The MAGA movement’s takeover of the GOP is now complete
BY ERIC CORTELLESSA
EVERY FOUR YEARS, SUPER TUESDAY MAKES for high drama, as voters in roughly a dozen states winnow down the presidential field. This time, it only confirmed what had seemed obvious for months: The Republican primary was over. With a series of smashing victories, Donald Trump had effectively clinched the nomination. His last remaining opponent, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, suspended her campaign the next morning. While she didn’t endorse Trump, most of the party was already falling in line behind him.
“They call it Super Tuesday for a reason,” Trump told supporters in a victory speech at Mar-a-Lago. “This is a big one.”
Trump’s triumph gets him another step closer to reclaiming the presidency and pursuing a draconian policy agenda unlike any the nation has ever seen. He has vowed to round up and deport millions of undocumented immigrants; reimpose his travel ban on Muslim-majority countries; purge the federal bureaucracy of civil servants and replace them with MAGA loyalists; force homeless Americans off the streets and into tent cities; and commandeer the Justice Department to exact revenge on his political enemies.
He also grows closer to squashing two of the four criminal prosecutions against him; as President, he could shut down his federal indictments, one for election interference and another for mishandling the nation’s secrets.
When Trump left office in January 2021, after unleashing a mob on the U.S. Capitol, few foresaw him engineering a one-sided victory three years later in one of the least competitive open primaries in U.S. history. But Trump and his allies did. They had a plan, from the start, to kneecap heretics and scare off potential challengers.
THEIR SUCCESS WASnever inevitable. When Trump launched his candidacy in November 2022, he was under a dark cloud. Republicans had just suffered a disappointing midterm cycle, with many of his handpicked candidates losing critical races. The party’s own top brass saw it as a sign to move on from the former President. Not a single member of Congress attended the Trump campaign kickoff at Mar-a-Lago.
Trump’s foremost priority was to neuter the man many presumed to be his most formidable intraparty threat: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who had just won a landslide re-election. Trump quickly went to work—debasing him with nicknames such as “Meatball Ron” and “Tiny D”; dispatching a
