Can a MAGA Warrior Go Normie? Michelle Cottle Goes to a Biker Bar to Find Out.

Matter of Opinion

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Ross Douthat, News, New York Times, Journalism

4.2 • 7.2K Ratings

🗓️ 25 June 2024

⏱️ 8 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We’re getting ready for this week’s presidential debate. In the meantime, we wanted to share an audio essay from Michelle Cottle on a make-or-break vote for the MAGA warrior Lauren Boebert. The controversial lawmaker is facing a primary in Colorado that will determine her political future. Michelle visited a biker bar in Douglas County, Colo., to understand the ways Boebert is tweaking her image in a new district in hopes of winning over more traditional conservatives. Can she do it without losing hard-core Trump fans? This audio essay was originally made for the NYT Audio app, free for Times subscribers in the Apple App Store.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey a matter of opinion listeners, it's Michelle Carl.
0:05.0	Stay tuned for a very special episode on the presidential debate
0:10.0	that we'll have coming up on Friday.
0:12.0	Be excited. Trust me. that we'll have coming up on Friday.
0:12.8	Be excited. Trust me.
0:15.0	But while you wait, I wanted to share something I've been thinking about recently
0:19.3	as a correspondent covering national politics,
0:22.0	which is how much magga is too much magga when Trump isn't
0:26.5	on the ticket.
0:28.0	Enjoy. House member Lauren Bobert is approaching the end of a primary fight for her political future.
0:44.0	Bobert is the Ultra Magga, over-the-top house member from Colorado,
0:50.0	who is known depending on how you want to slice it either for like wanting to
0:57.2	impeach Joe Biden and heckling him during his State of the Union speech or for getting thrown out of a Denver theater
1:06.3	when she was caught vaping and playing Gropy with her date.
1:18.2	So she loses Tuesday's primary, she will be probably by far the flashiest Trump Minion to fall. If she wins, it will be in part because of her ability to modulate her message for
1:26.6	different audiences, just like regular old politicians so often have to do.
1:31.9	And either way, her fate's going to tell us something about the limits of
1:35.8	extreme Trumpism by candidates not named Trump, and also how much room these kind of candidates have to maneuver within the strictures of the Magaverse.
1:50.0	The tricky thing about Colorado for the GOP is that it is a purple trending blue state.
1:56.2	And in 2022, she came just a few hundred votes close to losing a safe Republican House seat to a largely unknown Democrat.
2:08.1	So she has since moved across the state to the east side and is now running in a district that is even more safely
2:15.8	Republican. But in her new district, some of the voter-rich areas aren't really that MAG a Republican,
	...

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