President Donald Trump's ability to influence the outcome of GOP primaries has been evident in recent weeks, with Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky), Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana) and other incumbents he was angry or disappointed with losing to Trump-backed challengers. All of those primaries made it abundantly clear that any Republican Trump considers disloyal is in danger of being voted out of office via a GOP primary. But within the MAGA movement, there is no shortage of infighting. And historian/author Nicole Hemmer examined that MAGA chaos during an appearance on The New Republic's podcast, "The Daily Blast."Host Greg Sargent, a former Washington Post columnist, cited recent testimony from former U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi as an example of MAGA infighting. Bondi, Sargent told Hemmer, "essentially threw Acting AG Todd Blanche under the bus" when testifying about the U.S. Department of Justice's (DOJ) Jeffrey Epstein investigation. Bondi, according to Sargent, "blamed Blanche" for the "lack of transparency" over Epstein at DOJ.Hemmer argued, "Pam Bondi is in such a different position at this point than she was when she was first subpoenaed to give this testimony. She used to be the attorney general. Now, she's been forced out, and she is shifting all the blame onto her presumed successor. Blanche is going to have to go through confirmation hearings soon, and she has just made that very difficult for him. Epstein is going to be the focus of conversation when Blanche goes up for confirmation."Bondi, Hemmer stressed, put Blanche "in a particularly tough position, because he goes into his confirmation hearings looking like someone who's covering for Trump" Sargent argued that with the 2026 midterms a little over five months away, the United States is seeing a "split screen" in which Trump, on one hand, "still has this iron grip on the Republican primary electorate"— while on the other hand, the GOP "as a whole" is starting to "worry more about voters outside the MAGA bubble."Hemmer told Sargent, "Donald Trump has not been serving the interests of the base in a number of ways. The Iran war, his relationship with Israel, the Epstein files — these have caused a real split in the MAGA base. It has led to a number of right-wing personalities to openly question and criticize Donald Trump more than they had in the past. And then, you have this pressure on members of the party, at least members of the party who are from purple districts. There are plenty of Republicans who are going to be running in deep-red districts. They're completely safe. Once they win their primary with Trump's backing, there's just not a scenario in which they're going to lose that seat."Hemmer continued, "But you are going to have purple-district Republicans suddenly, again, cross-pressured, because as Trump's popularity goes down, they're going to need to win centrists and Democrats in order to win their election."
