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Explaining the Right is a weekly series that looks at what the right wing is currently obsessing over, how it influences politics—and why you need to know.
Republicans started 2025 with the wind at their backs, following Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential race and bolstered by Republican majorities in the House and Senate.
But by the end of the year, the party finds itself in retreat.
Trump is increasingly unpopular and isolated, presiding over a slowing economy that has led multiple Republicans to flee for the exit—rather than face life in the minority during a lame duck presidency.
The point of Explaining the Right is discussing how the right arrives at their positions, but as 2026 begins, what needs to be explained is how the right blew 2025.
Bluesky bump
Almost immediately following the election, it became clear to many on the left that billionaire Elon Musk had put his thumb on the scale for Trump in multiple ways. When he wasn’t spending millions to elect Trump—and possibly breaking the law in the process—Musk was utilizing his ownership of X, formerly Twitter, to amplify his own content and right-wing narratives (including racism and antisemitism). As 2024 ended and Trump’s return to the presidency loomed, there was an exodus.
Related | Explaining the Right: Why they hate liberals fleeing to Bluesky
Bluesky benefited the most of all the rival social media services, and while conservatives initially cheered that they had inherited what remained of Twitter, they soon began to realize social media is a lot less fun without liberals to bully. Since then conservatives have begun to make tentative steps onto Bluesky, but their abuse and trolling is not allowed to be as toxic as it is on X.
War on diversity
Immediately after he was sworn in, Trump began to make good on his promises to attack diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Conservatives have opposed diversity on the basis of race, gender, and sexual orientation for decades, and under Trump, they have tried to enshrine their bigotry within the American government. Programs focused on diversifying those who work for the government came under attack, even if data shows such diversity to be a boon to public safety—either via services like air traffic control or the military.
Drowning government
Elon Musk’s devotion to Trump led to the creation of Musk’s infamous Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Early in the year, Musk and a group of devotees were given free rein to pillage and destroy programs across the federal government. DOGE undermined multiple agencies and initiatives under the guise of cutting wasteful spending, but while the project succeeded at disastrous actions like cutting USAID and triggering starvation and the spread of disease, the amount of government cuts was far less than the “trillions” Musk and Trump touted.
Vengeance and faux masculinity
Trump also fulfilled a campaign promise of vengeance against detractors and his perceived political enemies, particularly in the media. He used his position to push phony claims that CBS News had altered video of former Vice President Kamala Harris, and instead of standing up to Trump and defending their journalism, CBS ultimately capitulated and installed a pro-Trump figure, Bari Weiss, to run its news operation.
The bullying of the media has been echoed in the leadership style of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon. A longtime advocate of faux masculinity during his time at Fox News, Hegseth spent the year constantly arguing that the military must adopt a “warrior” mentality.
The real-world manifestation of the new tough-guy regime? Embarrassing national security leaks on group chat. Purging capable transgender military members. And joking about likely war crimes in the form of bombing fishing boats.
Advocating for (alleged) sexual assault, promoting conspiracies
Many accounts of the 2024 election have credited the world of right-wing chauvinist podcasting for giving a boost to Trump’s campaign. In office, Trump—a serial sexual assailant himself—used the power of the presidency to pressure Romania’s government to go easy on Andew Tate and his brother. The Tates have been accused of rape and sexual assault and were welcomed to the U.S. by the world of pro-Trump content creators.
Even though he is the highest-ranking U.S. official, Trump returned to his safe space of advocating for conspiracy theories in the early days of his second term. Trump, accompanied by Musk, began circulating absurd conspiracies that the gold in Fort Knox had been removed under former President Joe Biden. Of course, the story wasn’t true—but that has never been an obstacle for the right before.
Fashion policing as the world burns
Trump repeatedly argued that the Russian invasion of Ukraine would have never happened on his watch and that he would solve it on his first day in office. Instead, when Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the White House, he came under attack in an Oval Office ambush. The right-wing media, given new positions of authority under Trump, used the opportunity to complain about Zelenskyy’s choice of clothing, insisting that he wear a proper suit before seeking Trump’s help in protecting his people from brutal Russian assault.
When he was busy not solving the Ukraine-Russia crisis, Trump was deeply involved in screwing up international trade. Dissatisfied with the economic recovery Biden had achieved after stimulating the weak Trump economy he inherited, Trump went wild with tariffs.
His mostly one-sided trade war has now hurt the domestic economy, leading to layoffs, a worsening job market, and increased costs for families.
Racism, killing Big Bird, and torture
The administration wasn’t just happy to attack diversity programs but instead gave a federal boost to the practitioners of slavery. Part of reversing course from Biden meant that Trump rolled back the name changes affixed to military bases, erasing names put in place to honor diverse American servicemembers, and instead restored base names meant to hail those who fought in favor of human bondage in the pro-slavery Confederacy.
Public media has been a reliable source of historical information for millions of Americans, so it was in line with Trump’s pro-Confederacy actions when he and congressional Republicans acted to defund public television and radio. Like other Republicans before him (most recently former President George W. Bush), Trump painted a target on Big Bird and tried to kill him and other programming of a similar nature.
Torture, another Bush initiative, was back on the menu as the Trump administration celebrated sending deported people to facilities like CECOT prison in El Salvador. A few years ago the U.S. was condemning human rights abuses, but now figures like Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posed for pictures using human suffering as a ghoulish backdrop.
When it gets bad, blame the ‘Deep State’
The worm began to seriously turn by mid-year, and as figures like Hegseth were swept up in scandal and bad headlines, the right turned to a reliable boogeyman. Once again, the shadowy “deep state” was invoked as the puppet masters behind Republican failure. The administration, reflecting Trump, simply cannot admit when it screwed up. Everything that goes wrong is the fault of the “deep state,” mirroring the right’s decades of obsession with conspiracy.
Screw up the economy, attack everyone (and be racist)
Surprising no one who follows presidential politics, the economy soured under Trump. His performance has echoed other Republican presidents like Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Trump during his first term. The rhetoric may change, but the underlying conservative ideology valuing the ultra-wealthy over the middle class continues to have a terrible batting average.
Instead of addressing his failings, Trump continued to bully colleges and universities (with far too many caving in to his demands). The Trump team threw red meat to their bigoted conservative base by attacking “woke”—aka tolerance and equality. And for good measure, the administration and figures like Musk used their new prominence to push racist mythology like “white genocide,” not only as rhetoric but as official policy used to restrict nonwhite migration.
American cities were also targeted with federal force, part of the conservative tradition of demonizing regions of the country with large nonwhite populations. Brown people were also the target of Trump-ordered bombings, based on extremely specious logic that echoed the Republican-led war in Iraq.
It’s always the fault of the press
The mainstream media has bent over backwards for Trump, even paying him off for legally dubious court cases. It didn’t stop his abuse. Trump and other Republicans went after the press for not operating as cheerleaders for his policies and rhetoric. This was the latest salvo in the conservative propaganda campaign against the free press. They don’t want journalism; they want a media world that looks like Fox News everywhere.
The Epstein moment
Conservatives have a long and sordid history with pedophilia. From former Speaker Dennis Hastert, who was an admitted pedophile, to Trump and his skin-crawling habit of sexualizing his underage daughter. Despite this, the party tried to smear Democrats on the issue.
This seriously unraveled as Trump and his team, led by Attorney General Pam Bondi, worked to cover up the investigation into sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein after promising that it would expose the powerful. The result? Defections and rebuke, leading to a bipartisan congressional vote to release Epstein data.
Fear and the police state
When they weren’t aiding sex criminals, key administration figures like Stephen Miller were admitting that they walk in near-constant fear. Miller argued that fear of immigration, crime, and other purported threats meant that Trump was justified in using federal officers against cities.
This led to police-state style action, with federal law enforcement usurping local control. This was the exact scenario conservatives have spent decades arguing would occur under Democratic presidents.
The fascist tendencies exploded at the national level after the weaponized FCC was used in an abortive attempt to silence comedian Jimmy Kimmel. The backlash was fierce and swift, but the naked attempt to silence dissent was exposed for all to see.
Always Fox, always demonizing
Meanwhile, Trump has continued to use Fox News not just to hire his key officials (leading to mistake after mistake), but as a source of policy decisions. The surest way to get Trump on board with an idea is to feature it in heavy rotation on the network.
Fox is a useful venue for the right to use in demonizing its ideological enemies. The network, working in concert with Republican officials, insists that left-wing detractors are terrorists—and they all echo each other, attempting to turn spin into reality.
No compassion, full speed ahead
Republicans also stuck to their guns on their pet issues, using the Trump presidency to attack health care funding. More than a decade ago, the right tried to kill Obamacare. And even as the public has aligned with the Democratic health care policy more and more, the GOP keeps trying to undermine it.
Trump even tried to deprive poor people of food, attacking funding for the federal SNAP program as his administration was under fire for health care cuts.
We got here
Being so out of touch and expressly ideological hasn’t happened in a vacuum. Republicans lost key races in Virginia and New Jersey, and performed poorly elsewhere as financial conditions worsened and Democrats argued for affordability.
The Republican response? Lie about it, and lie about it badly. Republicans have never cared about affordability, and that isn’t going to change overnight.
The GOP will have to navigate 2026 without the already intense backlash reaching a fever pitch.
The simple explanation: It doesn’t look good at all.
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Oliver Willis
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