. Then they said impeachment would destroy him. Then they said January 6th ended him politically. Then they said the indictments would finally collapse his support.
Yet here we are.
Trump today has more control over the Republican Party than any Republican figure in modern history. Even CNN analysts have acknowledged polling showing essentially total support for Trump among the MAGA wing of the GOP. Trump is not some fringe outsider clinging to relevance. He is the center of gravity of the Republican Party itself.
And unlike the old establishment Republicans, Trump didn’t merely influence the party; he fundamentally reshaped it.
Look at what happened to the old guard Republicans who openly turned against him. Liz Cheney went from being treated by the media as the conscience of conservatism to being overwhelmingly rejected by Republican voters in Wyoming. Similar things happened to a long list of anti-Trump Republicans who either lost primaries, retired, or became politically irrelevant after aligning themselves more closely with corporate media than with their own voter base.
Trump’s endorsement power became one of the strongest forces in Republican politics. Candidate after candidate he backed defeated establishment Republicans and so-called “RINOs,” proving that the populist-nationalist wing of the party was not shrinking; it was consolidating power.
Trump’s endorsement power has been one of the strongest forces in Republican politics, with a rock-solid 95% success rate across primaries. He played a direct role in removing ten prominent RINOs from office: Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Peter Meijer, Tom Rice, Jaime Herrera Beutler, Anthony Gonzalez, John Katko, Fred Upton, and several others who openly defied him and paid the price at the ballot box. A CNN poll recently captured Trump at 100% favorability among the MAGA wing of the GOP, and fresh polling from Fox News, Rasmussen Reports, and YouGov shows he is just as popular with his base right now as he was in 2016. Massie’s loss tonight seals this.
That alone completely undermines MSNBC’s argument that MAGA is somehow collapsing from within.
What the media still does not understand is that MAGA was never merely about one politician. Trump became the American expression of something much larger happening across the Western world: a civilizational backlash against globalism.
For decades, the ruling elite operated under the assumption that history was moving toward a borderless, technocratic, secular global order dominated by multinational corporations, supranational institutions, centralized bureaucracy, and cultural homogenization. The assumption was that national identity, religion, local culture, and traditional values would steadily fade away.
Instead, the opposite happened.
Across the world, people increasingly began rejecting the globalist consensus. Nations started reasserting sovereignty, border enforcement, cultural identity, and populist self-governance. You saw it with Brexit. You saw it with nationalist movements throughout Europe. You saw rising distrust toward legacy institutions everywhere.
And right here in Black America, the same globalist forces (dressed up as “progressive” politics) have been running the same experiment on us since the 90s. We were told that cultural Marxism, federal dependency, secularized social policy, grievance-centered identity narratives, and locking ourselves into the Democratic Party would produce empowerment and flourishing. Black nationalists from the old days warned that this was a trap: trading real self-determination for handouts, broken families, and permanent victim status. They were right. Look at the numbers since the 90s, family instability exploded, fatherless homes became the norm in too many neighborhoods, educational decline accelerated, violent crime in our communities stayed stubbornly high or got worse in key cities, cultural decay replaced pride with despair, and economic stagnation locked generations into cycles the Democrats never fixed. We bought what they were selling, and we got nothing in return. Zero real uplift. Just more dependency, more excuses, and more elites getting rich off our pain.
And we can’t ignore how illegal immigration has hurt Black communities the most. Black Americans (whose ancestors marched, bled, and sacrificed for suffrage and full citizenship rights) have essentially been replaced by illegal aliens who cross the border for free. These newcomers get priority access to jobs, housing, healthcare, education, and billions in tax dollars that should be rebuilding our neighborhoods and lifting up our families. Instead of honoring the hard-won gains our people fought for, the Democrats’ open-border policies make Black citizens less of a priority in their own country, diverting resources away from us so they can buy votes and cheap labor from people who never earned the right to be here. Our tax dollars are funding their success while our communities keep sliding backward. That’s not progress — that’s replacement.
Commentators like Steve Turley have described this as the transition from a globalist order to a civilizationist order, where nations reclaim historic identity, faith, tradition, and sovereignty instead of dissolving into borderless managerial systems. Trump did not create that movement. He rode the wave of it. And for Black America, that wave is the chance to finally break free from the very system that has kept us going downhill.
That is why the attacks against him never seem to weaken his core support. Millions of Americans increasingly view the media, federal bureaucracy, elite universities, multinational corporations, and political institutions as disconnected from ordinary life. So every new media attack often reinforces the belief that Trump is being targeted precisely because he threatens the establishment order (the same order that sold Black communities a bill of goods for thirty-plus years and delivered only decline).
And nowhere is the media narrative more dishonest than when it comes to claims that Trump “enriched himself” through the presidency.
Donald Trump entered office already wealthy and globally famous. He did not spend decades climbing political ladders to become rich after public office. In fact, Trump is one of the few modern presidents whose overall wealth appears to have declined substantially because of politics.
And honestly, the reason doesn’t even matter.
Whether it was lawsuits, investigations, political targeting, media warfare, business disruption, or nonstop attacks from institutions trying to destroy him financially, the basic point remains unchanged: Trump lost money during and after his presidency.
Meanwhile, many establishment politicians entered office far less wealthy and left dramatically richer.
Bill Clinton became enormously wealthy after office through speeches, foundations, and influence networks. Barack Obama signed massive book and media deals worth tens of millions after leaving the White House. Numerous career politicians have accumulated extraordinary wealth while spending most of their lives in public office.
Yet corporate media rarely frames that as corruption.
Americans notice that double standard, especially Black Americans who watched the same elites lecture us about “systemic” everything while our streets got harder and our futures got dimmer under their watch.
That is why many people simply do not buy the MSNBC narrative anymore. If Trump’s primary goal was personal enrichment, voluntarily walking into years of investigations, lawsuits, impeachments, financial pressure, public vilification, and nonstop political warfare makes very little sense.
But the deeper reason people reject these media narratives is because many Americans increasingly feel the system itself has failed them, especially the system that told Black folks the Democrats were our only path forward.
Working and middle-class Americans watched manufacturing disappear, wages stagnate, borders weaken, social cohesion decline, and institutions become more ideological and less trustworthy. They watched elite institutions lecture them about morality while those same institutions became increasingly disconnected from the struggles of ordinary people.
And this conversation becomes especially important when discussing Black America, because we have lived the failure of that cultural Marxist bargain longer and harder than anyone. For decades, many Black communities were told that progressive politics, federal dependency, secularized social policy, and grievance-centered identity narratives would produce empowerment and flourishing. Yet many communities instead experienced worsening family instability, educational decline, crime, cultural decay, and economic stagnation. That reality is difficult to discuss honestly because corporate media almost always frames social problems exclusively through systemic oppression narratives while avoiding deeper discussions about family structure, faith, personal responsibility, community standards, and cultural values (the very things Black nationalists have always said we needed to rebuild ourselves).
Even organizations like Black Lives Matter, once treated by corporations and media outlets as unquestionable moral authorities, became surrounded by financial scandals and leadership controversies that deeply damaged public trust. Many Americans watched millions of dollars flow into activist organizations while the actual conditions in struggling neighborhoods often showed little meaningful improvement. We got the slogans. We got the corporate cash. We got the Democratic lockstep vote. What we didn’t get was safer streets, stronger families, better schools, or real economic power. The black movement hasn’t gotten better since the 90s; it’s gone downhill precisely because we bought into the Democrats’ cultural Marxism and received nothing in return.
And that is ultimately why MSNBC and much of the corporate press continue misunderstanding this political moment.
They still think MAGA is simply a temporary emotional movement centered around one personality. But millions of Americans increasingly see it as part of a much larger civilizational shift happening worldwide, a rejection of globalism, technocracy, secular elitism, and institutional control. For Black America, that shift is the best news we’ve had in decades. Trump isn’t asking us to stay locked in the same failing Democratic plantation of grievance and dependency. He’s recreating the conditions (through opportunity, self-reliance, secure borders that protect our neighborhoods, school choice that actually educates our kids, and an economy that rewards work instead of punishing it) so Black people will have a much better chance of real success. The old order is weakening.
National identity is resurging. Sovereignty matters again. 401K’s are booming. Religion and tradition are returning to public life. Populism is replacing establishment consensus politics.
And until the corporate media understands that larger transformation (especially how it finally gives Black America a way out of the cultural Marxist dead-end they sold us) they will continue producing segments that sound less like serious political analysis and more like people trying to convince themselves that the world is not changing around them. Brother, the decline stops when we stop buying what they’re selling. Trump is proving the alternative works.
