MAGA Hunger Games: The Base Turns Feral

The Lincoln Project

News, Government, Politics, News Commentary

4.6 • 9.1K Ratings

🗓️ 24 April 2026

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week’s Elephant in the Room is the full-blown MAGA meltdown—and yeah, it’s happening live. What started as a rage-fueled influencer gold rush has turned into a self-destruct sequence, with the same clout-chasing chaos merchants now eating each other alive for clicks, relevance, and whatever’s left of the grift economy. Rick breaks down how the algorithm built this monster—and why the feedback loop from hell is finally cracking the whole thing open. From the early days of meme-lord nonsense to today’s internal bloodbath of bad takes and panic-posting, this is the origin story of a movement now spiraling into its own collapse. The base is restless, the influencers are unhinged, and the clown car just hit the wall. Bottom line: the chaos didn’t just break the system—it turned inward. And now? The crackup isn’t coming. It’s already here.
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Rick Wilson is on X at @TheRickWilson, on Bluesky at @TheRickWilson.bsky.social, and you can check out Rick's Substack at therickwilson.substack.com. You can check out more of LP's work at www.lincolnproject.us and on X at @ProjectLincoln.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Your task will not be an easy one.
0:02.5	Your enemy is well trained, well equipped, and battlehardt.
0:06.2	There is not a liberal America and a conservative America.
0:09.9	There is the United States of America.
0:14.5	Good night and good luck.
0:16.8	Hey, folks, and welcome back to The Elephant in the Room.
0:19.3	I am your host, as always, Rick Wilson.
0:20.8	And I'm thinking about doing... Hey, folks, and welcome back to the elephant in the room. I am your host, as always, Rick Wilson.
0:28.0	And I'm thinking about doing something longer than the normal elephant in the room,
0:29.9	something a little more complex.
0:32.0	And we're going to spread it out over a couple of Fridays.
0:39.0	But I want to talk to you about something that we're watching the end of right now from the beginning. And that is the MAGA Influencer Industrial Complex. So folks, the elephant
0:44.7	of the room is that the influencer industrial complex has been around for a long, long time.
0:54.0	Welcome to the influencer industrial complex.
0:56.7	It's a topic I've been thinking about a lot.
0:59.3	I've been writing a new book and this through line that keeps popping up over and over again
1:04.2	is that there's a massive presence in our online, our political, and now in our broader
1:10.5	culture of political and news influencers
1:13.7	who are part of a mechanism and a machine that very few people understand. I've been to school
1:19.6	on it. I helped create some of its earliest versions back when I was a Republican political
1:24.6	consultant. And on the influencer industrial complex, we want to peel the lid off this thing.
1:30.2	We want to show you what's underneath the hood of this car.
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