The Miscalculation

MAGA's Epistemic Bubble Seems To Blind Them To What's Coming

In the shadow of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, something remarkable seems to be happening that Trump’s movement seems completely unable to see. Trapped within their own epistemic bubble, MAGA appears to have fundamentally misread the political moment, interpreting tragedy as total victory over their opponents.

The miscalculation is breathtaking in its scope. The White House seems to believe that Kirk’s murder somehow delegitimized the entire Democratic opposition—that liberals, progressives, and the broad left had all been exposed as violent extremists in the eyes of ordinary Americans. Operating from this false premise, they’ve concluded they now possess unlimited moral authority to pursue their maximum programme: mass deportations, constitutional violations, systematic persecution of political opponents.

What MAGA world seems to be missing is that most Americans are capable of holding two thoughts simultaneously: political violence is unacceptable, and Trump remains a dangerous authoritarian who threatens democratic governance. The assassination didn’t change fundamental assessments of Trump’s character or his movement’s threat to democracy—it simply added another layer of chaos and violence to an already unacceptable situation.

The evidence of their miscalculation is mounting across multiple fronts. The National Corn Growers Association reports that 46% of U.S. farmers believe the country is on the brink of agricultural economic crisis, with corn margins showing losses of $161 per acre. These supposedly core MAGA supporters are discovering that deportation policies create severe labor shortages threatening entire harvests, while cash receipts for crop farms have declined by $71 billion over the past three years.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s new H-1B visa fees of $100,000 per year are creating consternation among tech leaders who supported him. Major companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta—which had thousands of H-1B visas approved—now face crushing new costs that could significantly impact smaller tech firms and startups. Even the Pentagon’s unprecedented restrictions on journalist access, requiring reporters to sign agreements not to publish certain information, suggest an administration increasingly paranoid about public scrutiny.

Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner publicly slammed current CEO Bob Iger over Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension, asking “Where has all the leadership gone?” and criticizing the “out-of-control intimidation” following FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s threats to Disney.

But perhaps most telling is the pushback from within the Republican Party itself. Senator Ted Cruz—hardly a liberal voice—ripped Carr's threats as “dangerous as hell” and “right out of 'Goodfellas,'“ comparing the FCC chairman to “a mafioso coming into a bar going, nice bar you have here, it'd be a shame if something happened to it.” Even Senator Thom Tillis called Carr's behavior “just unacceptable.”

This misreading reveals how completely epistemic closure has captured Trump’s inner circle. Surrounded by yes-men and sycophants, consuming only media that confirms their worldview, purging dissent from their ranks—they’ve lost the capacity to accurately assess public sentiment. They’re operating from assumptions about American attitudes that may have been valid two years ago but have completely shifted.

The dramatic shift in immigration polling tells the story clearly: over 70% of Americans now view immigration positively, while Trump’s deportation policies poll in the 30s. Rural farmers, tech executives, and ordinary citizens are all discovering that authoritarian rhetoric sounds different when it becomes authoritarian reality affecting their daily lives.

This creates a dangerous dynamic. Believing they have unlimited mandate, they’re pushing policies that are actually generating the opposition they think they’ve eliminated. Every masked ICE raid, every family separation, every constitutional violation, every restriction on press access, every punitive fee on tech companies is not consolidating their power but mobilizing resistance they can’t see coming.

History is littered with movements that became so convinced of their own narrative that they lost touch with actual public sentiment. The more authoritarian they become, the more they surround themselves with true believers, making accurate assessment impossible. MAGA has achieved such perfect epistemic closure that they may genuinely believe their own propaganda about having “ended” the opposition.

The Kirk assassination seems to have been their Reichstag Fire moment—the event they thought would justify unlimited power. But unlike the Nazis, who still had to carefully manage public opinion, MAGA appears to believe the American people will simply accept whatever they impose. They’re treating democratic opposition like a switch that can be turned off rather than a river that finds new channels when blocked.

By interpreting tragedy as permission for maximum authoritarianism rather than a moment requiring restraint, they’re making exactly the kind of overreach that can trigger successful resistance movements. The very epistemic closure that helped them capture power may ensure they overplay their hand so dramatically that they enable the opposition response they never saw coming.

The most dangerous moment for our democratic may also the moment when authoritarianism makes its fatal mistake.