Why MAGA faithful are growing frustrated with Trump
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 19 December 2025
⏱️ 29 minutes
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Summary
The week started with a Truth Social post from President Donald Trump about the death of Hollywood director Rob Reiner that drew backlash from within his own party. Then, a high-profile Vanity Fair profile of White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles revealed her disparaging assessments of the president’s Cabinet. And it’s unclear if the fast-paced, campaign-style remarks from the White House achieved Trump’s goal of reconnecting with voters on the economy.
So how is the White House dealing with these divisions on the right?
Host Colby Itkowitz sits down with Dan Merica, co-anchor of the Early Brief newsletter, and White House reporter Natalie Allison to recap it all.
Today’s show was produced by Charla Freeland and Josh Carroll. It was edited by Reena Flores with help from Martine Powers and mixed by Sean Carter.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I mean, it was essentially a rally speech where he was listing everything that he has accomplished and tried to accomplish. |
| 0:07.0 | Mental institutions and asan asylums. |
| 0:09.7 | The rally greatest hits. |
| 0:11.2 | It was very much a rally greatest hits. |
| 0:12.8 | A truncated version of a rally greatest hits. |
| 0:14.9 | But the real upshot of it was that it felt like this president who was insisting he had done more and |
| 0:22.4 | achieved more in his first year at a time when polls and conversations with voters show that those |
| 0:29.8 | folks who elected him to the White House are not feeling what he is saying he's achieved. |
| 0:38.4 | From the newsroom of the Washington Post, this is Post Report's weekly politics roundtable. |
| 0:43.5 | I'm Kolby Ekowitz. |
| 0:44.6 | It's Friday, December 19th. |
| 0:47.0 | Today, we're talking about cracks in support for President Donald Trump and what he's trying to do to repair it. |
| 0:53.7 | Back at the table with me today is Dan Marica, |
| 0:56.0 | co-anchor of our politics newsletter, the early brief, and we are thrilled to be joined by Natalie |
| 1:01.0 | Allison, White House reporter here at The Post. Guys, thanks so much for joining me. Thanks for |
| 1:05.3 | having me. Great to be here. Let's talk about these cracks in support for Trump. |
| 1:12.2 | I don't know about you, Natalie, but this week it really felt like the frustrations or disappointments in Trump from within the party were like especially pronounced. |
| 1:21.7 | And you had this amazing exclusive reporting over the weekend that there's some MAGA leaders that are kind of quietly |
| 1:27.8 | warning Trump behind the scenes that he's losing support from his base. What did you learn? |
| 1:32.9 | Yeah, you know, this is something that we have seen sort of growing in recent weeks. Some might |
| 1:38.8 | argue recent months. But this idea that people who long supported Trump, anything he would do, anything he would say, they would stand behind him, they would defend him, they would say everything he's doing is correct, have gradually begun to sort of put their heads up and say, hey, actually, I disagree with this. And we started to see some of that this summer when Trump was |
| 2:03.4 | first reluctant to release Epstein files. And we saw MAGA voices start to perk up and say, I don't agree |
... |
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