But between the July 2024 assassination attempt on Mr. Trump in Butler, Pa., and the ignominious end of Elon Musk’s run at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency in May 2025, it certainly looked as if there had been a significant shift. It seemed Mr. Trump had managed a generational political realignment, pulling the country’s plutocratic elite in Silicon Valley into a new ideological alliance with his legacy base of the left behind in postindustrial states and drawing an eye-opening number of Black and brown and young male voters into the fold, as well.
Liberals, it appeared, had been ejected from the cultural driver’s seat. To almost everyone contemplating Project 2025 and TrumpCoin and the inauguration stacked with Silicon Valley’s richest, it seemed intuitive that the election told us something profound not just about the politics to come but also about the nature of the country — the vibe shift so clear and obvious that elite liberal institutions, from law firms to top universities and media and entertainment companies, raced to accommodate it.
Eighteen months later, we can say that if that first vibe shift was real, it’s been followed by another, in the opposite direction, with the bottom falling out of Mr. Trump’s second term and his administration looking again like the same old destructive kakistocracy. But another way of looking at the disarray of the second MAGA era is to consider the possibility that it was always at least partly an illusion, jointly conjured up by self-aggrandizing Republicans and self-lacerating liberals. We haven’t even hit the midterms yet, and the prospect of an enduring MAGA majority doesn’t look like the natural path of the American future. It looks like a projection from the recent past, already fading.
There are any number of ways to mark the shift back: the president’s abysmal approval ratings, including a –50 net approval rating among independents; the fact that Democrats, hated as they may seem, now have a pretty good chance of winning control of the Senate; the hugely unpopular Iran war coming to such a humiliating end.
But the most vivid might be the planned celebrations for the country’s 250th birthday. A year or so ago, we were told that MAGA had won the culture wars, but barely a year later, when organizers with close ties to the White House tried to put together the Great American State Fair, the biggest stars they could attract were Flo Rida, Vanilla Ice and the living half of Milli Vanilli. Most of the performers who were announced quickly pulled out, then got called “libtards” by a cabinet secretary for doing so, and the lineup was repopulated by fillers like the girlfriend of the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel. Motocross bikers did flying tricks on the White House lawn — which called to mind Evel Knievel rather than any less ironic embodiment of American greatness — and the White House staged a high-profile Ultimate Fighting Championship event on the South Lawn that Americans judged inappropriate by a 3-to-1 ratio. And that was before the fighter Josh Hokit celebrated his victory by declaring that Michelle Obama was a man, as Joe Rogan giggled beside him.
