By early 2024, Donald Trump had risen from the ashes of his 2020 defeat to Joe Biden. Once again, there was a buzz around him.
And it wasn’t coming solely from the MAGA faithful.
Let’s be honest: Trump’s relationship with his supporters had always been different from that of a conventional politician. For many, he wasn’t simply a candidate or even a president. He had become the central figure of a movement — one that often appeared to demand an extraordinary level of loyalty.
As the 2024 election approached, Republicans were increasingly confident. Trump had survived impeachment, criminal indictments, a second presidential campaign and an attempted assassination. Despite everything that had happened since 2020, the MAGA movement remained remarkably resilient.
Trump was back.
And so were the people who had helped build his political media empire.
Tucker Carlson. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Alex Jones. Joe Rogan.
Some were politicians. Some were commentators. Some were media personalities with enormous audiences. They had all, in their own ways, helped amplify the Trump phenomenon.
But something has changed.
Some of the people who once defended Trump most fiercely are now turning on him.
Some have accused him of betraying the movement they helped create. Others have questioned his decisions and policies. And some have gone even further, expressing regret for having supported him in the first place.
So what happened?
Was MAGA ever really about Donald Trump?
Or did Trump become so synonymous with the movement that questioning the man became almost indistinguishable from questioning the movement itself?
And perhaps the more uncomfortable question is this:
What happens when the people who helped create a political cult of personality begin to walk away from the person at its centre?
Alex Jones: From “I will not let you down” to the 25th Amendment
If any commentator represented the extreme end of the American political landscape, it would be Alex Jones. His media empire, Infowars, was about as unapologetically right-wing as American politics gets.
And Jones wasn’t merely a Trump supporter. He was part of the political media ecosystem that helped amplify Trump during his rise.
In December 2015, Trump appeared on Jones’s Infowars programme during his first presidential campaign. During that interview, Trump told Jones: “Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down.”
The relationship continued after Trump’s victory. Jones remained one of Trump’s most enthusiastic media supporters, helping reinforce the alternative-media ecosystem surrounding the MAGA movement.
For years, the relationship between Trump and Jones seemed almost inseparable from the broader MAGA phenomenon.
Until it wasn’t.
By April 2026, Jones was questioning whether Trump should be removed from office under the 25th Amendment. Axios reported that Jones had described Trump as a “dementia risk” and called for his removal.
By September, Jones was still attacking Trump’s handling of the Iran war and arguing that its economic consequences were doing more harm than Trump’s other policies.
Think about that for a moment.
This wasn’t a lifelong Trump critic changing his mind. This was Alex Jones — one of the most prominent voices in the media ecosystem that championed Trump — now questioning the president’s leadership.
And Trump noticed the broader revolt.
In April, Trump attacked several former allies in the MAGA media world as they broke with him over Iran, including Carlson, Jones and Greene.
Perhaps that’s the most revealing part of the story.
When someone leaves the movement, are they simply changing their mind?
Or, in Trump’s MAGA universe, do they cease to belong to the movement altogether?
Tucker Carlson: When America First wasn’t America First enough
If Alex Jones represented the extreme end of the American right, Tucker Carlson was its polished prime-time face.
For years, Carlson was one of the biggest stars at Fox News, eventually becoming one of the network’s defining conservative voices. If Fox News had a voice, Carlson’s was one of the loudest.
And he was no reluctant Trump supporter.
By 2024, Carlson was fully onboard with Trump’s campaign. He spoke at the Republican National Convention and campaigned with Trump shortly before election day, describing Trump as a national leader.
But Carlson’s support for Trump was built around something very specific: the promise of an “America First” foreign policy and, above all, keeping America out of another endless foreign war.
Then came Iran.
When Trump launched military action against Iran in February 2026, Carlson was furious. For him, this wasn’t simply another disagreement with a president he supported. He argued that Trump had betrayed promises he had made for years about avoiding another war.
And eventually, Carlson apologised.
He said he would be “tormented” by his role in helping Trump return to power and added: “I want to say I’m sorry for misleading people.”
It was an extraordinary admission from a man who had spent years helping promote Trump’s political message.
But Carlson’s explanation was perhaps even more revealing.
He said that he and other Trump supporters were “implicated” in what had happened, arguing that it wasn’t enough simply to say, “I changed my mind” and walk away.
That is significant because Carlson’s criticism wasn’t simply that Trump had made a bad decision.
He believed Trump had broken one of the central promises on which the America First movement had been built.
And the split has continued.
By September, Carlson was discussing whether Trump should be impeached over the Iran war and describing Trump’s decision to enter the conflict as extraordinarily destructive.
The former Fox News star had gone from promoting Trump to publicly wrestling with whether his own support had helped create the situation he was now condemning.
Marjorie Taylor Greene: The revolt from inside
Then there is Marjorie Taylor Greene.
If Alex Jones represented the extreme end of the American right and Tucker Carlson represented its conservative media establishment, Greene represented something altogether different: Trumpism from inside the Republican Party.
A former Republican congresswoman from Georgia, Greene was once one of Donald Trump’s most loyal political allies.
But Greene’s relationship with Trump has since fractured.
And what makes her particularly interesting is that she hasn’t left the Republican Party or suddenly embraced the political left. Instead, she has increasingly taken aim at Trump over specific policies and decisions that she believes contradict the principles on which he campaigned.
The Iran war is perhaps the clearest example.
By September, with fuel prices soaring, Greene was blaming Trump directly.
“This is ridiculous,” she said. “The war in Iran has got to stop. This is Trump’s fault. This should not be this high. It needs to end.”
Her argument was not simply about geopolitics. She pointed out that diesel is built into the cost of almost everything Americans buy because food, supplies and other goods have to be transported.
For a politician who built much of her identity around putting America first, it was a remarkable criticism of a president she had once regarded as the leader of that movement.
But it wasn’t the first time Greene had challenged Trump over the interests of American workers.
In October 2025, Trump suggested buying more beef from Argentina to help bring down high U.S. beef prices. The proposal angered sections of the American cattle industry, including long-time Trump supporters.
Greene reposted an open letter from Wyoming’s Meriwether Farms, which told Trump that buying Argentine beef to stabilise prices would be an “absolute betrayal to the American cattle rancher.”
Greene added: “I’m hearing the same sentiment in my district.”
The significance wasn’t necessarily that Greene had suddenly become anti-Trump.
Quite the opposite.
She was still a Republican, but she was increasingly willing to publicly challenge a Republican president over policies she believed were hurting the very Americans the movement was supposed to put first.
And that’s what makes Greene such an interesting figure in this story.
She’s not criticising Trump because she has abandoned conservatism.
She’s criticising him because, from her perspective, some of his policies no longer resemble the America First politics she believed she was supporting.
The woman who once stood beside Trump is now questioning whether Trump himself has abandoned the movement.
And perhaps that is more significant than any criticism coming from his traditional political opponents.
Joe Rogan: The audience starts questioning the leader
And then there is Joe Rogan.
Rogan occupies a very different place in the Trump story. He wasn’t a Fox News host, a Republican politician or a traditional conservative commentator. He was something arguably more influential: the host of one of the world’s biggest podcasts.
His audience also mattered.
Trump’s 2024 campaign made a concerted effort to reach young men through podcasts and alternative media, with Rogan one of the most prominent figures in that space. His endorsement was particularly significant because his audience extended well beyond traditional Republican media.
Two days after Trump’s election victory, Rogan sounded optimistic about what the new administration might achieve.
On The Joe Rogan Experience #2225, during a conversation with comedian and political commentator Dave Smith, Rogan said there was “a real chance to make real tangible change that’s gonna be for the good of everybody.”
But then came the warning.
“He’s gotta unite people. He’s gotta not attack the left, not attack everybody. Let them all talk their shit, but unite.”
It was a remarkably simple expectation: Trump had won. Now he needed to govern.
Whether Rogan himself has actually turned against Trump remains less clear.
What is clear, however, is that Rogan has become increasingly critical of something else: the relationship between Trump and some of his most devoted supporters.
On September 16, 2026, while discussing the backlash against comedian Jelly Roll with fellow comedian Ron White, Rogan took aim at Trump supporters who had attacked the singer after he made jokes about Trump.
“Trump supporters are fucking nuts, man. They’re rabid,” Rogan said.
But it was what followed that was particularly interesting.
“He represents something other than just a person to them,” Rogan continued. “He represents something, a leader they wish they had.”
Rogan then broadened the observation beyond Trump, arguing that society has a tendency to treat political leaders as though they are fundamentally different from ordinary people.
“Like, this is the one,” he said. “This is the one that’s going to save us.”
That last sentence is perhaps the most revealing comment of all.
Because Rogan wasn’t simply criticising Trump’s policies. He was describing what he believed was happening among some of Trump’s supporters: the transformation of a political leader into something more than a politician.
And that brings us back to the question at the heart of this story.
When supporters stop judging a leader by what he actually does, and start seeing him as the person who will “save” them, what exactly has the political movement become?
The problem with rocking the boat
One thing I find interesting about Greene, Rogan, Carlson and Jones is their willingness to challenge their own side.
Carlson, Greene and Jones all have deep ties to the American right. They didn’t arrive at their criticisms of Trump from the other side of the political spectrum. They came from within the movement itself.
And that matters.
Because challenging your political opponent is easy. Challenging your own team is much harder.
Nobody likes to rock the boat, particularly when the boat is filled with people who once cheered you on. There is a price to be paid for breaking ranks. You risk losing friends, followers, audiences and, perhaps most importantly, your place within the tribe.
But perhaps that is precisely why it matters.
Politics becomes dangerous when loyalty to a person becomes more important than loyalty to an idea. It becomes even more dangerous when questioning the leader is treated as an attack on the movement itself.
Call it tribalism. Call it a cult of personality. Call it whatever you like.
The warning signs are the same: when people stop asking whether their own side is right and start assuming it must be right simply because it is theirs.
That isn’t unique to MAGA, the Republican Party or the American right. It is a human tendency that exists across politics.
Most of us don’t want to rock the boat.
But somebody has to.
Because democracy doesn’t need people who blindly cheer for their own side. It needs people willing to say, “Hang on. Something isn’t right here.”
Even when everyone else on the boat is telling them to shut up.
