It’s long been apparent the vibe shift in Donald Trump’s favor is over. That’s only become clearer since I last wrote about it. Once MAGA-friendly celebrities now relish the chance to trash the president. Trump’s “Lake America” name change fell like a dud even among his own supporters. And his approval rating stands at a low point.
Does Trump need pop culture support to win in the political arena? Not at all. He was far more hated in the first term when he did a fraction of the things he’s doing now. Most importantly, the Republican base is still devoted to Trump.
But the mood that helped Trump in 2024 has changed. It’s not a return to peak woke or the Trump derangement of his first term. It’s an incoherent populism whose only consistency is hostility towards authority. It’s spiritually libertarian, even when it advocates for socialism. Unlike the 2024 vibe shift, it’s not a backlash against woke. It’s a backlash against the establishment, whatever that may be perceived to be. Trump is in power, so he obviously doesn’t benefit from it. But the president isn’t the central villain of this new vibe. If it’s anyone or anything, it’s the tech industry.
The new vibe shift is already making an impact on the midterms and will play a role in the ‘28 election. Whether it will decide who’s the next president is another matter.
The MAGA vibe shift wasn’t going to last forever. The policies Trump campaigned on were not going to please entertainers or the media, regardless of how many athletes did the YMCA dance. The vibe shift was over as soon as the ICE raids became a permanent fixture. The Epstein files and the Iran War just made it clearer.
The new vibe is not just a natural result of Trump trying to fulfill his campaign promises. What the public cares about has changed from 2024. Back then, people had enough of the open borders, disorder, and wokeness of the Biden years. They voted for Trump as retaliation. The culture, naturally, began to reflect this mood as cancel culture weakened and people started enjoying politically incorrect jokes again. People liked Trump as a symbol of woke’s dethroning.
But normies have short memories. What made them vote for Trump in 2024 now seems like a distant memory.
The border is effectively closed, so now the normies no longer care about illegal immigration and feel queasy over deportations. Violent crime is at a historic low, so the normies now feel Flock cameras are more threatening than criminals. Woke seems like old news, so the normies now laugh about how crazy woke 1 was.
The Trump administration is arguably a victim of its successes, at least in regard to these matters. The admin curbed illegal immigration and helped push back wokeness so much that Americans are now bothered by other problems.
In the current year, the people worry more about the elites imposing data centers and Flock cameras on them rather than white privilege checking and pronoun announcements. “Leave us alone!”, which animated the backlash against woke, also prevails here.
This vibe shift is exemplified by the brocasters who helped Trump win in 2024. Back then, these podcasters and comedians railed against woke and how it imposes on them. Now they’re lambasting Trump and showing interest in the DSA. I predicted over a year ago that this demographic could shift to the Left. I was proven right. These guys are far friendlier to Abdul El-Sayed than they are to any MAGA personality.
The brocasters no longer seem greatly concerned with wokeness or open borders. Woke, in their view, is defeated. What’s bad now are BILLIONAIRES and government agents hurting immigrants and not respecting the public will. They started turning on Trump over the ICE raids and have been complaining about them since the spring of 2025. They also soured on Trump over how the Jeffrey Epstein files were handled and the first bombing of Iran.
They don’t have clear politics besides suspicion of authority. They’re upset over data centers and Flock. They don’t like taxes and regulations. They like the individual having total control over his own decisions. They don’t mind legalized weed or gambling, and they don’t have a problem with guns. If you wanted to give them a label, you would call them libertarian. But that’s too coherent a term for what the brocasters believe. They also like universal healthcare and nod along to price controls and other socialist nonsense spewed by their guests.
Then again, that’s also how many voters approach the issues. The majority of Americans aren’t ideologues and many of them have incoherent political views. Like the brocasters, they want to be left alone to pursue their own happiness and many are broadly suspicious of authority. The insane reaction to COVID still haunts the heartland.
It’s why the people are suspicious of AI and the infrastructure that comes along with it. It’s why conspiracy theories are more popular than ever. It’s why social trust continues to plummet.
The issue is that the main beneficiaries of the vibe shift are the people who championed woke and the lockdowns in the first place. The Right doesn’t benefit much from it. The vibe doesn’t see illegal immigrants, Antifa, and criminals as the real threats to the people. Many right-wing commentators try to accommodate this mood even if it undermines their stated priorities. There are plenty of pundits who demand 100 million deportations and the mass arrest of leftists that also insist on banning the technology that would identify illegal immigrants, criminals, and left-wing extremists.
The new vibe’s true beneficiaries reside on the Left. Democrats, especially DSA candidates, are catering to this sentiment in their campaigns. They promise to ban data centers and Flock and restrict AI development. They promise to do nothing about the legalized vices the masses have come to enjoy. They insist that woke 1 is in the past, and they no longer care about all that nonsense.
But this is all a facade. Democrats haven’t given up wokeness at all. They still want schoolkids to be indoctrinated by DEI, open our borders to the entire world, advance “trans rights,” and entertain reparations. They just don’t talk about these things as much as they accommodate the new vibe.
Make no mistake: the Left will pursue the exact same agenda that pushed the brocasters to back Trump in 2024, and they will do it with just as much vigor as before.
There is one important upside for the Right amid this new national mood. Trump’s low approval ratings haven’t shifted the Overton Window back to its factory settings. Cancel culture is still much weaker than it was in the early 2020s and right-wing memes and rhetoric continue to proliferate on social media. It’s never been easier to be “redpilled” than it is today. But, thanks to the new vibe, these redpills often lead the “awakened” to focus on insane clown populism rather than identitarianism.
Like the previous vibe shift, our current mood won’t last forever. People will find new villains and new issues to be worked up about in a few years’ time, especially if Democrats take back power.
But this is the political vibe for now. DSA libertarianism may make no sense to us, but it does to a lot of voters.
Order Scott Greer’s new book, “Whitepill: The Online Right and the Making of Trump’s America,” from this link.
I agree populist sentiment has shifted toward anti-authority causes, particularly anti-tech. This is bad and benefits the left, as you note. Good piece.
Things have changed so much since 2023 and 2024 on flock cameras. I got a room of half shit lib Democrats (people who wear the shirt that says “y’all means all” with a rainbow blm flag) and half boomer conservatives to agree on flock cameras at a HOA meeting. It was overwhelming support from both sides. There was zero opposition back in 2023 and 2024.