Welcome to Trump’s America, The i Paper’s World Insight series presenting the sharpest, deepest thinking on an era-defining shift in history and politics, investigating how Trump and his administration have changed the US and the world – and where we go from here.
Ashley St. Clair was once the perfect Maga influencer. Young, conventionally attractive and an arch-conservative, the 27-year-old college student from Florida was the poster-girl for a chronically online strand of youthful Trumpism.
On a regular day, you could catch her talking about the downfall of American civilisation on Fox News or promoting her anti-trans book for children titled Elephants Are Not Birds. But these are not regular days for the Make America Great Again faithful, and Ashley St. Clair is no longer the anti-woke culture warrior of yesteryear.
Now, you’re more likely to see the former ambassador for right-wing nonprofit Turning Point USA posting GRWM (get ready with me) videos on TikTok, in which she meticulously applies a full face of make-up while calling Donald Trump an “orange Oompa-Loompa”, having apparently undergone a Damascene conversion and realised the error of her ways.
Her journey – from Maga loyalist to whistleblower sticking the knife in – is an extraordinary volte-face, with her videos promising all the juicy details that Trump’s inner circle don’t want you to know. But St. Clair isn’t the only Trump ally who has performed a screeching U-turn. One by one, the stars of the Maga universe seem to be turning on their idol. Former Fox News broadcaster Tucker Carlson, who once joined Trump on the presidential campaign trail, has now apologised for “misleading” his audience about him. Conspiracy theorists Candace Owens and Alex Jones were once ardent devotees to the cause – now they’re urging their followers stop wasting their time on the President – or to “cut bait on Trump”, in Jones’s words. And of course it wouldn’t be Maga without a dollop of religious fanaticism on top, with Carlson going as far as describing Trump as a “false prophet”, perhaps implying in somewhat nudge-wink fashion that the President may even be the Antichrist.
