No. of Recommendations: 14
A reporter finds out the hard way that MAGA is not principally a collection of ideas or a philosophy, but refers instead the group of people lead by Trump:
The former chief Pentagon correspondent for conservative outlet One America News Network (OANN) said she was fired from her position after criticizing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in a Substack post on Memorial Day.
A self-described “MAGA girl,” Gabrielle Cuccia began her post last week by stressing that “I was (and still am) unapologetically defiant in my support for President Trump.”https://thehill.com/homenews/media/5330315-reporte...I mean, this should be obvious. MAGA is a label, a brand, a descriptor. It's whatever collection of policy proposals that the President believes should be implemented. Think about it - a sentence like, "President Trump proposes a policy that contradicts MAGA" doesn't scan as an actual sentence - President Trump
can't be doing something that goes against MAGA, because MAGA is defined by his policies.
So when Cuccia wrote in her Substack:
Somewhere along the way, we as a collective decided — if anyone ever questioned a policy or person within the MAGA movement — that they weren’t MAGA enough.
That they were deep state, that they couldn’t be trusted, that they didn’t love America as much as we do, and that … to put it bluntly, they sucked.
We’d kick ‘em out and remain skeptical for life and for theirs.
We became the polar of our ethos — to ask questions, to debate, to challenge each other and our ideals.
I will always be MAGA, but consider this a love letter to what we have lost, what we must regain, and my final plea to Love Your Country, Not Your Government.https://gabriellecuccia.substack.com/p/the-secreta......she was fundamentally missing the point. You can't "be MAGA" if you're publicly criticizing the choices being made by a high-ranking cabinet official. MAGA is a group effort, a description of a team of people.... not an "ethos" that exists independent of the people who make up MAGA. There may come a time down the road when that's no longer the case, when the people who make up MAGA have moved on and people clamor to have the MAGA brand apply to something else. But right now, the label describes a movement of men, not a "ethos" that you get to decide that those men are violating.
