The MAGA Doctrine: What It Is and What It Means

Donald John Trump was born on June 14, 1946, into a wealthy New York family. Trump graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1968 with a bachelor’s degree in economics. He attended the private Kew-Forest School, and then his father enrolled him in the New York Military Academy. He enrolled at Fordham University in 1964, where he became involved in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) during his first year. He later transferred to the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, frequently returning to his father’s office on the weekends. He sought a career in real estate. Trump was excused from the draft during the Vietnam War because he claimed he had bone spurs in his heels.

Trump is a real estate developer and celebrity who has given money to both parties to gain favor and access to the political elite. New York City is a Democratic jurisdiction, and he was once more in line with the Democrats there. In 2004, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer interviewed Trump. During the interview, Trump stated:

“In many cases, I probably identify more as a Democrat,” explaining that “it just seems the economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans. Now, it shouldn’t be that way. But if you go back, I mean, it just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats. But certainly, we had some very good economies under both Democrats and Republicans. But we’ve had some pretty bad disasters under the Republicans.”

Trump said that he has a broad range of political positions and that he identifies with some things as a Democrat.

The Shift to the Reform Party
Trump later changed his party affiliation to the Reform Party. Donald Trump joined the race by giving television interviews and planning his platform. At the time, Trump was progressive on social issues. Trump criticized Pat Buchanan, saying, “I’m on the conservative side, but Buchanan is Attila the Hun.” He eventually disengaged from the race, as did Jesse Ventura and the Minnesota Reform Party. Trump stated, “So the Reform Party now includes a Klansman, Mr. Duke; a neo-Nazi, Mr. Buchanan; and a Communist, Ms. Fulani. This is not a company I wish to keep.”

Buchanan decided to leave the Republican Party because “the Republican Party at the national level has ceased to be my party.” This divorce began around the end of the Cold War when President George H.W. Bush declared it a “New World Order” party and began intervening all over the world. Having had allies and friends during the Cold War, Buchanan felt that once the conflict was over, the United States should return to a more traditional, non-interventionist foreign policy.

Patrick Joseph Buchanan was born in Washington, D.C., on November 2, 1938. He noted:

“I have family roots in the South, in Mississippi. When the Civil War began, Cyrus Baldwin enlisted and did not survive the Battle of Vicksburg. William Buchanan of Okolona, who would marry Baldwin’s daughter, fought at Atlanta and was captured by General Sherman. Baldwin Buchanan was the name given to my father and by him to my late brother. As a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, I have been to their gatherings. I spoke at the 2001 SCV convention in Lafayette, LA. The Military Order of the Stars and Bars presented me with a battle flag and a wooden canteen like the ones my ancestors carried.”

The Rise of Trumpism
During his presidential campaign, Trump defined the United States as a nation in dire peril, plagued by lawlessness, poverty, and violence—constantly under threat and at risk of having nothing left. Upon accepting the Republican nomination for President, he said, “I alone can fix the system,” and promised he would get elected. He declared, “Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo.” He presented himself as a “law and order” candidate and the “voice of the forgotten man and woman.”

Yale sociologist Philip Gorski said of Trumpism:

“The election of Donald Trump constitutes perhaps the greatest threat to American democracy since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. There is a real and growing danger that representative government will be slowly but effectively supplanted by a populist form of authoritarian rule in the years to come. Media intimidation, mass propaganda, voter suppression, court-packing, and even armed paramilitaries—many of the necessities for an authoritarian devolution are gradually falling into place.”

Political scientist Karen Stenner and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt observed:

“The far-right populist wave did not, in fact, come out of nowhere. It is not a sudden madness or virus or tide or even just a copycat phenomenon—the emboldening of bigots and despots by others’ electoral successes. Rather, it is something that sits just beneath the surface of any human society, including in the advanced liberal democracies at the heart of the Western world, and can be activated by core elements of liberal democracy itself.”

They noted it can be far-right or far-left, arguing that both are the same at the heart of the democratic system.

Donald Trump has support among white evangelical Christians who do not attend church regularly, yet he maintains an agenda of Christian nationalism. This echoes historical figures like Charles Edward Coughlin, who was born on October 25, 1891, to working-class Irish Catholic parents. Ordained to the priesthood in 1916, Father Coughlin initially supported Roosevelt’s New Deal but later fell out with him, accusing him of being too friendly with bankers in 1934. In 1939, Coughlin was praised by the Regime Fascista, an Italian newspaper aligned with Fascist Italy, for the book The Fine Art of Propaganda.

Trumpism is fueled by emotion and righteous anger—the feeling that the government is “screwing us over” based on an American Dream that many feel turned out to be unreal. A demagogue (from the Ancient Greek demagogos, meaning “mob leader” or “rabble-rouser”) is a political leader in a democracy who obtains power by seeking scapegoats and attracting a base through emotion and prejudice by arousing racial, religious, and class tensions. The most famous demagogue was Adolf Hitler. While Hitler was in prison, the Nazi Party’s vote fell to one million, and it continued to drop after his release in 1924 as he began rejuvenating the party. For several years, Hitler and the Nazi Party were generally regarded as a laughingstock in Germany, no longer taken seriously as a threat. The Prime Minister of Bavaria lifted the region’s ban on the party, saying, “The wild beast is checked. we can afford to loosen the chain.”

Foreign Policy and the “Warrior Creed”
Charlie Kirk stated:

“In contrast to the warrior creeds of some ancient cultures, Augustine, like Thomas Aquinas after him, recognized that the goal of all moral military action should be peace. He did not want to arm the world, looking for territory to seize or subtle social problems to rectify with clumsy weapons. Compare that deeply moral impulse to the worldviews displayed in recent decades by the leaders of either the Democratic Party or, before Trump, the Republican Party.”

Kirk argued that Trump worked to avoid the flare-up of total war with Iran. In contrast, Mitt Romney—regarded by many “Never Trump” establishment Republicans as a voice of moderation—vowed in the early stages of his 2012 campaign to take military action against Iran to stop its nuclear program if elected. Kirk claimed a vote for Romney was, in effect, a vote for war.

He further argued that Democrats like Hillary Clinton offer no real alternative, noting her support for the Iraq War, the Afghan troop surge, and the toppling of Gaddafi’s regime in Libya. Kirk noted that while most agree Gaddafi was a tyrant, the intervention led to years of ongoing civil war. He claimed that Obama and Clinton are in no position to lecture on statesmanship, specifically citing Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize following the bombing of Libya. Kirk concluded that there is little difference between the neoconservative views of Romney-style Republicans and the neoliberal views of Clinton-style Democrats. Both follow the footsteps of Woodrow Wilson, viewing the U.S. as a remaker of the world—a giant that can bend nations to its will.

Kirk also criticized Rousseau as a forebear of today’s leftists, arguing that Rousseau longed to correct society’s inequities by remolding young minds to conform to the “General Will,” eventually resembling a phalanx of ancient Spartan soldiers. Kirk called this a nightmare by Trump-era conservative standards.

The Divide and the Future
There is a stark divide between Democrats and Republicans. According to the New York Times, Trump won the working-class, white, non-college-educated voters. Conservative David Brooks observed:

“These rural places are often 95 percent white. Are these counties marked by high social cohesion, economic dynamism, soaring wages, and healthy family values? No. Quite the opposite; they are often marked by economic stagnation, social isolation, family breakdown, and high opioid addiction. It is a blunt fact of life that these days, immigrants show more of these virtues than the native-born.”

Pat Buchanan predicted a civil war would break out inside the Republican Party along the old trench lines of the Goldwater-Rockefeller wars of the 1960s—a war for the “heart and soul and future of the party.”

As a candidate, Trump criticized both Bush’s Republicans and Obama’s Democrats for costly wars. He ran against the Washington bipartisan foreign policy establishment. In February 2016, Trump complained, “We don’t win wars anymore... You have got to win, and number one, we don’t win wars; we fight, we just fight. It’s like a big... like you’re vomiting—just fight, fight, fight.”

As a conservative populist, Trump became more of a neo-isolationist, similar to Pat Buchanan during his 1992 run. In an age of open borders, a rising China, and record national debt, Trump Republicans still support him at around 78%. However, his approval rating has dipped by 34% since the U.S. and Israel started the war with Iran, which is being called “Trump’s war.” Independent voters are moving toward the Democrats for the midterms. Americans are pessimistic about the economy and blame President Trump. People are cutting back on entertainment and spending less on dining out and movies due to the conflict. Meanwhile, 70% of MAGA Republicans still believe Trump’s policies are helping the economy.

References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Buchanan

https://abcnews.com/Politics/americans-unhappy-economy-reeling-high-prices-polls/story?id=132361707

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demagogue

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/23/trump-economy-2026-election-republicans-democrats.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Donald_Trump

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_America_Great_Again

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trumpism

https://monthlyreview.org/articles/the-maga-ideology-and-the-trump-regime/

https://openlettersreview.com/posts/the-maga-doctrine-by-charlie-kirk

https://theconversation.com/what-maga-means-to-americans-259241

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Donald-Trump/Foreign-relations \

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