Trump feels MAGA's 'red-hat yokels' have insulted him — and he's hitting back: analysis

While the less than 20% of Americans who identify as MAGA Republicans continue to support nearly every decision President Donald Trump makes, his “contempt” for his most loyal supporters “is getting worse,” argued writer Amanda Marcotte in an analysis published Tuesday.

“To Trump and his top brass, like Vance, feeling like they owe anything to anybody, especially to the red-hat yokels who got them into office, is insulting,” Marcotte wrote on her Substack. “Their resentment at their own voters for actually expecting results is getting worse, and that’s starting to be reflected in policy choices.”

Trump’s directive to deploy Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to airports nationwide to help alleviate staffing shortages sparked by the ongoing partial government shutdown, Marcotte noted, negatively impacts MAGA voters.

“Trump voters fly, too!” she wrote.

Perhaps more revealing, Marcotte argued, was Trump’s response to questions about rising gas prices, a predictable outcome of the war against Iran he initiated late last month.

“Trump and even Vice President JD Vance can’t help but sneer with annoyance every time they’re asked to care about skyrocketing prices at the pump,” Marcotte wrote. “Trump even tried to spin that as a good thing, claiming that ‘we make a lot of money’ when gas prices go up. Of course, that ‘we’ does not include approximately 99% of Americans, so he’s basically just telling the rest of us we don’t matter. Including his own voters.”

Marcotte dismissed the idea that Trump’s alleged disdain for his own voters was “some attempt at playing 11th-level chess," and instead came to a more straightforward conclusion.

“I think Trump and the rest of the White House really do hate Americans,” she wrote. “They view the majority who don’t support the MAGA agenda as bratty liberals who need to be squashed into silence. But they also hold most Trump voters in contempt, seeing them as easily duped morons. (Which is hard to argue with, honestly!)”