Tucker Carlson invited a white nationalist troll on his podcast for a softball interview. 

Dave Smith and Marjorie Taylor Greene are falsely accusing Israel of genocide. 

Ben Shapiro has criticized President Trump for investing government money into private enterprise, along with his ongoing tariff program.

Brandon Tatum has faulted other pundits for asserting that Trump will run for a third term, when the United States Constitution clearly forbids it.

And now Republicans in blue states are suggesting President Trump needs to back off on hardcore, complete enforcement of our immigration laws.

The left and corporate media want to characterize these personality and policy disagreements as a MAGA civil war, all to further Democrat chances of regaining power in Congress and then the White House.

This fight has even spilled out into who is MAGA, or who defines MAGA.  At the Republican Jewish Coalition summit in early November, attendees carried signs saying, “Tucker is not MAGA.”

Granted, Tucker Carlson has spent time lately attacking President Trump and propping up left-wing interest in ideologies.  He actually praised now mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani of New York City.  Besides interviewing harsh (often spurious) critics of Israel, Tucker has brought on dubious historians who have questioned World War II and America’s decline, and he has even praised the Taliban and Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro.

What’s going on here?  Is he corrupting the MAGA brand?  Does Tucker really matter?  How effective is it to target Carlson because he gives accommodationist interviews?  These attacks only feed the renegade podcaster and his audience.

The larger policy confrontations are inevitable.  They break out within a political party that has acquired considerable power.  Republicans swept Election 2024, with a growing big tent of voters who have now lined up with the Republican brand.  Now we have to reconstitute the coalitions into a firm, stable platform.

The larger issue worth discussing must go beyond the personalities and the podcasters.  What is MAGA?  The Republican Party and the broad coalition of voters who supported President Trump must establish a clear set of values to define what it truly means to Make America Great Again. 

What is America?  What are the values, interests, and identity essentials that we should be fighting for? 

Immigration is a core issue, and Republican leaders are finally talking about curbing legal immigration, not just getting the illegals out of the country.  All of this is good and should serve as a unifying force in the broadened MAGA coalition.  But where is the plan for assimilating the legal residents?  What defines the American cultural heritage that we want future Americans to espouse?

This loose coalition must get back to basics: the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution.  We need to foster an appreciation and renewed respect for our founding charters.  The new MAGA coalition — pundits and pollsters and the general public — need a crash course in the essential importance of natural law, natural right, and Nature’s God to the founding and future of our Constitutional Republic.

Can we really make America great again by incentivizing more dependence on the government?  Where is the advocacy for an aggressive expansion of our gun rights?  The pro-life movement and the pro-family movements within the new Trump coalition need to seize the forefront.  You can’t make America great again if you neglect male and female, marriage of one man and one woman, and Mom and Dad.

Most importantly, MAGA must seek and expound the truth about the proper role of government.  We cannot help the working class if the federal government continues to spend more money than it takes in.  Elected officials grandstand over Epstein files while ignoring the affordability crises and public safety issues in their own communities, but government largesse won’t fix those problems.

It’s time for a serious policy explanation when it comes to outlining the basic tenets of a post-Trump MAGA agenda.  We need to get past the silly grifter fantasies of podcasters like Steve Bannon, who insists that Trump is going to run for a third term.  No offense, but Trump’s going to be 80-plus years old, and this guy is not going to succeed running a third term.  There is no way that a country can recover when it puts all of its eggs in one basket, or rather one president, to accomplish all the policy goals.  This will never be a winning strategy.  And the fact that so many commentators and pundits on the MAGA or Dissident Right are so determined to keep propping up Trump shows a poverty of ideas, or a lack of attention to political value details.  We have to change this.

We’ve got to define America First.  Does it mean no interactions with any foreign countries whatsoever?  That kind of isolationism is rather silly, because you can’t take on negative actors like Venezuelan drug-traffickers and Mexican cartels on your own.  When it comes to establishing proper trade deals, the United States inevitably has to form relationships and work with other countries. 

Domestic communism remains a problem; there is too much regulation and red tape to start a business, find a job, or raise a family.  The federal government is spending way too much money.  Why are MAGA pundits not making a better case for protecting working people by cutting out the fat and waste pervasive in our federal government?  When will they talk about cutting corporate welfare and bureaucratic perks, along with slashing foreign aid?  And why hasn’t Trump expanded his decommissioning of the federal Cabinet bureaucracy?  Getting rid of the Department of Education is a great start, but what about ending the Departments of Commerce, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Energy, and others? 

Offensive podcasters and commentators are getting a lot of attention by putting personality ahead of policy.  It’s time for MAGA grassroots activists to solidify a key set of issues while getting rid of the empty collectivism, bigotry, and degeneracy harming our movement.

Don’t tell me who is not MAGA.  Let’s define — or refine — what is MAGA!

Image: Tucker Carlson.  Credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.