Is MAGA fracturing?
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.4 • 25.6K Ratings
🗓️ 10 April 2026
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode: senior political correspondent Tamara Keith, political reporter Elena Moore, health correspondent Will Stone and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.
This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.
Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover politics. I'm Elena Moore. I also cover politics. |
| 0:10.5 | And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And a happy Friday to you and yours. On today's show, we want to look at political divisions, specifically how the broad coalition that President Trump |
| 0:23.9 | assembled to win re-election is starting to fray. It comes too, as the president is seeing his |
| 0:30.5 | approval rating continue to fall. Elena, this week, you've been reporting on some pretty |
| 0:36.6 | strong pushback from people who used to be some of the loudest, most vocal supporters of President Trump. |
| 0:46.0 | Media figures like Tucker Carlson and Megan Kelly are mad about the president's handling of the war in Iran. |
| 0:53.2 | So what are you seeing there? Yeah, |
| 0:54.8 | these are people, obviously, that you might have first seen on Fox News or network television of |
| 0:59.2 | some sort. And they've gone from TV stars to podcast stars in recent years and just, you know, |
| 1:05.5 | very overtly partisan figures. They campaigned with President Trump in 2024. Tucker Carlson spoke at the RNC, the Republican |
| 1:13.5 | National Convention. And they've started to break with Trump over the war over the last few weeks |
| 1:18.9 | and criticize the actual act of going to war. There's been a lot of discourse about U.S. |
| 1:23.7 | Israel relations. But the difference right now in this week was the direct attention that |
| 1:29.8 | they put on President Trump. There was no beating around the Bush. They were mad and frustrated at |
| 1:35.0 | him. And a lot of this stems from a couple of really stunning social media posts. One on Easter |
| 1:42.0 | Sunday that said open the expletive straight. And then there was another one where he |
| 1:49.1 | threatened to completely wipe out Iranian civilization. Right. He said, quote, whole civilization will |
| 1:55.1 | die tonight, end quote. And so, yeah, Megan Kelly in her podcast, after that tweet, before the ceasefire was announced on Tuesday, said this on her show. |
| 2:06.6 | This is completely irresponsible and disgusting. I wish he would stop doing this. |
| 2:14.7 | Like, he can't negotiate without doing this. What does that say about him? And, you know, |
| 2:20.2 | Tucker Carlson, a day earlier on his show, really picked apart Trump's comments about the threat |
| 2:27.0 | to bomb civilian infrastructure if there wasn't a deal, that Easter Sunday, True Social Post. |
... |
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