Is MAGA a Spent Political Force? A Conversation

By Carlo Versano and Jesus MesaShareNewsweek is a Trust Project member

As the Republican Party struggles to define itself for the post-Trump era, constitutional scholar and lifelong conservative Justin Stapley warns that the movement’s problems run far deeper than any single election cycle.

In a wide-ranging interview on Newsweek’s new video podcast, The 1600, Stapley, host of The Conservative Underground Substack and podcast, argues that the GOP’s outward strength under President Trump masks a party increasingly defined by internal division, ideological drift, and the growing influence of populism and online-driven extremism.

Speaking with Newsweek's Carlo Versano, Stapley warns that Trump’s personal dominance has masked the extent to which traditional conservatism has been sidelined, leaving Republicans unprepared for what comes after Trump.

With the party struggling whenever Trump isn’t on the ballot and fringe figures like Nick Fuentes gaining ground among young conservatives, Stapley frames the current moment as an inflection point—one that will determine whether the GOP returns to its Reagan-era roots or continues down a more radical path.

Watch the full episode or read the complete transcript below.

Watch Here: The 1600 Podcast Full Episode

Read the Full Transcript

Carlo Versano: [00:00:01] Good day from Newsweek headquarters at the top of the World Trade Center in New York City. I am Carlo Versano, and this is The 1600, the YouTube edition.

So it is often said—and often remarked upon, including by myself in the newsletter—that President Trump is strong. He's very strong, right? He's a winner. What's less remarked on lately is that Republicans in the Trump era aren't so strong. In fact, I think you could argue that they're pretty weak. They're, frankly, losers.

If you look at the elections we just had this month, the GOP got pretty much smoked wherever they were on the ballot. And that’s a ballot that Donald Trump was notably not on, and he won't ever be on it again, regardless of his musings about staying in power for a third term. I will wager that the Trump experiment is going to end on January 20th, 2029.

The question then becomes: What comes next? What comes after this Trump experiment?

So to help me answer that question, I have with me today a guest I've been looking forward to talking to. He writes a great Substack that I'm a big fan of. His name is Justin Stapley. Justin is a constitutional scholar. He's based in Utah. He's a proud conservative Republican, though he is by no means a Trump supporter. Justin writes on Substack at The Conservative Underground, and we'll put a link to his newsletter in the description.

What he writes about is this idea of how to renew the conservative movement, how to restore the Republican Party. Justin, thanks so much for joining us, man.

Justin Stapley: Yeah, great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Carlo Versano: So I want to get right into it—we'll get to Trump in a minute. I want to get into a piece you wrote earlier this month titled The Poison Pill of Chaos. I thought it was really interesting, really thought-provoking. We all sort of know what a "poison pill" is in legislation or business. What do you mean when you say the "poison pill of chaos"?

Justin Stapley: [00:01:50] I mean that you may have a legitimate issue, a legitimate problem that has to be solved in the country—but if you go about solving it the wrong way, you not only fail to solve the issue, you actually make it more difficult to solve in the future.

Carlo Versano: [00:02:05] Right. So this is the idea that Republicans would probably argue that immigration was a mess—was a sort of disaster under Biden—and something needed to happen. Trump comes in and he sort of goes kind of crazy, right? With these ICE raids, deporting people to countries they’ve never even been to, having mass agents rounding people up on the streets. Is that what you're talking about? It's almost performative, right?

Justin Stapley: [00:02:39] Yeah, yeah. One thing I talk about a lot right now is that many of the numbers we’re seeing on deportations are actually people being reclassified by the Trump administration—people who actually came here the way they were asked to under the Biden administration.

When you have people showing up to their court dates—doing what they were supposed to do—and they’re getting grabbed there, that’s… that’s just one thing. It de-incentivizes people to do the right thing, and it's also a game of smoke and mirrors. How many of the people being deported are actually part of the criminal element at the core of our problems?

Trump loves to talk about the fentanyl problem, but if we’re spending all our time going after the low-hanging fruit—like canceling student visas and counting those deportations—we don’t have a clear sense of the real numbers. Are we actually solving the problems at the root of the immigration crisis?

Carlo Versano: [00:03:57] And I have an immigration reporter here who is constantly complaining. He’s like, the administration just won’t give us data. All we want to know is: How many people are being deported? Where are they going? What were they? What is the criminal element, to the extent that there is one? We can’t get any of that.

So I think that adds to what you're saying: it's very hard to make sense of what the actual policy is without the numbers.

But I want to step back for a minute, because I did a poor job introducing you. Tell me a little bit about your political journey. I think it's safe to say we come from very different backgrounds. I was born and raised in New York, coastal liberal Democratic family. I'm always interested in how people get into politics and how they arrive at the ideology they have.

Justin Stapley: [00:04:50] Yeah. So, when the Trump era began back in 2015, I was working in law enforcement. I was a Salt Lake County deputy sheriff. I’d been politically engaged—I read books, I was a big fan of Glenn Beck, I'd been listening to various talk radio shows since high school in the mid-2000s, especially Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh.

Before law enforcement, I studied American history briefly at Southern Utah University. I’ve always had a passion for the American founding—the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Federalist Papers. That era was a huge intellectual and philosophical event.

So when this Trump phenomenon happened, I found myself going: Wait a minute. Some of this stuff is different from what I thought conservatism was. Why does it feel different? How is it different? Why am I responding differently?

For the next four or five years while still in law enforcement, I made it a hobby to read more deeply into the intellectual background of the American founding and conservatism as a philosophy. I discovered various giants of the conservative movement—Frank Meyer, Bill Buckley, Sowell. I began to realize that conservatism has very deep roots, even going back to Aristotle. And I realized there had been a shift—maybe even a corruption—of the direction of the country and the right side of American politics.

It became clear we were in a populist phenomenon. Populism had overwhelmed both the conservative movement and the Republican Party.

Eventually, in 2020, I left law enforcement and went back into academics. I studied constitutionalism at Utah Valley University, got my bachelor’s, and I'm currently in a master’s program. I really wanted to communicate to people what conservatism is, as opposed to the populist phenomenon we’re currently living in.

That's where the Substack newsletter comes in—The Conservative Underground. There’s a small niche community that understands something has changed, and we're trying to get the message out that we’ve deviated—and many people don't realize it.

I'm also involved with several activist efforts. I'm the state director of the Utah Reagan Caucus. We engage inside the Republican Party. What we’ve discovered is that the last 10 years haven’t been a direct ideological shift so much as a propaganda coup.

People will walk up with a swagger, red MAGA hat, angry look, and say, “Oh, we've got a zombie Reaganite over here.” And then everyone else will stop and say, “Wait, I thought we liked Reagan.” There’s confusion among ordinary Republicans.

I talk about Reaganism and conservatism. I say: If conservatism means anything, it means there are certain truths and ideals that transcend the moment. What was true yesterday is true today and true tomorrow.

Populists and nationalists have embraced the relativism conservatism used to push against on the left. If there is no truth, then all that matters is power. And that’s the populist view: we need power so we can dictate a worldview.

Ordinary Republicans still embrace Reaganism and traditional conservatism because they understand the country is built on deep philosophical roots. If people want to abandon all that because it's “holding us back,” that’s not what many Republicans signed up for.

Carlo Versano: [00:13:56] We've had bad presidents before—Buchanan comes to mind. I think Joe Biden was a bad president, which I guess makes me a heretic as a Democrat. But we've also had presidents who tested the foundations of democracy. Why is Trump different? Is he different?

Justin Stapley: [00:14:18] I think he's different because he comes at a point where a lot of the post-Constitution seeds planted over the last hundred years are coming to fruition. He’s worse because we’ve gutted the checks and balances that used to exist.

He’s not worse in every way. For example, Woodrow Wilson was president at a time when total war was developing across the world during WWI. Governments experimented with applying total-war lessons domestically. Wilson actually put one of his presidential rivals—the socialist candidate—in jail. We are not yet at the point where Trump is throwing people running against Republicans into jail.

Carlo Versano: [00:15:27] Though he is trying to put his political enemies in jail.

Justin Stapley: [00:15:29] Yes, he definitely is. So it's hard: you don’t want to lessen the danger, but you also want context.

During the Wilson era, a movie called The Spirit of 1776 was literally banned because it painted Britain in a bad light. Back then there was an appetite for “we’re evolved past the Constitution.”

Over time, especially after WWII, that appetite shifted. But look at tariffs, for example. After Trump won, I was one of the lone voices saying: If you're worried about Trump imposing tariffs on his own, you have the votes—take emergency power away from the president. But there’s no appetite because both parties want presidential power.

Congress has become almost an empty branch of government—even though it was meant to be the "first among equals." The modern presidency has grown and grown. Congress has become the president’s foot soldiers.

Schlesinger wrote The Imperial Presidency half a century ago under Nixon; this has been a problem for a long time.

Trump, with his demagogue qualities, reveals how unmoored the presidency has become. If we don't learn from this and make Congress more important, this could be a harbinger of crazier things down the road.

Carlo Versano: [00:19:18] I've changed my tune on the filibuster because of this. I used to think the filibuster was the one thing keeping us from going off the rails. Now I’m of the opposite belief: lawmakers need to make laws, and if we don’t like them, we vote them out. Where do you stand on nuking the filibuster?

Justin Stapley: [00:19:48] There’s danger in thinking one procedural change will fix things. The real problem is that we have a representative government and the people don’t want government to work.

Look who is known in Congress: Marjorie Taylor Greene, AOC. People who aren’t legislating—just performing.

A few years ago, legislative interns were being fired and replaced by social media interns. And honestly, that’s what many people want right now.

On immigration, Biden failed. The public gave Trump the reins, and all we’ve had for a year is showmanship—not actual solutions. The legal immigration system hasn’t been touched. And something conservatives haven’t confronted for half a century is that under the current system, many people who came legally could not have come legally if they hadn’t first come illegally—because the system is broken.

Carlo Versano: [00:22:39] And the H-1B issue—seems like a no-brainer for Trump to fix. But he can’t, because he's beholden to big tech. They rely on H-1Bs as a kind of indentured servitude. He can't take the wins right in front of him.

Justin Stapley: [00:23:24] Trump’s strength is also his weakness. He has this stream-of-consciousness style where it seems like he’s saying a lot but isn’t saying much. People project their own values onto him.

That works until you have to make policy—until choices have to be made. Now we're seeing a huge crack-up in the MAGA coalition because he can't please everyone.

We may soon see “America First” meaning something very different from MAGA. Trump still holds the MAGA brand, but you have people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson, Matt Walsh saying “I’m America First, and I’m America Only.”

Carlo Versano: [00:24:39] Breaking with him on Israel, yeah.

Justin Stapley: [00:24:43] Exactly. Trump says no one is more pro-Israel than him, but he has to deflect criticism away from people like Tucker Carlson because that part of the coalition is important to him.

He’s doing this weird balancing act: 100% pro-Israel, but winking at people saying classic, over-the-top antisemitic tropes.

Carlo Versano: [00:25:22] Let’s go to electoral politics. There's this mirage where Trump is so powerful and resilient that the GOP looks powerful. But look at the ballot box: their gains last November are turning out to be vapor. Hispanics, Black voters, young men who went toward Trump are now swinging back or staying home.

Look at this stat: In 2016, Republicans controlled 31 governorships and 68 legislative chambers. As of January, they’ll control 26 governorships and 57 chambers. That’s not a party building momentum.

So what happens when he’s not on the ballot?

Justin Stapley: [00:26:35] Yeah, that’s the big question.

Republicans need to figure out their identity. People say they’ve remade themselves into a blue-collar populist party with a bigger coalition. But that coalition doesn’t show up without Trump.

Even with Trump, we’ve overestimated his strength. He’s run in three consecutive presidential elections and never broken 50%. He has a 47% ceiling unless he’s running against a candidate who’s mentally not there or one who didn’t go through a Democratic selection process.

2016 was a perfect storm: a huge GOP field that refused to consolidate, and Hillary Clinton—one of the least popular Democrats among many Americans. He barely beat her. A handful of votes in three states and he loses.

Same with Harris—he gained maybe two points in the popular vote after four rough years of Biden. Again, the votes spread out just right for the Electoral College. But small margins are being interpreted as sweeping mandates.

Carlo Versano: [00:29:46] Biden didn’t have the force of personality to whip his party. Nobody was afraid of him. Talk to me about JD Vance for a minute.

He has a tough job: be a Trump supplicant with no daylight between them—otherwise Trump kills him politically. But he also has to pave his own way for 2028.

He can speak to young “based” conservatives and older Fox News conservatives. I don’t see anyone else who can do both. Is he a foregone conclusion for 2028?

Justin Stapley: [00:30:56] I really don’t think so.

Yes, Vance can talk out of both sides of his mouth, but he doesn’t have Trump’s ability to sound forceful and energetic while speaking to everyone. He has firmly aligned himself with a specific camp: Catholic integralists, post-liberal intellectuals. He keeps winking at the Fuentes–Groyper world, as if losing young right-wingers would doom him.

But we’re already three years out and seeing problems: Fuentes attacking his wife, and Vance shrinking from confronting it.

Carlo Versano: [00:32:07] Fuentes attacks her for being Indian American and Hindu—and Vance isn’t just saying “Hey, you little twerp, that’s my wife, shut up.” That hurts him. If you can’t stand up for your spouse, you don’t have the juice to be a Trump-like figure.

Okay, so back to Fuentes. One of the big divides in the GOP right now is figuring out where someone like Fuentes fits—if he fits at all.

Tucker Carlson hosted him. Fuentes is a white nationalist—he’s got propellant views. He’s a troll. But he has a huge audience, extremely influential among young people.

Fuentes as a figure is less interesting than what he represents: the nihilistic, overtly racist, misogynistic thread animating young men on the right. What do you do about a guy like that?

Justin Stapley: [00:33:36] First off, you have to call it what it is.

Part of Fuentes’ schtick—and that of the Groypers—is saying edgy things, then pretending critics “don’t get the joke.” They push the Overton window until the meme becomes the movement.

Now they're openly saying women shouldn’t vote, that America must be a Christian nationalist country. For however much the left has overused the term “fascist,” here we have people actually behaving like fascists.

They feel so ascendant that they think they can attack Trump without consequences.

This also shows why JD Vance doesn’t have Trump’s talent. Trump would aggressively defend his wife and simultaneously invite those individuals into his coalition. Vance doesn’t know how to do that.

In 2028, we're either going to get something worse—someone fully embracing this stuff, like Tucker Carlson—or voters will revert to form and pick a Reagan-type. But the middle-coasting “inherit the coalition” candidate? I don’t think that’s likely.

Cancel culture and wokeness helped fuel all this. Young right-wingers came of age believing strength is being crass, in your face, pushing boundaries.

Carlo Versano: [00:37:14] And then there’s the McCain moment—the attack where he said McCain wasn’t a hero because he was captured—he didn’t suffer for that politically. That was astounding.

Justin Stapley: [00:38:37] I’d say attacking veterans was even more shocking. But yes—both the McCain and Iraq War moments showed something different was happening.

Once the message becomes: you are rewarded for pushing boundaries, the movement becomes about pushing boundaries. Suddenly Churchill is the bad guy and Hitler is the good guy—ideas that were unthinkable are now casually discussed.

Cancel culture isn’t the solution. The solution is truth. You counter bad speech with good speech.

The vast majority of Republican members of Congress are still traditional conservatives, but they're riding the tiger. They know what’s right, but political convenience convinces them to stay quiet.

Liz Cheney went too far—she became a warning rather than an example.

But there comes a moment when you must speak. When a Hitler-lover is welcomed by Tucker Carlson—who has immediate access to the White House—that’s the moment.

Ordinary Republicans hear headlines about Fuentes being a fascist, but they don’t see trusted leaders pushing back. So they think it’s just media hysteria. They don’t realize actual staffers in Congress and think tanks are being filled with these individuals. There’s been a quiet surge of committed Groypers into the mainstream.

Carlo Versano: [00:41:59] That’s a discussion for another day. One funny aside: The Babylon Bee had a great headline this week—“Tucker Carlson Goes Back in Time to Kill Baby Churchill.” Perfect distillation of what we’re talking about.

Before I let you go, Justin—let me ask this. Is there anything Trump has done that you support in the aggregate? Tax policy? Border security? He did do what he said he’d do on the southern border.

Justin Stapley: [00:42:41] There are things I’m happy to give Trump credit for. The first term is easier than the second.

When he doesn't care much about an issue, he’s open to listening. Federalism saw some good victories. In areas like education, he pushed more power back to the states.

During COVID, he gave governors free rein to try their own approaches. That helped us dial in on what worked and what didn’t.

Deregulation was also big. The regulatory burden hurts small businesses far more than large ones with armies of lawyers.

On the border, he proved Biden wasn’t entirely honest when he said he needed new laws to seal the border—Trump used existing laws and the bully pulpit.

Immigration is hard to measure—migrants know it's easier under Democrats, so they wait. It’s hard to know which changes will endure.

Foreign policy: Trump talks like an isolationist but reverts to something like Reaganite instincts. He almost abandoned the Kurds, but generals convinced him otherwise. He’s been aggressive with Iran—right out of a Tom Clancy novel. Supportive of Israel. Ukraine is muddling along; I'd like to see more to help Ukraine win.

So foreign policy hasn’t been a complete disaster—maybe a B or C+.

But domestically? I’m very concerned. The presidency has swollen to a dangerous degree. Trump shows that previous presidents kept themselves in check through tradition—not the Constitution.

Between tariffs and deportations, we’re seeing a president able to enforce his will on America and the economy more than constitutionalists thought possible. That must be addressed.

Carlo Versano: [00:48:00] That’s something traditional Democrats and Republicans should agree on—the unitary executive is not the path we want.

Justin, let’s leave it there. Thank you so much—really illuminating conversation. I enjoy your work. Tell people where they can find you.

Justin Stapley: [00:48:23] Yeah. I'm involved in various efforts. I do the podcast and the Substack newsletter The Conservative Underground. You can find it on Substack. The podcast is on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, most platforms.

I'm the state director for the Utah Reagan Caucus, and there’s a national effort—the Reagan Caucus—which you can find at @newreagancaucus on Twitter. We’re at around 24,000 followers and trying to grow. The effort is to rebuild conservatism within the Republican Party. This is our party—we believe retreating to the wilderness hasn’t worked.

I’m also a fellow at FreeOP. I work on their higher education initiatives. They're a free-market think tank focused on helping people in the lower economic brackets gain more access to success through market efforts.

Definitely check all of that out. And thank you for having me—I really appreciate it.

Watch the full conversation between Justin Stapley and Carlo Versano in the video player above or on YouTube, and be sure to subscribe to Newsweek’s official YouTube channel.

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