Several dozen people. That's the size of the support group MSNBC found for former MAGA members who've supposedly seen the light. Several dozen — out of the 77 million who voted for Trump. Katy Tur aired the segment on June 28 like she'd just uncovered Watergate.
"What once seemed unbelievable is now starting to be believable," Tur announced on her MSNBC show. "The MAGA faithful are leaving."
They've written Trump's political obituary more times than a mortician in Florida. The escalator ride was a joke. The Access Hollywood tape was the end. Two impeachments were the final nail. The indictments were the real final nail. And now a support group with fewer members than a Wednesday night bowling league — that's the one that finally does it.
The segment featured MSNBC reporter David Noriega profiling these couple disgruntled voters with the kind of breathless gravity usually reserved for natural disasters. Noriega at least had one moment of accidental honesty, acknowledging that "MAGA is not, in fact, a cult. It is the prevailing political ideology." But he couldn't leave it there, quickly adding that "there are corners of MAGA that are, in fact, very cult-like."
That's the trick. Concede the obvious truth — tens of millions of ordinary Americans hold these views — then immediately reframe them as brainwashing victims who just haven't been deprogrammed yet. Tur made the quiet part loud: "It's almost like, 'Thinking of leaving this cult? We can help you.'" She was referencing an actual billboard the group apparently put up, which reads "Thinking of Leaving the Movement?" — the kind of thing you'd see outside a Scientology recovery center, not a political disagreement.
The segment paraded two former Trump supporters as evidence of the crumbling empire. Rich Logis, described as a former Trump supporter, offered his testimony: "He didn't try to solve those... he exacerbated them." Stephania Messina, another ex-MAGA member, explained that she "became heavily indoctrinated into tradwife culture" and claimed the SAVE Act — election integrity legislation — "in essence, is to take that right away from women." The right to vote, apparently, is threatened by verifying that voters are citizens. That's a new one.
Here's what MSNBC didn't mention during this segment: any polling data showing an actual decline in Trump's support. Any election results suggesting the movement is shrinking. Any evidence beyond two people and a support group that could fit in a studio apartment. They didn't mention it because it doesn't exist. Trump won in 2024 with more votes than any Republican in history, flipped states that hadn't gone red in decades, and currently governs with approval ratings that make his predecessors jealous.
The network that told us Russian collusion was a certainty, that the walls were closing in every Tuesday for four straight years, that the red wave of 2022 proved MAGA was finished — that network now wants us to take "several dozen" defectors as a trend piece. Noriega himself admitted the group's membership numbers in the "several dozen" range. Not several thousand. Not several hundred. Several dozen.
Every major political movement in American history has had people walk away. Some Democrats became Reagan Republicans. Some Republicans became Obama voters. The existence of people who changed their mind is not news. Packaging it as the beginning of the end is not journalism. It's wish-casting dressed up with B-roll and a chyron.
Several dozen people left a movement of 77 million, and MSNBC gave it a whole segment. By that math, the network should be running four-hour specials every time someone cancels their New York Times subscription.