MAGA malaise festers into some high-profile buyers’ remorse

Tucker Carlson said this week he’s “tormented” by his backing of President Donald Trump.

“Humbly, I’m sorry,” Marjorie Taylor Greene said last November. Her apology, for contributing to toxic politics, came after Trump called her a traitor.

Candace Owens said last June she was “embarrassed” for backing Trump after the first time he ordered the bombing of Iran.

Megyn Kelly didn’t apologize, but she did lash out at Trump this month over his Iran war and his feud with the pope in recent weeks.

Both Greene and Owens, along with fellow serial conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, have suggested Trump’s Cabinet should consider the 25th Amendment as a means to remove him from office. To so would require Cabinet members to revolt against him, which seems fanciful at the moment.

Not the MAGA they pushed for

But in some vocal corners of the conservative chattering class, there is a visceral anti-Trumpism, even anger, setting in.

Carlson interviewed his brother Buckley, whom the family calls “Uncle Buck,” in a two-hour interview in which they aired their many grievances and disappointments with the president.

It’s not that the two have suddenly found common ground with Democrats who frequently label Trump as a fascist. Rather, the Carlson brothers don’t think Trump has gone nearly far enough delivering on his promises.

They weren’t shocked at the severity of mass deportations, for instance — they want more. And Buckley, who described himself as a Trump supporter in 2016, before it was cool, is now angry at the president, who he said didn’t do enough to defend January 6 rioters before he pardoned or commuted the sentences of more than 1,000 of them.

Tucker Carlson, who campaigned doggedly with Trump in 2024 and said he was advising the president as recently as a few weeks ago, said Trump hasn’t done enough to unwind the “anti-White” agenda of Democrats. Tucker’s son, also Buckley, recently left a position in the office of Vice President JD Vance.

The Carlson brothers questioned the veracity of polls that show Trump still has the support of most Republicans since everyone they know is hopping mad about the war in Iran, the Epstein files and a lot more.

Trump’s approval rating among Republicans has definitely fallen

Republicans were effectively all in on Trump not long after he took office for his second term; CNN polling clocked Trump at 92% approval among Republicans in March of 2025. Nearly two-thirds, 64%, said that month that they strongly approved of his job as president. By this March, approval among Republicans dropped to 80% and strong approval dropped to 43% in CNN polling.

For what it’s worth, Trump has attacked the MAGA supporters who turned on him, and has said that he gets to decide what the movement’s priorities are.

“MAGA is me,” he told NBC News in January.

Conspiracy theories turned against Trump

It’s worth noting here that many of these former boosters turned Trump opponents have made livings stoking conspiracy theories. Those tendencies to creatively distrust authority, as CNN’s Aaron Blake noted, are now being turned against Trump, who remains the master conspiracy theorist.

The administration’s slow-walked release of the Epstein files frustrated many backers who expected full transparency from Trump.

Owens, in particular, thinks there’s more to the story of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination last year. She has made wild accusations about the murder and drawn the enmity of Kirk’s widow Erika.

And all the MAGA conspiracy theorists now turning on Trump question why more is not known about the assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, in 2024.

More than disappointment

What’s striking about the buyer’s remorse some right-wing commentators are expressing about Trump is not that it exists; it’s natural for a president to lose support as their campaign promises run into reality.

Rather, these Republicans are now his active political enemies.

The turn has not occurred in all or even most of the GOP, but those who have evolved have done so dramatically.

Trump remorse is far from ubiquitous in MAGA media. Dan Bongino, who went from Facebook-famous podcaster to a top position at the FBI, left the bureau to return to his podcast and remains committed to the president.

Steve Bannon has expressed frustrations with some of Trump’s policies, but still wants to see him run for an unconstitutional third term.

CNN senior political commentator Scott Jennings wondered at Carlson’s apology.

“I mean, is his preference that Kamala Harris had become the president of the United States?” Jennings said to CNN’s Kasie Hunt on “The Arena” Tuesday. “That will come as a surprise, I’m sure, to a lot of people who used to view Tucker Carlson as a conservative and someone who had certain kinds of values.”

On the Iran war, Jennings said Carlson should have seen it coming.

“Is he now claiming he had no idea that Donald Trump held the position that he would never permit Iran to have nuclear weapons? If that’s what he’s saying today, he’s kind of a moron.”

Trump did very specifically promise to keep the US out of forever wars on the campaign trail. But he now has shown a willingness to make use of the US military.

A larger problem for the Trump administration will ultimately be whether rank-and-file Republicans agree more with the MAGA media personalities that cross into their social media feeds or with Trump himself.

The unintended consequences of Trump’s policymaking may not help him or his party in November. The war has driven up gas prices. Tariffs could be blamed for continued inflation. Trump’s effort to draw new House seats for Republicans in Texas and other red states as an election insurance policy has backfired; Democrats hold the redistricting-wars advantage, at least for now, after voters in Virginia and California blessed the redrawing of their maps specifically to combat Trump.

CNN’s Adam Cancryn reported Tuesday the White House could shape its midterm strategy around trying to convince voters Democrats would be worse if they were in charge. It seems unlikely Carlson, Greene or Owens is going to be voting for a Democrat any time soon, but the White House probably shouldn’t count on their support as election season draws near.