September 7, 2026

VDH: What Happens to MAGA When Trump Is Gone?

A post-Trump MAGA future involves several preliminary considerations. The first is the health, longevity, and political viability of Trump himself in retirement. No one can predict Trump’s future vigor and energy with certainty. Yet even his supporters accept that the whirlwind pace of the start of Trump’s second term is unsustainable for any 80-year-old man, especially one who reportedly scarcely sleeps, eats as he pleases, and wades into public crowds almost daily.

In addition, there is the question of whether Trump’s second term will be judged successful or will be overshadowed by the partisan hysterias of the first term and its aftermath—two impeachments, lawfare, hoaxes like Russian “collusion” and Hunter Biden laptop “disinformation”—or by crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic, yet another conflict in the volatile Middle East, and the post–George Floyd rioting. The next two years are also an open question: If there is an economic downturn, or if the ongoing war with Iran continues too long into the future, it could fundamentally imperil Trump’s legacy.

Finally, recent history is against Trump. No modern president emeritus—even the most popular—has ever been able to significantly affect the policies of his party or choose his successors. Barack Obama came the closest when he stayed put in Washington after his second term ended in 2017 and sought to help guide the flailing Joe Biden presidency between 2021 and 2025. Yet even despite Obama’s alleged surrogate role, his political capital diminished during the 2024 campaign in direct proportion to his visibility.

Similarly, Ronald Reagan left office after two successful terms and after moving his party markedly to the right. But instead of continuing Reaganism, his vice president, George H.W. Bush, almost immediately talked of a “kinder, gentler nation,” raised taxes, toned down Reagan’s cultural fights against liberal orthodoxies, and sought to expand supposedly insufficient social services with “a thousand points of light” of volunteer citizen participation. Bush was also more likely to use considerable military force abroad.

Harry Truman, who assumed the presidency after Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s death, also gradually drifted away from Roosevelt’s domestic and foreign policies. He inaugurated the Cold War against the Soviet Union, sought successfully to save South Korea from communist invasion, and was regarded as a far more centrist, realist, and hawkishly anti-communist commander in chief.

As a general rule, an administration’s unique political and personal brand is likely to erode under the next presidency, even if it is from the same party. Ex-presidents usually do not wish to, or cannot, imprint an agenda on their successors.

Jesse Kelly has some thoughts on the craziness that’s right around the corner:

Posted at 5:30 pm by Ed Driscoll