MAGA’s Civil War Just Started. Popcorn or Champagne?

How a movement built on “owning the libs” ran out of enemies and started swinging at its own reflection.

There’s an old rule of war that says: when two tigers start fighting in the valley, you don’t run down there and try to break it up. You climb the hill, you sit your behind on a rock, and you watch. You wait till they’ve clawed each other bloody, then you walk down and see what’s left. In other words: when your enemy is busy destroying itself, your job is observation, not intervention.

That’s where we are with MAGA right now. For years they promised a second civil war where “patriots” would take on the Deep State, the feminists, the queers, the immigrants, the whole “woke mob.” Look up from your screen for a second and tell the truth: the loudest war they’re fighting in 2025 isn’t against us. It’s against each other. They’re doxxing each other, outing each other, calling each other traitors, grifters, pedophiles, feds, plants, cowards, and “not real conservatives” before breakfast.

So this piece is not a rescue mission. I am not here to throw myself between grown adults who have spent a decade lighting matches and are shocked there’s a fire. I’m inviting you up on the hill with me for a few minutes, to watch how a movement built on projection, repression, and revenge finally hits the mirror and starts swinging at its own reflection. MAGA’s civil war just started. The only real question for the rest of us is simple: popcorn or champagne?

When the Closet Starts Doing Talk Shows

Milo Yiannopoulos

Picture this: on one side of the table you’ve got Milo Yiannopoulos, an openly gay far-right troll who has built a career screaming about “degeneracy.” On the other side you’ve got George Santos, the expelled Republican congressman who lied about pretty much everything from his résumé to his own name. And somehow Santos is the one warning, “Bro, you might get sued for this.”

On Tim Pool’s show, Milo decides his new mission from God is outing “closeted” conservatives. He zeroes in on Benny Johnson, a MAGA meme-lord who sells himself as a squeaky-clean family man. Milo tells this wild story about “everybody knowing” what went on in hotel lobbies at a Turning Point USA student conference: “men, younger men… his wife crying in the lobby three years in a row while he was upstairs with boys.” Santos, of all people, jumps in like the substitute ethics teacher: “Aren’t you ever scared of getting sued?”

Benny’s response is pure culture-war theater. He posts about being a devoted husband and father, calls the story a malicious lie, and says he’s “duty bound” to sue to protect his family’s honor. Milo fires back online that he has “receipts,” knows “what questions to ask,” and dares Benny to drag him into court so they can litigate his sexuality in public. This is not a serious moral dispute; this is two right-wing brands threatening to subpoena each other’s private lives for content.

And here’s the twisted part: you don’t have to believe a single word Milo said to see the psychology on display. In a movement that spends all day demonizing queer people, the worst insult their own insiders can imagine is “you’re secretly one of them,” preferably with a Grindr-adjacent visual and a crying wife in the background. The joke in liberal and queer circles is that Grindr must crash every time a MAGA conference hits town; inside MAGA, the joke is a weapon. The rumor doesn’t have to be true. It just has to tap that terror that the mask might slip.

So now you’ve got an openly gay troll, a disgraced gay ex-congressman, and a “family values” influencer all orbiting the same story about boys, hotel rooms, and lawsuits. That’s not owning the libs. That’s a purity spiral with better lighting. When the internal nuke code is “we’ll out you as the thing we preach against,” you’re not fighting the Deep State anymore; you’re fighting your own reflection and hoping nobody notices who threw the first punch.

Projection 101: Why Everybody’s a “Groomer” Except the Folks in the Mirror

If you strip the ten-dollar “culture war” language off this thing, a lot of MAGA world runs on one simple move: whatever I can’t face in myself, I slap on you. That’s projection. You take your own forbidden impulses, your own curiosity, your own shame, and you staple it to somebody else’s forehead so you don’t have to feel it in your own chest. It’s spiritual Photoshop: erase, blur, export to enemy.

Now add repression to the mix. You grow up in a church, or a family, or a media bubble where certain desires are not just “wrong,” they’re unspeakable. You don’t stop feeling them; you just shove them into the basement. Jung called that basement the shadow. It’s the part of you you’d rather die than admit is yours. And anything that even smells like that shadow out in the world? You go after it like it’s the devil himself.

So of course a movement that’s built its brand on “protecting the children” ends up seeing “groomers” on every street corner. Teachers? Groomers. Librarians? Groomers. Drag queens doing a story hour? Super-groomers. Meanwhile, inside the house, the insults get more specific: Grindr jokes, “everybody knows what he does in those hotel lobbies,” the crying wife in the corner of the frame. It’s the same script, just turned inward.

From a clinical angle, this is classic shadow panic. The language is loud and moral, but the volume is covering fear: What if the thing I’ve been yelling about lives inside me, too? If you’ve spent ten years promising your followers that you’re the pure ones, then the worst possible accusation is not “you’re a hypocrite,” it’s “you’re secretly what you told us to hate.” That’s why “groomer,” “pervert,” “closet case” hit harder in that ecosystem than “corrupt” or “liar.”

Once that kind of projection turns inward, the movement starts auto-immune attacking itself. The antibodies they built for drag queens and liberals now float around looking for targets inside the bloodstream. Every rival influencer, every ambitious congressperson, every ex-insider becomes a potential stand-in for the shadow: “He’s compromised.” “She’s corrupt.” “He’s one of them.”

So when you see grown men on “family values” platforms threatening to drag each other’s sex lives into court, that’s not just gossip. That’s the psychology cracking. The mask they built for the world, pure, straight, righteous, chosen, is getting too tight. And instead of taking it off, they’d rather rip each other’s faces trying to prove, one more time, that the darkness always belongs to somebody else.

The Epstein Files and the Moment the Spell Slipped

For years, “save the children” was the MAGA altar call. Jeffrey Epstein was the perfect villain: a billionaire predator with a private island, a dead body in a federal jail, and a guest list full of the rich and powerful. In the Q-adjacent imagination, Trump was the lone righteous billionaire who had “kicked Epstein out” and secretly planned to expose the whole ring. People didn’t just like that story. They organized their whole moral universe around it.

Marjorie Taylor Greene stepped into Congress as the high priestess of that universe. Gym videos, Bible verses, “America First” stitched on every sentence, and always that refrain: protect the kids, punish the traffickers, burn it all down if we have to. So when she started pushing to pry open the Epstein files for real, she wasn’t going rogue. She was doing exactly what the movement claimed it was born to do: name names, lift every rock, let the world see which “respectable” men were paying to rape fourteen-year-old girls.

And that is where she ran straight into the golden calf. The minute it became clear that releasing everything meant real heat on people in Trump’s orbit, the music changed. Instead of “blow the doors off,” Greene got a Truth Social smackdown. Trump tested out a new insult for her, hinted she had “lost her mind,” and started flirting in public with backing a primary opponent. The woman who had called herself his fiercest defender was suddenly being painted as the traitor, not the billionaires on those logs. The sermon flipped: the threat wasn’t powerful men who bought children; the threat was a congresswoman asking the wrong questions about powerful men who bought children.

Greene’s resignation speech was messy, self-serving, and still damning. She basically told the base, “I went to war for this man, and the first time I tried to stand flat-footed for the victims, the knives came out at me.” She talked about the “Political Industrial Complex,” about being frozen out by leadership, about realizing that even an “America First” president will protect his own circle before he protects the nameless girls on that island. You could hear the shock: she had finally tested whether the slogan was real, and the answer that came back was no.

Psychologically, that is not just a bad news cycle. That is a cult member bumping into the limit of the myth. The whole “we are the army that will take down the pedophile elites” story could survive a lot of hypocrisy. It could survive affairs, porn stars, even January 6. What it could not survive was this: the moment the crusader for the kids discovers that the crusade stops at the edge of the leader’s comfort. Once people see that the Epstein files are negotiable but the leader’s ego is not, the spell hairline-cracks. They may not walk away tomorrow. But a little voice in the back of the head starts whispering, “If we won’t protect them, who is all this really for?”

When “MAGA Granny” Says, “I’m Guilty”

If the Epstein Files crack was about the altar, Pamela Hemphill is about the pews. She wasn’t a senator, a billionaire, or a TV troll. She was a retired addiction counselor from Idaho, a self-described “MAGA granny” who bought the whole story: Trump as savior, January 6 as righteous protest, the media as liars. She went to D.C. on January 6, followed the crowd toward the Capitol, filmed, chanted, absorbed the energy like a thousand other older white boomers who thought they were finally on the right side of history.

Then the high wore off and the state came calling. Hemphill got arrested, charged, and stood in front of a judge who did not care about her Facebook feed. This should’ve been the moment she played the greatest hits: “It was peaceful,” “I’m a political prisoner,” “I was just there to document.” Instead, she did something almost no one in that universe does in public: she told the truth. She said she was guilty. She said she got swept up. She accepted the sentence. She went to prison.

Fast-forward to Trump’s second-term stunt: the mass pardons. Overnight, hundreds of January 6 defendants got a golden ticket. “Full, complete and unconditional.” The base went wild; influencers shouted that justice had finally been served. And Pamela Hemphill, MAGA grandma, said, “No.” She refused the pardon. She said it felt wrong to erase the conviction she had owned. She said a blanket pardon for everyone, including the guys who smashed windows and assaulted cops, was an insult to the rule of law and to her own recovery work. That’s not liberal spin. That’s a woman who used to believe the man, saying, “This story doesn’t match what I lived.”

The reaction from inside the movement was vicious. The same people who once made her a folk hero started calling her “Pamtifa,” a plant, a traitor, a fake conservative. They needed her to be either perfectly innocent or perfectly persecuted; there was no room for “I did what they said I did, and it was wrong.” Psychologically, that is the tell. A cult can handle enemies. It can’t handle grandma snapping out of it. When the seventy-something woman who bought the hat, bought the lie, and did the time looks up and says, “Y’all, we were guilty, period,” the spell doesn’t just crack at the top. It fractures at the kitchen table.

Hemphill is not going to bring the whole thing down by herself. That’s not how this works. But her refusal sits there like a little stone in the shoe of the narrative. Every time they say “political prisoner,” there’s that one grandma who said “no.” Every time they say “we did nothing wrong,” there’s that one sentencing transcript where a true believer said, “I did.” Movements like this are built on millions of tiny denials. Implosions start when too many small people in the crowd decide, quietly or out loud, “I’m not lying for you anymore.”

Tim Pool vs. Candace Owens: When the Grift Starts Swinging at Itself

On one side you’ve got Tim Pool: ex-Occupy livestreamer turned beanie-wearing right-wing podcaster with a million-plus YouTube subs, selling himself as the “reasonable” MAGA-adjacent guy. On the other side you’ve got Candace Owens: former Daily Wire star, professional flamethrower, and queen bee of conservative drama who already fought her way out of Ben Shapiro’s house and into her own empire. For years they swam in the same pool: same audiences, same “we’re just asking questions” posture, same donation buckets.

Now they’re on air calling each other demons. After Charlie Kirk was assassinated at a Utah event, Owens started pushing conspiracies about shadowy foreign operatives and telling people to stop giving money to Turning Point USA. Tim snapped. On his Timcast IRL show he went nuclear on his own side, calling Owens a “scumbag,” accusing her and other right-wing conspiracy peddlers of being “f***ing evil” and “burning down everything,” and blaming them for wrecking TPUSA in the middle of a crisis. That’s not “owning the libs.” That’s a man screaming at his own congregation that the prophets are hustlers.

Then it gets even more petty and even more revealing. Pool claims someone drove up to his West Virginia property and opened fire, hinting it might be politically motivated. Owens doesn’t offer sympathy; she publicly demands proof, questions his story, and basically says, “Show the receipts or stop playing victim.” When he melts down on air again, she reposts the clip and responds by saying he “doesn’t have the intellect” to understand what’s going on, calls him “less than a man,” and tells her followers he looks like someone mentally struggling who needs compassion, not clicks. That’s the “family values” brand now: accusing each other of faking shootings and having breakdowns for content.

Psychologically, this is what happens when a movement built on outrage discovers there’s more money in fighting each other than in fighting us. Tim’s whole rant is basically: “You’re grifting too hard and you’re going to break the toy we all use.” Candace’s whole clapback is: “You’re just mad I’m better at this game than you are.” And hanging over all of it is that special episode of Timcast where he brings on Milo Yiannopoulos and George Santos—the chaos twins themselves—to “debate” the Candace/TPUSA drama like it’s the State of the Union. That’s not a serious movement; that’s reality TV with Bible verses and body armor. When your “civil war” features a beanie, a ring light, and two influencers yelling “grifter” at the mirror, the tigers in the valley aren’t hunting anybody else. They’re just mauling each other for views.

MAGA Indians Can’t Escape MAGA Racism

Let’s talk about the “diversity” wing of MAGA, the Indian showcase squad. On the posters you’ve got Kash Patel, the Indian American hardliner Trump slid into national security jobs and then into the FBI director’s chair in this sequel, smiling like the brochure for “See, we’re not racist.” You’ve got Usha Vance, JD Vance’s Indian American wife, law-school brilliant, mother of his kids, proof that the movement totally loves brown people so long as they come pre-attached to a white champion. And then you’ve got Erika Kirk, the blonde widow of Saint Charlie, standing at the center of the Turning Point stage like a living altar for white Christian grief.

Now go look at the comment sections when Kash posts a Diwali message or shows up at a temple. It’s a mess. The same base that screams “we’re just defending Western civilization” suddenly remembers every slur their granddaddy taught them: “pagan,” “idol worshiper,” “go back,” “this is a Christian nation, not Bollywood.” These are their people talking to their FBI director. The man can raid whoever Trump tells him to raid, but he cannot post a picture of a diya without his own followers acting like he personally spat on the cross. That’s not the left calling him names. That’s the pews.

And then came the hug. Charlie Kirk is assassinated at a Utah event, the whole movement is in shock, and on that Turning Point stage you get the image they will not admit is a confession: JD Vance wrapping Erika Kirk up in the “hug heard around the world,” cameras zoomed all the way in on white sorrow, white protection, white martyrdom. Usha is there, Kash is there, the Indian faces are technically on the scene, but they are background texture. The emotional center of the story is still the white preacher’s daughter and the white senator holding her like America itself is a grieving widow that just needs a strong white arm.

Psychologically, it’s not subtle. On paper, MAGA loves its Indian stars: they’re telegenic, they’re smart, they prove the movement is “about values, not race.” But the minute religion or grief or real power shows up, the hierarchy snaps back into place. Patel can run the FBI, but he can’t lead the prayer. Usha can raise the kids and polish the JD Vance brand, but when the movement needs a face of holy suffering, they don’t frame her tears, they frame Erika’s. The racism doesn’t disappear because they hired a few brown frontmen; it just gets dressed up in “heritage” talk and pushed down until it leaks out in the replies.

From a shadow-psych angle, this is projection again with a side of entitlement. They swear they’re building a colorblind army, but the deep story is still: we’re the real Americans, you’re the help. Indians in MAGA are allowed to be trophies, translators, shock troops against “woke,” but the minute they ask to be the hero of the frame—or bring their own gods, their own grief, their own center of gravity—the base snaps, “Know your place.” That’s not a coalition. That’s a plantation with better Wi-Fi. And when your “Big Tent” keeps quietly shoving its brown stars to the edge of the shot, don’t be surprised when the tent poles start cracking in the wind.

Good News, Great News, Hard Truth

Here’s what I need you to see before we land this plane. The closet whispers, the Grindr jokes, the Milo-and-Santos circus, that’s one crack. The Epstein files showdown between Greene and the golden calf is another. “MAGA granny” Pamela Hemphill standing in court saying “I’m guilty” while the tribe calls her a traitor is another.

Tim and Candace turning their mics on each other, calling out the grift in public, is another. Kash Patel catching “go back” in his own comments, Usha Vance pushed out of the frame while the camera zooms in on Erika Kirk’s tears, that’s crack, crack, crack.

That’s the good news: the mask is slipping in every corner of the house. The Grindr ghost is rattling their own closet doors. The “save the children” crusaders are exposing the limits of their courage when the spotlight gets too close to their king. The grandma they thought would parrot the lie is standing in front of a judge telling the truth. The big-name influencers are saying the quiet part out loud; “you’re grifting too hard, you’re going to break the toy.” The diversity trophies are finding out in real time that the movement’s love stops at the color line and the communion rail.

The great news is this: none of that came from us storming their gates. We didn’t infiltrate their rallies. We didn’t hack their group chats. We did not make Milo threaten to drag a “family values” star into court over boys in hotel lobbies. We did not make a president choose protecting his circle over fourteen-year-old girls on an island. We did not put “Pamtifa” in their mouths when grandma refused a fake absolution. All we did was tell the truth long enough for the lies to start arguing with each other.

But here’s the hard truth, and this is where the shouting stops for a second. A cult in free fall is dangerous. Wounded tigers don’t suddenly become house cats; they flail, they bite, they go looking for a new enemy to blame.

Some will double down, get crueler, and look for a softer target than the people who just hurt their pride. Some will quietly slip away, ashamed, and never admit they were ever in it. Some will be standing in that valley when the dust clears, looking up at this hill, wondering who kept watch while they were busy clawing each other to pieces. That’s the hinge we’re standing on right now. The cracks are real, the spell is slipping, the house is fighting itself. The question we have to answer next is simple and deadly serious: what do we do, what do we refuse to do, while the tigers fight in the valley?Here’s where we pull the threads tight and then pause.

You’ve just watched this thing from every angle: the Grindr ghosts and hotel-lobby whispers, the “save the children” crusaders flinching at the Epstein files, MAGA Granny telling a judge “I’m guilty” while her own people rename her “Pamtifa,” the beanie brigades calling each other grifters, the Indian showcase crew catching “go back” in the comments while the cameras zoom in on white grief. Different scenes, same story: a movement built on projection, repression, and revenge finally runs out of fresh enemies and starts swinging at its own reflection. That’s the good news and the great news.

The hard truth is that a movement in free fall is still in charge of real levers. The folks screaming “groomer” at each other online are the same ones deciding what your kid reads, who feels safe at the polls, which version of history gets taught. A wounded beast doesn’t wake up wise; it wakes up looking for someone else to blame for the pain. Some will double down, get meaner, go hunting for softer targets. Some will slide quietly out the side door and pretend they were never there at all. Some will be left standing in that valley, covered in dust, finally looking up at the hill and wondering who was watching while they tore each other apart.

Our job is to hold the line where we live: at the ballot box, at the school meeting, in the family group chat where the next “civil war” meme shows up. Not to dive into their fight, not to play referee for people who built this fire on purpose, but to make damn sure the fallout doesn’t roll over our kids, our neighbors, our future without a word from us. This is the hinge: MAGA is busy clawing itself in the valley. The only real question left, before we talk about anything else, is who you’re choosing to be up here on this hill while it happens.

Here’s where I’m going to ask you for something.

The same folks tearing each other apart in that valley are raising millions doing it. They turn racism into a business model, turn conspiracy into merch, turn every fresh wound into a fundraising link. They lie on camera, cry on cue, and the checks clear. Meanwhile, people trying to tell the truth about what this is doing to our democracy, to Black folks, to your kids’ future are out here passing the hat like it’s an open mic night.

I’ll own this: I used to be damn near ashamed to ask for money. It felt like begging. It felt like I should just “be grateful” and grind in silence. Watching this civil war, watching grifters get rich while truth-tellers burn out, snapped something in me. I was living like my work didn’t deserve to eat. I was wrong. I see it now: if we don’t fund the voices pulling receipts and connecting dots, we are letting the loudest liars set the story for everyone.

So here’s the ask, plain: if this hit you in the chest, if you want someone on that hill every day tracking how this mess spills into courts, classrooms, and communities, help me keep doing it. Xplisset Voice of America is Black-led, psychologically sharp, and reader-funded on purpose. No party bosses. No billionaire sugar daddy. Just you. Upgrade to paid

They’re already monetizing the chaos. This is you choosing to put your money behind the people naming it.

Sources:

1 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/03/maga-coalition-cracks-republicans-trump

2 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/21/marjorie-taylor-greene-resigns

3 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/14/trump-marjorie-taylor-greene-support

4 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/11/15/trump-withdraws-support-for-former-maga-champion-marjorie-taylor-greene

5 https://time.com/7339247/marjorie-taylor-greene-trump-feud-epstein-files-new-claims/

6 https://people.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-says-trump-was-furious-with-me-over-epstein-files-on-phone-call-11863543

7 https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/11/23/trump-maga-division-tech-ai/

8 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/11/24/afpi-ai-plan-trump-tech/

9 https://www.newsweek.com/republican-realignment-matrix-the-fight-to-control-post-trump-maga-11089630

10 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pamela-hemphill-trump-supporter-refuses-jan-6-pardon/

11 https://www.cbsnews.com/video/january-6-defendant-refuses-trumps-pardon/

12 https://afro.com/former-maga-supporter-rejects-pardon/

13 https://newrepublic.com/post/204111/maga-implodes-closeted-gays-qatar-tucker-carlson-johnson-yiannapoulos

14 https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/benny-johnson-suggests-duty-bound-234834754.html

15 https://www.sportskeeda.com/pop-culture/news-what-milo-yiannopoulos-say-tim-pool-s-podcast-benny-johnson-says-podcaster-called-apologized-cool-now

16 https://www.thedailybeast.com/maga-star-melts-down-at-trump-fans-in-expletive-filled-rant/

17 https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/us-news/candace-owens-reacts-after-tim-pool-calls-her-evil-accuses-her-of-burning-everything-down-in-shocking-rant-101765265098450.html

18 https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/maga-implodes-over-claims-faked-161834775.html

19 https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/global-trends/hellish-celebration-false-gods-maga-supporters-troll-kash-patel-over-diwali-greeting/articleshow/124764997.cms

20 https://www.dnaindia.com/world/report-hinduphobia-in-us-maga-supporters-attack-diwali-asks-tulsi-gabbard-kash-patel-nikki-haley-to-go-back-3184943

21 https://people.com/jd-vance-erika-kirk-hug-11841052

22 https://people.com/jd-vance-addresses-marriage-rumors-11862815