The post-Maga era: the ‘rebel’ candidates and Carlson’s potential challenge

American politics is experiencing a summer of experimentation the likes of which has not been seen for years. Fuelled by the electoral climate in the run-up to November’s mid-term elections, unease over the dead-end war with Iran and, above all, the need to start envisaging the 2028 race for the White House and the post-Trump era, challenges to the establishment are flourishing on both the right and the left. At stake is the attempt to define the political class that will lead America into the 2030s, called upon to chart a new course following the traumatic Trump decade.

Within the Democratic Party, the battle is entirely confined to the party’s ranks, with the socialist wing led by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez having scored some significant victories against the party leadership, particularly in Michigan. But it has also suffered resounding defeats, such as in Wisconsin, where the socialist gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong was beaten in the Democratic primary by the centrist David Crowley: a surprise result that represents a debacle for the pollsters (Hong had been predicted to lead by 15–20 points) and raises many questions about how voters are reacting to the rebels’ challenges to traditional politics.

But it is within the turbulent world of MAGA that laboratory experiments are becoming more daring, to the point where it seems the time has come to find another name for the Make America Great Again movement. Talking about MAGA 2.0 seems too narrow, given the emergence of plans for a split, initiatives to create a third party (long the phoenix of American politics) and cross-pollinations that are causing political short circuits. A case in point, in this latter regard, is the series of interviews Hunter Biden is currently granting to his fiercest enemies of recent years: the podcasters and influencers of the radical right who had made the former president’s son their favourite target. The most talked-about instance is the conversation – which has racked up millions of views – that Biden Jr had with Tucker Carlson on the popular programme that the former Fox news anchor broadcasts across all digital platforms. But Hunter is undertaking a broader strategy; he has infiltrated the far right to dismantle from within the caricature that the Trumpian world had created of him and his father.

It is unclear whether Biden Jr.’s aim is to pursue some sort of political candidacy, choosing to begin by addressing his opponents. A bit like California Governor Gavin Newsom is doing, in preparation for his bid for the White House in 2028. What is certain is that, at 56, Hunter seems to have put the various controversial chapters of his life behind him (drugs, guns, tax evasion, lobbying in Ukraine and other assorted scandals), to devote himself to crafting a counter-narrative about himself and his father – one that effectively amounts to an indictment of Donald Trump and his obsessions regarding his predecessor. A journey that began last December with an appearance on the popular podcast hosted by Shawn Ryan – a controversial figure with a past as a Navy SEAL and CIA contractor – and which has since taken him through many platforms within the ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA) movement, including those of Candace Owens and then Carlson. That is to say, two of the leading rebels who are splitting the conservative coalition that helped bring Trump back to the White House in 2024.

The strong messages that Biden Jr. found himself sharing with Carlson are the belief that Trump is an ‘existential threat’ to the United States, that technocrats such as Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are dangerous and must be stopped, and above all that the United States today has an enemy posing as a friend: Benjamin Netanyahu, whom Hunter describes as “evil incarnate” and whom Carlson has been attacking for months (though, in his case, extending the accusations to the whole of Israel) as the real architect of the war against Iran, which has definitively alienated the rebellious MAGA supporters from Trump.

Where is this seething anger against the establishment – paradoxically embodied today by the president who wanted to ‘drain the swamp’ in Washington – leading? One of the first effects is the resurgence of the age-old idea of a third party: an independent presidential campaign that could feature Carlson as its candidate – though he is holding back for now – with foreign policy as its unifying theme. The promoters, alongside the anchorman, are former MP Marjorie Taylor Greene, the maverick MP from Kentucky Thomas Massie and former counter-terrorism director Joe Kent. But the model they have in mind is not that of the independents of yesteryear, à la Ross Perot – libertarian and disruptive candidacies offering an outlet for those who do not identify with the two main parties. Instead, the model to replicate is that of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose ‘independent’ challenge in 2024 ended with a reconciliation with Trump and a government post. Carlson could launch his own insurrection, particularly if Marco Rubio – the real enemy – were among the White House candidates. In that case, he would challenge the Secretary of State on foreign policy issues, before likely entering into an alliance with J.D. Vance. The candidate on whom those disillusioned with Trump are pinning their hopes to build, in the 2030s, a post-MAGA, isolationist world that, in their eyes, is truly ‘America First’.