There Once Was A Dream That Was MAGA

It’s difficult to describe the level of optimism I had for the future of our country in the days, weeks, and months after Donald Trump’s improbable victory over Kamala Harris in 2024. After the Covid-fueled mess that ended Trump’s first term, the political fallout surrounding the J-6 riots, and four disastrous years under a dementia-riddled Joe Biden during which the border remained wide open for all comers, another four years under Harris would have likely sealed America’s fate.

So when Trump pulled it out, it felt like new life, God’s proverbial second chance, a miracle even, especially given the failed assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, that could have ended it all, yet ended up galvanizing voters in a way that normal politics never could have. (RELATED: Epstein Allegedly Signed Off On Horrific Medical Act Against Woman)

It was the coalition to end all coalitions, as least insofar as our fractured politics has become. In addition to a solid MAGA base that would have followed Trump into the ocean if he chose to walk there, it was an election won by disaffected Democrats, by MAHA moms, by non-interventionist libertarians, by minorities fed up with empty Democrat promises, by podcast bros like Joe Rogan and formerly center-left cultural figures like Elon Musk who seemingly overnight found themselves considered by the left to be far right for supporting positions liberals believed a decade ago, and by countless ordinary Americans just tired of the craziness. For one glorious day, a majority of voters put aside their differences to put America first and keep the woke nutjobs from running their country into the ground and running their lives for the next four years. And they took their country back.

Or at least they thought they did.

Initially, Trump 2.0 seemed to be exponentially better than his first version — a based wrecking ball hellbent on destroying the Deep State and bringing the country back to life and sanity after years of inept, woke leadership. ICE was ramping up for mass deportations, DOGE was finding fraud and abuse that had gone on for decades, administration appointments were seemingly competent MAGA loyalists who wanted Trump’s agenda to be carried out just as much as he did, and absurd woke DEI policies were coming to a merciful end. We were on the precipice of full disclosure and final justice for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein and his cohorts. The list was on Pam Bondi’s desk, we were reliably told, and a gaggle of grinning conservative influencers were given those now infamous binders, “Phase I” of supposedly many more to come.

Then, it all fell apart, as Trump proceeded to blow up his winning coalition one excruciating detonation at a time. First, there was the rift with Musk and the eventual sidelining of DOGE, a project that should have been permanent, yet somehow only lasted months. It was disturbing, but hey, depriving the Deep State of their funding was always going to be tough. What came next, however, was an unforgivable error of epic proportions. (RELATED: I’m A Georgetown Student. Here’s How My University Hides Its Illegal DEI Agenda)

Releasing the Epstein files in their entirety and bringing the remaining perpetrators to justice seemed like the easiest slam dunk in politics. Of all the promises made during the campaign, this should have been the easiest to keep, and yet the president managed to bungle it to the point where not only did he look like he was protecting pedophiles, but that he was covering up for something he did wrong himself. Apparently the list wasn’t just not on Bondi’s desk, Trump never had any intention of releasing the perpetrator names, much less bringing them to justice, and anybody in Congress who believed otherwise wasn’t MAGA. Instead of putting the Epstein Class in prison where they belonged, the president was inexplicably attacking Reps. Thomas Massie and Marjorie Taylor Greene for trying to hold him to his own word and eventually dragging him kicking and screaming to at least some semblance of a finish line.

It was the first major fracture in what would become a long list of inept execution and broken promises. What should have been smart, targeted tariff policy to leverage deals, encourage fairness, and protect vital interests became a muddled, one-size-fits all mess that even the staunchest protectionist Pat Buchananite like me could no longer defend. What should have been quiet, discreet deportations starting with the criminals and working out from there became a circus with ICE mistakes and overreaches becoming the headline instead of the monsters they were trying to remove from our midst.

And what should have been peace became, well, the reality we’re currently living, starting and fighting a war Trump explicitly said he wanted to avoid, even to the point of warning that electing Kamala Harris could lead to it. It’s hard to begin to explain the pretext for this war, especially considering that Trump repeatedly claimed that Iran’s nuclear capacities were “completely destroyed” after last summer’s airstrikes on three nuclear facilities in the country. Did Trump come to the conclusion that Iran was an existential threat that warranted blowing up the price of fuel and the global economy along with it, depleting our missile stockpiles, and tanking any prospect of Republicans holding on to anything of substance in the midterms, or did someone essentially make that decision for him?

That ‘someone,’ according to The New York Times’ reporting on closed-door meetings prior to the initial launch of strikes in February, seems to have been none other than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who reportedly predicted a swift and certain victory that would lead to regime change, regional military bases intact, and the Strait of Hormuz remaining open to shipping. It’s certainly laughable now, with 20/20 hindsight. The sad thing is, it was also laughable then to anyone with half a brain, yet Trump believed it and decided to launch another pointless war in the Middle East. (RELATED: Tucker Carlson Has Message For Neocons Wanting To Silence Americans Who Call Out Iran War)

To paraphrase a line from one of my favorite movies of all time, there once was a dream that was MAGA. That dream is dead. While I’m happy to recognize and celebrate the good things Donald Trump does over the next two and a half years and hope he does many of them, it’s becoming increasingly evident that America First as a movement led by the current president is over. After all, how could launching and fighting a war for the security of Israel, a war that hastens our eventual bankruptcy and virtually guarantees that Democrats re-obtain power, possibly be good for America?

Scott Morefield is a Senior Columnist for the Daily Caller. He spent three years as a media & politics reporter with the Daily Caller from 2018 to 2021, another two years with BizPac Review before that, and was a weekly columnist at Townhall from 2018 to 2026. His op-ed bylines can also be found on Newsweek, TheBlaze, The Hill, Breitbart, National Review, The Federalist, American Greatness, and many other sites. Follow him on Twitter @SKMorefield.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.