It's not entirely clear whether, in a tribute to the Frankenstein myth, resurrected yet again by cinema these days, Donald Trump warned this Monday in an interview with Laura Ingraham, a Fox News presenter: “Don't forget, MAGA was my idea. I know better than anyone what MAGA people want.”

And that's partly true: a decade ago, the US president borrowed Ronald Reagan's slogan of making America great again and transformed it into the unprecedented movement known as Make America Great Again, a modern political Prometheus cobbled together from nationalist, populist, conspiracy-theory-driven, and xenophobic remnants. But, perhaps for the first time since then, it's no longer clear that Dr. Trump/Frankenstein is capable of controlling his creation.

Ingraham had asked him about his support for admitting hundreds of thousands of Chinese students, and whether this could be considered a “pro-MAGA stance” or a betrayal of his promise to tighten immigration policies. “I want to be able to get along with the world,” the president replied. And he justified himself by saying that there aren’t enough “talented people” in the United States.

The clash, which occurred midway through a game in which Trump was playing at home, sparked a riot among his supporters around the same time that the reopening of the government allowed Democrats (and a few Republicans) in the House of Representatives to resurrect the specter of Jeffrey Epstein, the millionaire pedophile and former friend of the president, whose shadow has haunted him for years. This relationship has even been immortalized in a statue by an anonymous collective of artists, depicting the two dancing hand in hand. It first appeared in front of the Capitol and this Thursday dawned in front of one of the locations of the Busboys and Poets bookstore, a gathering place for the African American community in Washington.

Both missteps, due to Epstein and the visas for foreigners, were enough to prove that the support of his staunch followers seems to be fracturing on multiple fronts after a year of closing ranks around the leader, back in the White House. The main source of this rift is the accusations against Trump for betraying the"America First" spirit. This is the main glue of the MAGA movement, as well as the campaign promise that brought the Republican candidate back to power, encompassing many others: from combating illegal immigration to correcting the global economy through tariffs.

Some of the most prominent voices in his camp, from activist Laura Loomer to populist nationalist ideologue Steve Bannon, have criticized his administration for being overly preoccupied with international politics and neglecting domestic affairs. The attack on three uranium enrichment and storage facilities in Iran, provoked by Israel, was the first skirmish in that war in June.

Then came Trump's obsession with exaggerating his image as a universal peacemaker to win the Nobel Peace Prize, the rescue of Javier Milei in Argentina, and the series of (now 20) extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean and the Pacific against alleged drug-trafficking boats that seem to be sailing at cruising speed toward some kind of intervention in Venezuela to overthrow the Maduro regime. Wasn't this the candidate who promised during his campaign that he wouldn't drag the country into any more military adventures with unpredictable consequences?

Change of mind

The other major front is the Epstein papers, that vast amount of material relating to the cases against the pedophile financier, who died in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking of hundreds of minors in a secure cell; it was a suicide, according to the coroner and the government, and an inexhaustible source of conspiracy theories for believers in such matters. These files are in the possession of Attorney General Pam Bondi, who promised to make them public until she changed her mind last July, much to the dismay of the MAGA community.

“When they protect pedophiles, when they squander our budget, when they start wars abroad… I’m sorry, but I can’t support them,” Representative Thomas Massie, a maverick Republican from Kentucky, declared on CNN. “And in my state, people agree with me. They understand. Even the most ardent Trump supporters understand.”

The House of Representatives will vote next week on a bill introduced by Massie and Democrat Ro Khanna (California) to release Epstein's documents, and dozens of Republicans are expected to support it. Among them are some members of the party's hardline wing and, therefore, also inhabitants of the MAGA universe. Afterward, the bill needs 60 (out of 100) votes in the Senate, where Democrats hold only 47 seats. Trump always retains the option of vetoing it.

“It seems everyone is at odds in the MAGA world,” writes Ben Domenech in the US edition of The Spectator, a leading voice for Washington conservatism. “The battle lines are drawn. This isn’t just a hierarchical struggle between social and fiscal conservatives, insiders and outsiders, MAHA moms [that healthy version of Trumpism] and tech giants; tariff advocates and opponents (…). It’s the fiercest, meanest, most ostentatious, Botox-filled contest in living memory, and nobody knows where [Congresswoman] Marjorie Taylor Greene found that hand grenade.”

Greene has recently undergone one of the most dizzying and unexpected transformations in recent memory in the capital. For years, she was the vociferous embodiment of MAGA ideals on Capitol Hill, now transformed into a measured critic of the Administration's policies: from the Epstein papers to health subsidies and the military campaign in the Caribbean. “I am not just America First, I am America alone,” the congresswoman wrote in X.

This week, Trump said of her, “She’s a good woman. But I don’t know what happened to her, she’s gone.” On his social media, the president also warned that “only a very bad, or stupid, Republican would fall into the trap” of demanding the release of the pedophile millionaire’s papers. This Friday, he returned to the attack against Greene. And he did so with full force. He announced that he was withdrawing his support for her in the upcoming elections and that he would offer it to anyone who wants to challenge her at the polls. He called her “crazy” and mocked her concern since the president stopped answering her calls.

In his list in The Spectator, Domenech also refers to the clash over Israel between podcaster Candace Owens and the organization Turning Point, founded by Charlie Kirk, who was murdered a couple of months ago, as well as the phenomenal row surrounding how much (anti-Semitic) extremism the American far right can tolerate.

The origin of this latest row lies in a friendly interview given by radio host Tucker Carlson to Nick Fuentes, the country's most famous neo-Nazi, which has had repercussions for one of the intellectual pillars of Trumpism in the capital, the Heritage Foundation. The support for Carlson from its president, Kevin Roberts, has plunged the foundation into a deep crisis.

It's unclear whether the perfect storm facing Trump—comprised of his party's defeats in the New York, Virginia, and New Jersey elections last week and the Supreme Court's skepticism regarding the constitutionality of his tariffs—will lead to the MAGA movement fleeing its creator's laboratory. Even less clear is whether this will affect him in the next election.

It will be in November 2026, and Trump risks losing control of one or both houses of Congress, which would relegate him to another mythical creature in the Washington bestiary: a lame duck, a president with little power and his days numbered, given that he cannot run for reelection. Meanwhile, veterans of this political jungle remember well that it's unwise to underestimate him. It wouldn't be the first time something like this has backfired. Nor, surely, the last.