10-plus times MAGA asked “Are We the Baddies?”

The year in façade-cracking

In a 20-year-old sketch that still makes the occasional rounds online, British comedians David Mitchell and Robert Webb, dressed as SS officers, are hunkered down on the Eastern Front when Mitchell’s character makes an uncomfortable observation. “Have you noticed our caps?...They’ve got skulls on them.”

Webb’s character shrugs this off, but Mitchell can’t stop. “Why skulls, though?...I mean what do skulls make you think of? Death, cannibals, beheading…I just can’t think of anything good about a skull.” It all builds to the punchline, as Mitchell’s character looks at Webb’s with dawning horror and asks: “Are we the baddies?”

The first time I thought of the sketch this year was upon seeing this February post from the official White House’s Instagram account, which paired a video of ERO officers laying out long chains with which they handcuff immigrant men to be marched onto a waiting plane, with the caption “ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight.” As internet commentator Ryan Broderick pointed out, the reactions on X from otherwise pro-Trump accounts were decidedly mixed:

“Who is running this account?”

“You can be pro deportation and still have a heart. This is f*ked.”

“This is distasteful, I expect better from the administration I voted for.”

Elon Musk weighed in with “So based 🦾.”

I thought of the “baddies” sketch again days later with Musk’s own performance at CPAC, waiving a chainsaw gifted to him by right-wing Argentine President Javier Milei and shouting, “This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy! Chainsaw!” The room cheered. But at a town hall in Roswell, Georgia the same evening, Republican Congressman Rich McCormick fielded responses from constituents alarmed by DOGE’s approach to “efficiency.” “I understand trying to do more with less—that’s reasonable,” an attendee said. “What’s not reasonable is taking this chainsaw approach.”

To kill a joke by explaining it: the obvious humor of “Are We the Baddies?” is in the fact that despite being literal Nazis, it is the most cosmetic, cartoonish sign of villainy that finally tips off Mitchell and Webb’s fools that they’re on the wrong side of history. The joke is on all of history’s baddies—how could anyone put skulls on their uniforms and still think they’re the good guys?

But this is how ideological disillusionment works, or at least how it can. The fascists of the mid-twentieth century sold beauty and strength, safety and community, fertility and glory. Propaganda made a specter of the other and a totalizing hero of the Reich. Trump’s regime has likewise sold strength, unity, and greatness, seasoned with the fear of “American carnage.” Nine years of messaging have pushed the lie that they will make America great again, like it definitely used to be.

Once a nation-sized lie is sold and becomes self-perpetuating (easier than ever in the algorithmic age) it’s not fact-checking that takes it down. Documentary truth is a vital line for the press and the left to hold. When it comes to winning back hearts and minds, we’re in the realm of myth. As Roland Barthes wrote back in 1957:

Myth is constituted by the loss of the historical quality of things…A conjuring trick has taken place; it has turned reality inside out…Myth acts economically: it abolishes the complexity of human acts, it gives them the simplicity of essences…it organizes a world which is without contradictions because it is without depth.

What, then, takes down a myth of the vast scope, nonexistent depth, and (therefore) Teflon durability of “Make America Great Again”? How do you fight the stew of cooptation and sloganeering that is RED HAT! GOLDEN AGE! GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY! AMERICA FIRST!?

To go back to the sketch: as far as Mitchell’s character is concerned, however tight his SS training, someone went a bridge too far by trying to reverse the moral polarity of a skull. It’s like someone very carefully turned up the temperature on a couple of frogs, only to be thwarted in the eleventh hour because they forgot to take down the sign that says CAUTION, BOILING WATER, XXX FOR FROGS.

Which is to say: a myth can be weakened from the inside if the effective propaganda that seeded it is replaced by things that evoke the wrong myths; gambling and losing with cultural symbology. With the moments above, however much xenophobia the administration has stoked, you can’t so easily teach your public to read the image of a calm, slight man being hustled along by a uniformed guard as something to cheer for. You can play to the room with a chainsaw, but to ordinary people experiencing decimated public funds and services, it will look like what it is: a noisy machine made to tear indiscriminately through the trunks and roots of a complex ecosystem.

All year I’ve been on the lookout for what else, in Trump’s zone-flooding, may register on the “AWTB?” scale. Here are 10 (more) times MAGA voters asked: “Are We the Baddies?”* in 2025:

10. Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Growth Engine

Maybe this is recency bias, or maybe the base is finally learning to spot when their best interests weren’t even nominated for consideration. Either way, the MAGA protest against the executive order on AI Trump announced in mid-December, which effectively bars states from regulating AI, was real. Many Trump supporters saw not a “Growth Engine” but a groveling bow to Silicon Valley billionaires, at the expense of American workers and anyone unlucky enough to have a new grid-gobbling data center forced into their backyard. In myth-speak, this looked like rolling over for the Monopoly Man and his shiny new Torment Nexus.

“AWTB?”: “It feels like millions of votes across the country just got traded for thousands of [venture capitalist] and tech rich votes in regions Republicans will never win.” —Anonymous source, quoted in The Washington Post

9. The People’s Extreme Home Makeover

The demolition of the East Wing has polled as broadly unpopular, but based on an (admittedly anecdotal) investigation of online sentiment, plus hand-wringing coverage from the likes of Fox News, the White House reno that has Trump’s base asking “AWTB?” is not his hideous ballroom fantasy, the paved-over Rose Garden, or even the new Lincoln mausoleum bathroom. It’s the President’s Walk. “I’m not for this at all…I’m not for the trolling,” said Brian Kilmeade of the insult-laden plaques now accompanying images of former presidents. Not all MAGA disruptors have strong feelings about the “dignity of the office,” but it’s given some pause.

“AWTB?”: “Some actions are beneath the dignity of the office he holds. As a Trump supporter, I think this crosses the line. He doesn’t seem to care, knowing he has only three more years left. If he wants to be remembered as a good president, he should stay focused and avoid making a mockery of the Presidency.” —Reader comment on Fox News

8. King Trump

The millions who came out for one of the largest single-day protests in American history aren’t alone in rejecting Trump’s penchant for depicting himself as a king. From his non-sequitur of a response to New York’s congestion pricing program in February (“Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!”…??) to his feces-dumping AI fantasia in October, even some in the MAGA base have expressed the uneasy objection that, in fact, not having a king is a pretty foundational part of America’s deal.

“AWTB?”: “Love what Trump is doing & how promises have been kept. But y’all must refrain from using ‘King’” —X post

Honorable Mentions: When Trump posted himself as a disturbingly muscular Jedi Knight with an Empire-coded lightsaber (no evidence that this confused MAGA hearts and minds, but one can dream); when Trump posted himself as the Pope (some real backlash); Trump as a literal golden idol in AI Gaza.

7. “TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME”

Trump’s recent reaction to the tragic deaths of Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner stood out from his usual blather due to its chaotic vitriol. Prominent Republicans were quick to condemn it, cementing the rambling attack as the most callous response to death by a politician since Sen. Mike Lee’s unhinged post about the shootings of Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband earlier this year. Republicans have a double standard when it comes to violence with a political valence, but Trump’s Reiner post was darker than the norm—and gave even his staunchest supporters pause.

“AWTB?”: “As a MAGA I have tried my best to support you every step of the way but not this time. EVERY human. I repeat EVERY human deserves respect during something like this. I am ashamed that you posted that. You must humble yourself and ask for forgiveness in what was a very HUGE lapse in judgement.” —Truth Social post

6. The Qatari Jet + Idaho Air Base

Amidst all Trump’s open corruption and courting of foreign autocracies, his business with Qatar seemed to break through as a bad look. In May there was his acceptance of a luxury Boeing 747 from the Qatari government, to bipartisan disapproval; this was improbably one-upped in October by the announcement that “a contingent of Qatari F-15s and pilots” would be coming to an Idaho air force base. Hardly America First.

“AWTB?”: “This is really going to be such a stain on the admin…and I say that as someone who would take a bullet for Trump.” —Laura Loomer, X post

5. Two Dolls and Five Pencils

Ah, the tariffs. In response to worries that the consumer taxes he unilaterally imposed would make for empty hearths come Christmas, Donald “can it be MORE gold” Trump took the sympathetic tack of suggesting that the rest of us don’t need bourgeois extravagances like dolls and pencils. He reiterated this argument as recently as Dec. 10, in a speech supposedly about affordability that became an even-more-meandering-than-usual rant about how wrong we all are about the economy.

Tariffs have been a divisive intra-party issue from the start, but in a recent Politico poll, even 21% of self-identified MAGA voters reported thinking Trump’s tariffs are harmful, against 27% still holding out hope for benefits.

“AWTB?”: Just watch the faces in the crowd behind Trump when he brings up the dolls. I’m looking at you, maroon-shirt-gold-chain.

4. A Little Food Scarcity Never Killed Nobody

Just how unpopular the administration’s threats to SNAP are is evident in uncharacteristic bouts of “scal[ing] down,” “walk[ing] back” and “back[ing] off”—none of which has amounted to actual mitigation of the very real, ongoing danger to an essential program. But this is the president who hosted a Great Gatsby themed party at Mar-a-Lago on Oct. 31, hours before SNAP benefits were due to run out. In Art-Deco script on the banner above the ballroom: “A little party never killed nobody.”

The party, which may as well have been called “Baddies Nite, Let ‘Em Eat Cake Edition,” made few waves with the base. But anger over SNAP funding shortages mounted throughout the shutdown, with at least some Republicans catching blame.

“AWTB?”: “I voted for Trump, but I don’t think he gets how many people this is affecting. My kids, my ex wife, my friends, there [sic] friends, there families, there Grandparents, there Grandparents friends and families. Come on Trump, snap back into shape and get us our snap.” —Facebook post

3. “You don’t have certain talents”

During a Fox interview with Laura Ingraham in November, Trump defended the H1-B Visa program by explaining that visas for skilled foreign workers are necessary because “you don’t have certain talents” among US workers. When Ingraham protested that “we have plenty of talented people here,” Trump doubled down: “No, you don’t.” The base was not thrilled.

Support for H1-B is a rare not-bad take from Trump (though one considerably worsened by his unlawful levying of a new $100,000 fee), and MAGA resistance to the position predates the interview for standard MAGA reasons, i.e., Immigration Bad. But the AWTB lens still works, as the backlash in the interview’s wake focused on how Trump said the quiet part out loud: he despises his own voters.

“AWTB?”: “Where is my president?” —Kylie Kremer, Jan. 6^th organizer, X post

2. The Affordability “Hoax” and Blaming Biden

Now we’re cooking with (overpriced) gas. More than anything else, what is currently eroding Trump voters’ confidence is the affordability crisis—and the increasing sense that they’re being gaslit by a president who, a year into his term, would rather blame his predecessor than take accountability, when he’s not denying there’s a crisis (or that affordability is a word). Or, as many might point out, when he’s not busy making it worse.

“AWTB?”: “When is the economy going to get better like you promised? Nobody can afford medical insurance or groceries! You have all the branches of government why are you not fixing the economy??” —Truth Social post

The only reason this doesn’t get the top spot is that it’s not a truly ideal “AWTB?” situation. There’s plenty of scales-falling-from-eyes potential: a new cohort of people beginning to wonder whether their great American businessman may just be a great American huckster (or a wizened shell of one). But in terms of inducing existential-level “AWTB?” panic, a politician lying about the economy doesn’t have quite the supervillain zhuzh of skulls-on-caps. It’s too pedestrian an offense, however brutally executed and worth voting against (fingers crossed).

Unlike our #1 spot.

1. The Epstein Files

The gift no one wanted that keeps on giving. If anything had—and still has—the potential to turn Trump from hero to villain in the eyes of his own most fervent supporters, it’s the Epstein Files.

By this I mean both the actual files (I’m still trying to unsee that birthday note), and the thick miasma of conspiracy that made “The Epstein Files” a rallying point for Q-Anon and others who trusted that Trump’s promises to “drain the swamp” and “root out the deep state” included dismantling an elite pedophile cabal about which the files must hold key evidence.

When Trump got back in office and—after some stringing along from AG Pam “sitting on my desk right now” Bondi—suggested that everyone just forget about Epstein, this did not go over well.

Since July, throughout the tortured release of lurid, damning, still maddeningly partial pages, too few conspiracy-minded Trump supporters have appreciated that the files already evince a real elite pedophile ring at the center of American power—just not the one they were hoping would be exposed. But MAGA has been deeply rocked by the administration’s withholding, seeing in it anything from a broken promise to a malignant cover-up.

For the sake of the women who survived so much abuse at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein and his guilty peers (the president very much included), let’s hope Americans across the political spectrum are never satisfied by the administration’s redacted pretenses. Let’s also hope more Trump voters start questioning what else this administration might not be giving to them straight.

“AWTB?”: “They covered up the Epstein Files. No other way to put it now. They’ve had years to protect victims, including now plenty of time in this Administration. They are all complicit. Media and Administration included. P*do Protection Racket.” —Owen Shroyer, former Infowars host and pardoned Jan. 6^th participant, X post

There is so much not on the list above.

Disappearing thousands of American residents. Dismantling institutions of science. (Re)institutionalizing white supremacy. Eroding healthcare. Enabling foreign dictators. Committing war crimes. Destroying the civil service. Threatening voting rights. Standing with perfect indifference as a man collapses….I wish I could report that more of these horrors got significant numbers of Trump voters to take a long, hard look at their leader. That’s not where we’re at right now. But there are real cracks in voter support, for myriad reasons. It’s a start.

The upshot of AWTB?-watching, as we look to 2026 and beyond: keep looking for where this regime’s myth-coopting eyes are bigger than its stomach. Amplify whatever madness the base is struggling to swallow, great and idiotically trivial alike. Point out the skulls on the caps—the details that, however small, are hardest to unsee. Trump and co. will have a hard time countering this strategy because (to state the obvious) of course they are the baddies, terminally out of touch with whatever might make the average American queasy.

Falling for the myths of an autocracy requires total buy-in, and is thus a brittle kind of faith, vulnerable to whatever doubts find a crack to seep in. Once you’ve spotted skulls all around, it’s hard not to keep your eyes open for causes of death.

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*Not this kind, unfortunately.

Meghan Houser is a New York-based Editor, Writer, Collaborator, and Cheetah. Her admiring team at The Contrarian strongly urge our community to read everything she writes in 2026 & beyond—and are so grateful for her invaluable contributions to our first year of content.