Tucker Called Him the Antichrist. MTG Quit Congress. The MAGA Coalition Is Cracking.

April 20, 2026

Tucker Carlson compared him to the Antichrist. Marjorie Taylor Greene resigned from Congress rather than run in a primary against him. Steve Bannon's texts to Jeffrey Epstein called him "beyond borderline." The loudest voices that elected Donald Trump are now the loudest voices against him.

The coalition that sent Donald Trump back to the White House in 2024 is visibly cracking in the spring of 2026. It is not fringe critics. It is the people who built the movement.

Marjorie Taylor Greene announced in November 2025 that she was resigning from Congress effective January 5, 2026, a week after Trump withdrew his endorsement. She had broken with him publicly on the Epstein files, the Gaza bombing campaign, Obamacare subsidies, and the war with Iran. In her resignation letter she explicitly dropped the MAGA label, saying she now identifies as "America First" instead. Trump, in public, called her departure "great news for the country." In private, according to Carlson's own reporting, he sent her texts the Buckley Carlson episode this month described as "shocking."

Tucker Carlson, the Antichrist comment, and the Iran split

Tucker Carlson was, for most of the last decade, the most influential voice in conservative media. As recently as 2024, his endorsement of Trump was treated like a kingmaker move. In April 2026 he hosted a segment titled "Writing Trump's Speeches, Trump's Shocking Texts to MTG, and the Epstein Cover-up" that played Trump's texts on air and questioned whether the administration was hiding evidence tied to Epstein.

In a separate segment that week, Carlson implied Trump may be the Antichrist. Trump responded on Truth Social, calling Carlson "kooky" and pretending not to know what he was talking about. Carlson's own break from Trump started earlier over the U.S. war with Iran, which Carlson opposed and Trump launched. His current position, in public, is that Attorney General Pam Bondi is the one generating the backlash, not the president. That is a soft version of saying the administration is lying about Epstein. It is still a sentence Tucker Carlson would not have said in 2024.

Steve Bannon, Alex Jones, and the rest of the war room

Steve Bannon, the architect of the original 2016 MAGA run, had his own texts to Epstein surface this spring. The messages showed Bannon told Epstein in 2019 that Trump was "beyond borderline" and should be removed from office. Bannon spent 2024 calling Trump the savior of the republic. His audience noticed.

The Iran war split the far-right media ecosystem wide open. Alex Jones opposed it. Laura Loomer supported it and is now publicly fighting Jones and Roger Stone. Bannon mocked Mark Levin on air for wanting a harder line. The MAGA commentariat that for a decade presented a unified front is now 10 podcasts yelling at each other.

The numbers behind the vibe

The polling tells the same story the podcasts tell. Trump's overall approval is at 40 percent approve, 56 percent disapprove in the NYT polling average. A UMass poll has him at 33 percent approval, the lowest of any modern second-term president.

The more interesting number is inside the MAGA base itself. Strong approval of Trump among self-identified MAGA Republicans has dropped from 78 percent to 70 percent in a matter of weeks. Fewer Republicans are calling themselves MAGA at all. Among working-class voters, Trump's approval has fallen 26 points since the election. Black and Latino voters and young men, three groups that delivered the margin in 2024, are all peeling off.

What this is and what it isn't

This is not a sudden outbreak of principle on the right. Tucker Carlson is not a hero. Marjorie Taylor Greene spent years carrying water for Trump on QAnon-adjacent conspiracies, January 6, and the stolen-election claim that got Cassidy Hutchinson subpoenaed. Steve Bannon already did prison time. None of these people are admirable converts. What they are is useful.

They are useful because they are losing the audience they spent a decade building for Trump, and because the most effective critic of a con is a former participant. When MTG says the Epstein files are being hidden and you do not trust MTG, you at least have to ask why she would break from a man whose endorsement she spent five years chasing. When Tucker Carlson implies Trump is the Antichrist, he is speaking to an audience that thought Tucker Carlson was right about everything for a decade.

The coalition is not falling apart because Democrats argued with it. It is falling apart because its own architects looked at the president they installed and did not like what they saw.

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