In a Dallas hotel ballroom on Tuesday night, supporters of Ken Paxton, Donald Trump’s favoured candidate for the US Senate, streamed out early as the scale of the Republican defeat became clear. In the hotel bar, Michael Little, a 59-year-old businessman and three-time Trump voter, stared at the president’s image on a television screen. “People are pissed off at Trump. Trump has cost us,” he said — a sentiment now rippling through the Make America Great Again movement after the party’s worst electoral defeat in decades.
Across the coalition, some who once saw Trump as MAGA’s greatest asset are beginning to wonder whether he has become its biggest liability. Voters disillusioned with soaring fuel prices, the war in Iran and corruption in Washington handed Democrats decisive majorities in both chambers of Congress. Democrats could hold as many as 56 of the Senate’s 100 seats — enough to block Trump’s future judicial picks — and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis warned Republicans might not recapture the chamber until 2032.
Trump’s first response came on Friday, and it was defiance rather than a change of course. He promoted Stephen Miller, the architect of his hardline immigration crackdown, to White House chief of staff, replacing Susie Wiles, who had been seen as a stabilising force. The White House did not answer Reuters’ questions about why Republicans lost, instead pointing to Trump’s remarks on Wednesday: “If I were on the ballot, we would have won.” He also conceded it was “largely true” that the Iran war had cost Republicans because “it drove the gasoline up” — but said he would do it again.
Reuters spoke to more than a dozen MAGA activists, influencers, party strategists, Christian nationalist leaders and researchers, and reviewed supporters’ posts and podcasts since Tuesday. The picture is of a movement turning its anger on itself. The stolen-election claims that have driven MAGA since 2020 have mostly gone quiet. Instead, supporters blame Republican leaders, Trump’s advisers and, in some cases, the president himself for broken promises on living costs, the Iran war and the government’s decision to redact or withhold large parts of its files on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
An analysis of social media traffic done for Reuters by PeakMetrics found that more than 20 per cent of self-described MAGA loyalists raised doubts about the movement’s leadership and direction. Of the posts that assigned blame, nearly a third pointed to the Iran war and Israel’s influence over US policy, while a quarter blamed Republicans not fully committed to the MAGA agenda.
The factions disagree about what comes next. Some want a return to populist basics; some want a movement less tied to one man; a vocal minority say MAGA is already dead. “We have to rebuild,” Steve Bannon, the prominent MAGA proponent and former Trump White House adviser, told Reuters. But the movement’s energy is fading: engagement among Trump’s most loyal backers has steadily declined since January, including a 27 per cent drop in posts and comments on Patriots.Win, a popular MAGA forum, according to University of Maryland professor Jennifer Golbeck. “They are saying that ‘MAGA is stale.’ It’s not new and exciting like it once was.”
The midterms also dealt a heavy blow to the election-denial movement, a central pillar of MAGA politics since Trump’s 2020 defeat. Candidates who embraced his false claims of widespread voter fraud lost heavily; election deniers will hold at least 41 fewer congressional and statewide offices next year and lost 70 per cent of the called races for statewide posts that oversee elections, according to States United Action. Trump made no effort to contest the results, instead blaming Republicans for the defeat. Laura Loomer, an influencer close to Trump, wrote on X: “America is over and the American Dream is dead.” Yet she told Reuters the losses did not signal the end of MAGA: “The Republican Party belongs to President Trump.”
Sources: Reuters, “‘Trump has cost us’: After midterm losses, MAGA asks if it’s over”, 8 November 2026 — https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-has-cost-us-after-midterm-losses-maga-asks-if-its-over-2026-11-08/
