Is There a MAGA Endgame? Actually, There Are Three | Opinion

The Trump administration's seemingly bottomless appetite for disrupting, contorting, or outright demolishing everything in sight begs a question: what are they ultimately after? What's their endgame?

There isn't one single, clear answer because there isn't one single scheme at work: there are three. And it's worth understanding the distinctions.

One bloc—led by President Donald Trump himself—is easy to figure: they're motivated by power and payback. Trump's need for dominance and gluttonous craving for flattery to stroke his sense of supremacy is so well-known that foreign leaders build their foreign policy around it, while his supplicants in Congress—playing Regan and Goneril to his King Lear—pile atop one another to suggest putting his name and face on airports, currency, and Mount Rushmore (no, actually).

The only other psychological need that rivals his thirst for toadying is the pursuit of retribution. Political opponents, law firms, non-fawning judges, insufficiently flattering portraits—that's just a small subset of his targets in the past week alone.

But beyond that, there's no evidence that Trump has any core principles, attachments, or goals. He's eventually flipped on everything he's said and everybody who has stood with him. His endgame is about ever more control, veneration, and vengeance. Much of his cabinet and Republican congressional leadership—think figures like Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) (who opposed Hegseth until threatened with the loss of her seat, and then folded faster than Superman on laundry day)—are simply happy to be remoras on Trump's neck for the chance to get or keep a measure of that power.

Then there's a second faction—best represented by Office of Management and Budget head and Project 2025 veteran Russell Vought—made up of Heritage Foundation-infused true believers who see the entire government as a cancer needing radical chemo. They actually believe that the Americans who work in our government form a nefarious "deep state," so the goal has to be to "put them in trauma" in order to drive them out and leave the remainder cowed and demoralized. In Vought's words, only through this kind of "aggressive use of the vast powers of the executive branch" can they "break the bureaucracy" and restore their imagined, originalist vision of the republic.

To this crew, almost no amount of demolition is too much, since their endgame is a bare bones, explicitly Christian-inspired federal government taking its direction solely from the president. So what's happening right now is "beyond their wildest dreams."

If that sounds pretty extreme, the third faction would like to say, "hold my beer." The Vought-Heritage crowd wants to retain a stripped-down version of the system. The "tech right," led by Elon Musk, wants to explode it.

Musk and his allies believe in the "Dark Enlightenment" movement (ever wonder why Musk wears those black "Dark MAGA" hats?), as espoused by blogger Curtis Yarvin. It envisions the inevitable total collapse of the existing structure of American government. Since they believe that "democracy is done," their stated aim is "acceleration": hastening the collapse so that they can get a new tech-infused hierarchy in place with one of their own at the top. They are essentially Ra's al Ghul from the Batman movies: a league of shadows that thinks the system needs to burn and wants to strike the match.

Thirteen years ago, Yarvin even laid out a strategy called RAGE (Retire All Government Employees) for how he would "reboot" the U.S. government. It is spookily close to what we see happening right now.

Three factions, three agendas, one nestled inside the next like a Russian matryoshka doll: garden-variety Trumpian power-lust and piracy, covering over a deeper plan to radically winnow down the government, covering over a still deeper fever dream of completely immolating the government.

So where will all of this end up?

For the time being, the three forces are aligned and mutually reinforcing, overlapping in the center of a MAGA Venn diagram to create a perfect storm in American government. Musk and Vought are in a quiet alliance, since they want to cover much the same initial ground: Musk does the disruption, Vought tells him where to go. Trump has been an easy mark for both of them, having totally bought the idea of a deep state arrayed against him, and especially since Musk bankrolled his 2024 campaign while his tech-right ally—and Yarvin acolyte—Peter Thiel bankrolled Vice President JD Vance's political ascent. Not to mention that Musk takes some of the political heat for Trump, Trump helps him sell cars and win contracts. That's a simple transaction that Trump can understand.

But whether the Dark MAGA alliance can continue to hold long enough and overcome enough of the remaining guardrails to do permanent damage is another story. The Trump administration is sorely testing the power of the judicial branch, but so far, the courts have mostly pushed back against the worst DOGE abuses. The recent "Signalgate" scandal seems to have shaken the media out of its torpor. The Republican-led Congress is still struggling to put together a budget that would put more of Trump's agenda in place. And individual senators—even Trump himself—may well get more skittish as the midterms approach if the recent declines in Trump's popular support continue.

Not to mention that parasitic relationships among erratic parties with a history of strife are probably not a great bet for long-term stability.

But the mere fact that people with such radical endgames have gotten this far and hold this much power should be a shattering wakeup call.

Matt Robison is a writer, podcast host, and former congressional staffer.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.