Summary of Finish What We Started by Isaac Arnsdorf: The MAGA Movement's Ground War to End Democracy

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The MAGA movement, inspired by Donald Trump's election lies, radicalized the Republican Party after January 6, 2021. Inspired by the insurrection, grassroots activists mobilized to dismantle democracy. However, their success drove away moderates and provided Democrats with a winning message in the 2022 midterms. The MAGA Republicans remained uninterested in learning from this defeat, becoming more extreme and divisive. Washington Post national political reporter Isaac Arnsdorf provides a defining journalistic account of the MAGA movement, combining critical reporting with the intimacy of a novel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: XinXii
• Release date: Apr 17, 2024
• ISBN: 9783989837744

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NOTE

This book is based on hundreds of hours of interviews and travel across the country over three years, as part of the author's work for ProPublica, This American Life, and the Washington Post. The author aims to provide a journalistic account of the rise of the MAGA movement, focusing on its leader, origin, and future impact on American politics. The author uses first names for everyday people, representing thousands of people with unique stories, and acknowledges the contributions of those who shared their time and worlds with them.

PROLOGUE

The MAGA King in Exile

The Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida, modeled after the Palace of Versailles in France, was added in 2005 by reality TV star Donald Trump. The club symbolized the Court of Donald Trump, self-described MAGA King, and was where Air Force One deposited Trump for the last time after refusing to accept his defeat in the 2020 election. It became a pilgrimage site for leaders and candidates seeking Trump's approval, with Kevin McCarthy, Rick Scott, Elise Stefanik, and Senate hopefuls passing through for fundraisers or taking a photo with the king giving them a thumbs-up.

On the night of the 2022 midterm elections, the ballroom was set up with gold chairs, brocade tablecloths, silver chafing dishes, and flatscreen TVs to play live coverage of the election results. However, Donald Trump refused to evacuate or cancel his election watch party, as the hurricane was in a mandatory evacuation zone. This election was the critical test of a consolidated MAGA slate, and Trump had more on the line than partisan pride. He wanted to put Republicans in office who would use their power to clear his path back to the White House in 2024.

Assured of his impending triumph, Trump could barely wait to seize on this momentum by declaring his candidacy for president. He came close to blurting it out at a rally in Ohio, setting off a scramble among his advisers and other Republican leaders to talk him out of it. Instead, he settled on announcing in another week and rattled off poll results showing him ahead of potential rivals for the Republican nomination and against the incumbent president.

On election night, Trump's appearance at the Mar-a-Lago ballroom was not a setback but rather a sign of the closeness the US has come to being taken over by a radical far-right mass movement. The movement, now known as MAGA, originated in 1940 among isolationists during World War II and is loosely defined by nationalism, traditional social values, opposition to liberalism, and a tendency toward paranoia and conspiratorial thinking. This ideology remained on the fringe of American politics, unpersuasive to most Americans and systematically frozen out by the two major parties.

Trump never missed an opportunity to use his presidential megaphone to elevate these views, from defending white nationalist marchers in Charlottesville to railing against deep state enemies. He both welcomed more people from the radical fringe into the Republican fold and mainstreamed their views to steadily radicalize the existing rank and file. In his final year in office, two genuine crises collided to radicalize millions more Republicans with astonishing speed. First, the pandemic upended all semblance of normalcy, injected politics into daily life, and fueled a spasm of conspiracy theories that presented attractive alternatives to experts asking for major sacrifices. Second, massive street demonstrations responding to the murder of George Floyd created an atmosphere of social upheaval, racial unrest, and rampant lawlessness and destruction. Trump's campaign messaging rolled it all up—the China virus and the thugs—into a vast voter-fraud conspiracy arrayed against him and his supporters. The essence of the stolen-election myth was the latest expression of insisting America must tilt right, that, as Trump would repeat at his rallies, this nation does not belong to them, this nation belongs to you.

The MAGA movement, a political movement that emerged after Trump's 2020 election defeat, focuses on the uncooperative members of his own party. The movement, which began with the January 6 insurrection, was largely driven by weak Republicans who were narrowly thwarted at every step by Trump. This led to the formation of the Precinct Strategy, which forced out Republicans who were not entirely faithful to Trump and his election denial.

However, this strategy's success quickly became its own undoing. The MAGA movement controlled one of the two major parties but remained unpopular with a majority of Americans, leading to its rejection at the 2022 midterms. Democrats exploited Trump's MAGA brand to portray Republican candidates as extreme and dangerous, alienating swing voters and some Republicans.

Despite criticism from prominent Republicans, almost two-thirds of Republican midterm voters identified themselves with the MAGA movement. The party organization was now firmly in control of election deniers, and the fully empowered MAGA movement would not give up. The movement resolved to try again in the 2024 presidential election.

The Republicans' face-plant in the midterms and refusal to change course in their aftermath do not mean they cannot win this November. In a polarized, evenly divided country, either party always has a real chance of winning. Trump and his supporters are locked in a feedback loop, pushing each other to become more extreme. They are growing more disconnected from the rest of the country, hostile to reconciliation, and mistrustful of institutions.

The book tells the story of ordinary Americans whose small, daily decisions add up to changing history in unpredictable and unexpected ways.

True Believers

In February 2021, Steve Bannon, a former White House strategist and podcast host, was about to take to the airwaves in his basement townhouse, which had been the headquarters of Breitbart News, the rising voice of reactionary right-wing nationalism. The basement was decorated as if for a state visit, with yellow brocade curtains, crystal chandeliers, filigree mirrors, and white stars dotting