Nick Fuentes speaks at the America First Political Action Conference 4 outside of Huntington Place in Detroit, Michigan, on Saturday, June 15, 2024Dominic Gwinn/ Zuma
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In the lead-up to Election Day, white nationalist troll Nick Fuentes had simple instructions for his followers, known as “groypers”: “Stay home or vote Democrat.” And as the election results began to roll in last night, he tweeted, simply, “I love winning.”
For much of Trump’s second term far-right figures like Fuentes, who once doggedly supported Trump, have bitterly denounced him, citing his invasion of Iran and support for Israel. (Fuentes has also complained that the president is, as he has put it, “Not Hitler.”) And last night’s election results proved a vindication for the extremist figures who have broken with Trump. “They hate the Groypers because they were right,” tweeted Christian nationalist pastor Joel Webbon, part of the TheoBros network of far-right Christian millennial influencers. “Thanks, @NickJFuentes.”
In his tweet, Webbon also shared a video of himself outlining the Trump administration’s failures as he saw them, and their failure to listen to their far-right, isolationist, anti-immigration base.
“We begged, ‘Please pull out of the war in Iran. Please release the Epstein files,’” Webbon fumed in the video. “Please don’t ruin the economy. Please build a wall. Please give us mass deportations. Please stop blundering a historic coalition from 2024 that won not only the electoral but the popular vote in a landslide.”
On his show, meanwhile, conspiracy theory kingpin Alex Jones took it even further, calling Trump “a literal sack of garbage,” adding, “I mean, does Donald Trump not know with his egomania that he’s the most reviled person in the world right now?”
As Democratic wins rolled in, a grim sort of celebration took hold among prominent far-right figures who’d once supported Trump, and who reveled in being right. “Let the finger pointing commence,” tweeted Mike Cernovich, a far-right MAGA figure and early Pizzagate promoter who had close ties with the first Trump administration. Cernovich has become increasingly furious with the president over issues like the war in Iran, and had warned for months that it could be politically costly.
“Call me crazy (I am),” he tweeted last night. “But maybe the people who delivered 2016 and 2024 knew that the Iran war was going to cost us the midterms.”
Meanwhile, MAGA figures still loyal to the president were struggling to come up with a coherent narrative for why such a sweeping MAGA and GOP loss happened. “Larry Kudlow is correct,” tweeted former Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem, citing a Fox News analyst. “We were too successful the first year of the Trump administration.”
Earlier on voting day, there were signs that some of them might try to blame voter fraud; Katie Miller, Stephen Miller’s wife, shared a tweet about apparently broken voting machines in Westchester County, adding, “This is how the Left steals elections. Mike Lawler’s competitive district, and they are turning away voters.”
But a widespread voter fraud narrative simply failed to take hold on the right, in large part because Trump himself didn’t push one. Instead, the president spent much of the night on Truth Social, complaining about Fox News’ coverage of him. And he, too, made it clear that he’d be looking anywhere but at himself to explain last night’s staggering defeat. “Fox News bears responsibility for these losses by constantly and consistently putting on the Dumocrat opposition, and worse,” he posted.
