Roger Kimball, writing in The Spectator, just laid out what every single one of us already knew but the mainstream media still can't seem to process — the MAGA movement isn't dying, it's accelerating. And while NPR was busy reporting on "the fracturing of MAGA" and the New York Times was publishing yet another breathless piece about the "death of MAGA," 26 MAGA Republicans were winning their primaries across Indiana, Michigan, Texas, and North Carolina.

Oops.

You'd think after a solid decade of getting it wrong, somebody at these outlets would update the playbook. But no. The New Republic ran a headline screaming "Trump's MAGA Base Splits Dramatically" while Politico and Salon were tripping over each other to publish the same fantasy. Meanwhile, in actual reality — the place where votes get counted — President Trump's endorsed candidates were steamrolling the competition.

Let's talk about Ohio for a second. Vivek Ramaswamy pulled 85% of the vote. Won every single county. That's not a victory, that's a statement. That's the political equivalent of dunking on someone so hard the backboard shatters.

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Kimball, who serves as publisher of Encounter Books and editor of the New Criterion — so we're not talking about some random guy with a Substack — made the case that the media's MAGA-is-dead narrative has become a kind of ritual. They publish it, reality contradicts it, and then they publish it again six months later hoping nobody remembers. The New York Times even had the audacity to frame the primaries not as "a contest between moderates and conservatives" but as "a test of how much deference Republicans owe Mr. Trump." Because of course they did. Everything has to be framed as subservience when it comes to our side. When Democrats fall in line behind their leadership, it's "unity." When we do it, it's a cult.

But here's the part the legacy media will never understand, and political commentator Kurt Schlichter nailed it perfectly. "Trump is not our leader. He is our avatar," Schlichter wrote. "You dummies screwed with the base." That's the whole ballgame right there. They keep thinking if they can just separate Trump from the movement, the movement dies. They've been trying that play since 2015 and it has never worked. Not once.

Schlichter also dropped this gem after watching the primary results roll in: "Inevitably, the RINOs will take the wrong lesson from tonight's brutal discipline." He's right. They always do. The establishment wing watches their candidates get curb-stomped by double digits and then goes on cable news to explain how the real problem is that the party needs to "moderate."

And while we're taking a victory lap, let's glance across the aisle. Writer LHGray summed up the Democrats' situation heading into the 2026 midterms with a line that should be framed and hung in every DNC office: the Democratic Party is not merely losing — it is "structurally, psychologically, and philosophically finished." That's not a Republican saying that. That's someone watching the left eat itself in real time.

Kimball's piece in The Spectator isn't just another opinion column. It's a receipts file. Every prediction the media made about MAGA fracturing, every poll they waved around, every smug editorial about how the movement was "losing steam" — all of it has been torched by actual election results. Twenty-six wins in a single primary night. Eighty-five percent in Ohio. Every county.

They've been predicting our funeral since 2015. We keep showing up with more chairs.