The alt-right movement’s steamy love affair with President Donald Trump is apparently on the rocks and may be beyond repair, according to a recent report by Vice News’ Tess Owens.
In her report, Owens writes that the “cadre of far-right extremists, racist trolls and white nationalists” who clung to the promises of the president’s campaign has lost interest and is fed up after his policies failed to pan out the way they hoped. In fact Trump’s soggy Fourth of July extravaganza, replete with Army tanks and militaristic fanfare, barely made a blip on the far-right’s radar.
President Donald Trump’s relationship with the alt-right movement has reportedly become frayed after the president failed to deliver on several of his campaign promises, including sweeping immigration enforcement. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
“Online forums home to the alt-right, such as 4chan and 8chan, were filled with chatter about Disney’s decision to cast a Black actress as Ariel in the upcoming live-action version of ‘The Little Mermaid,” while “discussions around ‘Salute to America’ were decidedly muted,” Owens wrote.
Citing extremism experts, she added that the far right’s dwindling interest in Trump is “partly because [the] heyday of the ‘alt-right’ as a coordinated bloc is over — and partly because they feel betrayed by Trumps, who, by operating in the political mainstream, is now tainted by the very swamp he promised to drain.”
Another reason far-right extremists have kicked Trump to the curb? The POTUS has fallen flat on many of the sweeping immigration reforms/laws he promised on the campaign trail, most notably, his vow that Mexico would foot the multibillion-dollar bill for a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico.
Just last week, a federal appeals court blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to divert $8.1 billion in military funds to “build the wall!” This was after the president failed to win funds for the wall from Congress.
“Our president squandered an enormous opportunity,” Patrick Casey, leader of the white nationalist American Identity Movement (formerly Identity Evropa), told Vice News in an interview. “Mr.Trump has, so far, failed to achieve his ‘MAGA’ agenda to any significant degree.”
In the 2024 election, Casey said he’s hoping for a “superior candidate” who shares his politics — like Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
Owens noted in her report that Casey and roughly 20 members from his organization hosted a small rally in Virginia over the weekend, but there was something much different this time.
“In the past, their members wore MAGA hats at their events,” Owens wrote. “But this time, there were no trademark red caps in sight.”
Aside from Trump’s empty promises, extremists experts said the far-right have also fallen out with the president over his pro-Israel stance and cushy relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Owens added that “many of Trump’s former fans, like Richard Spencer, now ridicule the president by tweeting his name alongside Israeli and American flag emojis,” and that “vocal anti-semites like former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke, who ‘endorsed’ Trump in 2016, has completely turned his back on the president.”
University of Alabama professor George Hawley, who has written two books on the far right, argued that the frayed love affair between white supremacists and the president is a far cry from the relationship they had when Trump was running for president.
“Trump was a candidate they were genuinely enthused about,” Hawley, an assistant political science professor, told Vice News. “They weren’t as excited about [Sen. Mitt] Romney or [Sen. John] McCain.”
“I think we’re headed to a situation much like the previous status quo, of the extreme right being more or less indifferent when it comes to their preferences of Republicans and Democrats,” he added.
