2026-10-17T09:00:45.100Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/10/17/politics/maga-ever-after-donie-osullivan
编者按： 敬请收看CNN纪录片《“让美国再次伟大”之后？》，今晚美国东部时间/太平洋时间晚8点将在《安德森·库珀完整报道》栏目首播。
特朗普总统因对伊朗开战而遭到其支持者的强烈反对，这在MAGA运动十年的历史上是前所未有的。
这一事件，再加上经济状况、通货膨胀、本届政府对爱泼斯坦文件的处理方式，以及特朗普与马克·扎克伯格等科技亿万富翁的密切关系，还有他对他们兴建大型人工智能数据中心的支持，都在考验着这位总统支持者的忠诚度。
过去十年里，我大部分时间都在报道MAGA运动，而在过去一年里，我为纪录片《“让美国再次伟大”之后？》走遍了全美。该片将于今晚美国东部时间晚8点在CNN首播。
在这部纪录片中，我们采访了一些在特朗普第二任期内与总统决裂的前特朗普支持者，以及那些依然对他忠心耿耿的人。我们还探讨了共和党在面临后特朗普时代前景时的未来走向。
在过去几个月与数百名共和党人交谈后，以下是我的五点心得：
开战四周后，我参加了在达拉斯举行的保守派政治行动会议（CPAC）。正如共和党政坛的几乎所有事物一样，这个年度保守派集会在过去十年里已经彻底变成了MAGA的舞台。该活动已成为特朗普支持者的多日集会。
当时在我采访的数十人中，有一个现象值得注意：许多人毫不避讳地批评特朗普。
我遇到了40多岁的特朗普支持者，他们表示，尽管总统多年来一直承诺“不发动新战争”，但他们已经接受了对伊朗开战是必要的这一观点。他们认为，德黑兰的威胁迫在眉睫。
“不幸的是，我认为这是必要的，”一名女性说道，“他是唯一有勇气采取行动的总统。”
但对于CPAC上的年轻男性保守派来说，伊朗问题是特朗普的终极背叛。
“我很不高兴，一点都不高兴，”一名22岁的CPAC参会者说，他曾投票给特朗普，“特朗普总统竞选时承诺不发动新战争，但我觉得我们被裹挟进了一场本不该我们参与的战争。这场战争应该由以色列来打。”
特朗普此前也曾违背过竞选承诺。那么，为什么他对伊朗开战的决定会成为这么多年轻男性压垮骆驼的最后一根稻草？
年轻男性并非铁板一块。但许多支持特朗普的年轻男性所处的信息环境并非完全依附于单一政党的传统正统观念，而是由播客主和舆论塑造者主导，从乔·罗根、皮尔斯·摩根到更右翼的塔克·卡尔森和尼克·富恩特斯。
年轻保守派男性最认真地对待“不发动新战争”的口号，因为他们是最有可能被派往战场作战的人群。他们中真正的共识是，美国应该更多地帮助本国公民，而不是发动战争。他们也越来越关注美国与以色列的关系。
年长的共和党人比年轻人更有可能观看福克斯新闻，他们被告知这场战争是好事，因为以色列是美国的盟友。但罗根和卡尔森这类人对此并不认同，而且他们毫不掩饰自己的反对立场。
在极右翼阵营中，反犹主义的鼓点为这场辩论注入了诸多戾气。
过去三次总统选举中投票给特朗普的年轻男性中，有许多是过去十年年满18岁的首次选民。他们是通过罗根和保守派活动家查理·柯克等人的宣传才支持特朗普的。
但和罗根一样——罗根在2016年曾支持参议员伯尼·桑德斯，之后右转支持特朗普——这些男性未来的投票倾向仍未确定，因为他们正在处理自己感受到的背叛感。
“这真的让我很生气，”德尔西亚·贝尔对我说，“如果你来自阿巴拉契亚，你就总是被认为落后又贫穷。”
贝尔是在回应特朗普最近的言论，即反对兴建人工智能数据中心的社区想要“落后又贫穷”。
54岁的德尔西亚和82岁的母亲艾达，当时正坐在肯塔基州梅森县自家农场的家里。梅森县是典型的深红选区，特朗普在2024年该县的得票率为71%，德尔西亚和艾达已经三次投票给特朗普。
这对母女因拒绝一家科技公司提出的在她们和邻居的农田上兴建巨型数据中心的约2600万美元补偿而登上了全球媒体头条。
随着硅谷竞相为日益主导我们生活的高数据需求人工智能系统建设算力，这场斗争正在全美各地上演。
特朗普曾两次当选总统，部分原因是他利用了普通美国人的不满情绪，但在这个问题上，他似乎与自己的支持者格格不入。
MAGA运动的元老史蒂夫·班农上周在接受JD·万斯采访时最简洁地表达了这种挫败感，他要求这位副总统采取行动对抗其科技“寡头金主”。
从高速公路、发电厂到监狱，“邻避效应”并非新鲜事。但对于德尔西亚和艾达来说，她们反对在自家后院兴建数据中心的斗争已经不仅仅是一场公共工程项目的争议。
她们将其视为一场反对1%顶层精英的斗争，这些科技亿万富翁曾在特朗普的第二任就职典礼上支持他，如今还经常在椭圆形办公室与他会面。
在她们敬畏上帝的圣经地带家中，这场斗争也带上了精神层面的意义：对抗一种新的、不可预测的智能形式，就连建造它的人都不知道它未来会带来什么。
“那是反人类的，人工智能就是这样，”德尔西亚说，“它没有道德，也无法遵循上帝的标准。”
我对她们说，母女二人对抗一家数十亿美元的科技公司，听起来就像大卫对抗歌利亚。
“但我要提醒你，”德尔西亚回应道，“只需要一块石头就能击倒非利士人。只要位置正确，一块小小的石头就能击倒这个星球上任何巨人。”
令副总统JD·万斯遗憾的是，在过去六个月我采访的数百名MAGA支持者中，以及那些被直接问及2028年共和党总统候选人的数十人中，没有一个人对他表现出多大热情。
我听到最多的名字是马尔科·卢比奥——他身兼数职，包括负责国务院工作以及担任国家安全顾问。人们似乎认为，这位来自佛罗里达州的前参议员脚踏实地，能把工作做好。
人们对万斯缺乏热情似乎与他关联伊朗战争有关。
当我问及为何身为美国外交政策核心人物的卢比奥似乎没有因这场战争而受到同样严厉的指责时，得到的回应通常是耸耸肩。
在特朗普的民调支持率低迷，以及他和共和党在中期选举前面临所有挑战的情况下，人们很容易忘记仍有数百万美国人依然对总统极为忠诚。
以科罗拉多州大章克申的特朗普支持者乔·布莱克为例，我三年前在内华达州的一场特朗普集会上首次结识了他。
乔在2024年大选前告诉我，他希望特朗普重回白宫，以降低汽油价格并结束外国战争。
几周前我拜访乔时，他承认汽油价格高企令人头疼，但他确信总统对伊朗开战是正确的决定。
“没人喜欢战争，”布莱克说，“但任何了解伊朗政权的人都知道，47年来他们一直是四处欺凌、炸伤无辜的坏人。”
即使在人工智能等某些领域批评特朗普的人，也在其他方面支持他。肯塔基州的德尔西亚和艾达也认同特朗普在伊朗问题上的决定是正确的。
“美国一直心怀善意，”艾达在谈到美国在中东的外交政策时说，“我们帮助了所有这些国家。”但“他们却一次次高呼‘去死吧美国！去死吧美国！’”
“好吧，”她说，“是时候让‘去死吧美国’这种言论就此打住了。”
2024年，许多特朗普支持者将前总统乔·拜登治下的经济状况以及乌克兰和加沙的战争作为美国衰落、世界陷入混乱的证据。
如今他们面临着比两年前更高的汽油价格、比拜登离任时更高的通货膨胀，以及一场新的伊朗战争。
但像乔·布莱克这样的支持者表示，特朗普治下发生的任何事情都比另一种选择要好。
“请你想象一下，如果卡玛拉·哈里斯当选，我们现在会生活在一个什么样的世界里，”布莱克说，“想象一下这个世界现在会变成什么样的地狱。”
巴拉克·奥巴马离开白宫已经近十年了，但近几个月来，我在竞选活动中越来越频繁地听到他的名字。
当被问及特朗普对伊朗开战一事时，乔·布莱克迅速转移了话题：“奥巴马才是用无人机杀人的国王，”他说。
越是难以将特朗普治下的美国与拜登治下的美国进行有利对比，我就越有可能听到奥巴马的名字。
特朗普的忠实支持者表示，不爱美国的是奥巴马——而不是那位最近暗示他会允许对手轰炸洛杉矶和圣地亚哥的总统。
特朗普的忠实支持者表示，一直在欺骗美国民众的是奥巴马——而不是那位靠加密货币赚了数十亿美元的总统。
奥巴马式的“那又如何”式辩解很少能经受住严肃的审视。但这个名字对许多MAGA支持者所唤起的情感和记忆，无论真实与否，都显得非常真切。在他们看来，奥巴马的当选是美国真正的原罪。
I’ve spent most of the year talking to MAGA supporters. Here are 5 things I’ve learned
2026-10-17T09:00:45.100Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/10/17/politics/maga-ever-after-donie-osullivan
EDITOR’S NOTE: Watch the CNN documentary, “MAGA Ever After?”, premiering tonight at 8 p.m. ET/PT on “The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper.”
The backlash President Trump has received from his base over going to war with Iran is unprecedented in the 10-year history of the MAGA movement.
This, along with the economy, inflation, his administration’s handling of the Epstein files, and Trump’s closeness to tech billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg and support for their building of massive AI data centers, is testing the loyalty of the president’s base.
I’ve spent much of the last decade covering the MAGA movement and most of the last year traveling the country for the documentary, “MAGA Ever After?” which premieres tonight at 8 p.m. ET on CNN.
In the doc we meet some former Trump faithful who have broken with the president in his second term, along with those who remain as loyal to him as ever. We also ask what’s next for the Republican Party as it comes to terms with the prospect of a post-Trump future.
After speaking to hundreds of Republicans over the last few months, here are five of my takeaways:
Four weeks into the war, I went to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas. Like just about everything in Republican politics, the annual gathering of the conservative faithful has transformed over the last decade into MAGA’s image. The event has become a multi-day rally of the Trump base.
It was notable then, among the dozens of people I spoke to, how vocal many were in their criticism of Trump.
I met Trump supporters over 40 who said they’d come to accept the belief that despite the president’s years-long “no new wars” pledge, bombing Iran was needed. The threat from Tehran was imminent, they believed.
“Unfortunately, I think it’s necessary,” one woman said. “He’s the only president that had the backbone to take it on.”
But for the younger male conservatives at CPAC, Iran was Trump’s ultimate betrayal.
“I’m not happy. I’m not happy at all,” said a 22-year-old CPAC attendee who had voted for Trump. “President Trump ran on no new wars, and I feel like we’ve been co-opted into a war that shouldn’t be ours. It should be Israel’s.”
Trump has broken campaign promises before. So why was his decision to go to war with Iran the final straw for so many young men?
Young men are not a monolith. But many of those young men who support Trump live in an information environment — not permanently moored to conventional orthodoxy of a single party — dominated by podcasters and opinion-shapers ranging from Joe Rogan and Piers Morgan to more right-wing voices like Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes.
Young conservative men took the “no new wars” mantra most seriously because they are among the people most likely to be sent to fight. There’s a genuine sense among them that the US should be doing more to help Americans than to fight wars. They’re also increasingly focused on America’s relationship with Israel.
While older Republicans — more likely to watch Fox News than younger ones — are told the war is a good thing because Israel is America’s ally, the Rogans and Tuckers of the world disagree. And they are not afraid to make that known.
On the far-right end of the spectrum, a drumbeat of antisemitism animates much of this debate.
Many of the young men who voted for Trump over the last three presidential elections were first-time voters who turned 18 over the last decade. They were sold on Trump by the likes of Rogan and conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
But like Rogan, who was a supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders in 2016 before moving rightward to Trump, these men’s future votes are up for grabs as they process the betrayal they feel.
“That sort of pisses me off,” Delsia Bare told me. “When you’re from Appalachia, you’ve always been backward and poor.”
Bare was reacting to Trump’s recent comment that communities that oppose the building of artificial intelligence data centers want to be “backward and poor.”
Delsia, 54, was sitting with her mother, Ida, 82, at home on their family farm in Mason County, Kentucky. Mason is deep red; Trump won 71% of the vote in the county in 2024, and Delsia and Ida have voted for him three times.
The mother and daughter made headlines around the world for turning down a reported $26 million from a big-tech company seeking to build a gigantic data center on their and their neighbors’ farmland.
It’s a fight that is happening across the country as Silicon Valley rushes to build capacity for the data-hungry AI systems increasingly playing dominant roles in our lives.
Trump, who was elected twice in part by tapping into the grievances of regular Americans, seems out of step with his base on this issue.
Steve Bannon, dean of the MAGA movement, expressed the frustration most succinctly in an interview with JD Vance last week when he demanded the vice president take action against his big-tech “oligarch sponsors.”
From freeways to power plants to prisons, the not-in-my-backyard phenomena is not new. But for Delsia and Ida, their fight against the proposed datacenter in their backyard has come to represent more than another public works project.
They see it as a fight against the 0.1%, the tech billionaires who stood behind Trump at his second inauguration and now regularly meet with him in the Oval Office.
And in their God-fearing, Bible Belt home it has also come to represent something spiritual: a fight against a new form of intelligence so unpredictable that even the people who are building it don’t know what it might do next.
“That’s anti-human, that’s what AI is,” Delsia said. “It doesn’t have any morals and it can’t be held to God’s standards.”
A mom and daughter up against a multibillion-dollar tech company? This sounds like David and Goliath, I suggested.
“But I’ll remind you,” Delsia responded, “it only took one stone to bring down a Philistine. One itty bitty little stone in the right place can bring down any giant that there is on this planet.”
Sadly for Vice President JD Vance, of the couple of hundred of members of the MAGA base I spoke with over the last six months, and the dozens I asked directly about potential Republican presidential candidates in 2028, none mentioned him with any great enthusiasm.
The name I heard most frequently was Marco Rubio — who wears several hats, including running the State Department as well as being the national security advisor. There seems to be a sense that the former senator from Florida has his head down and gets the work done.
The lack of enthusiasm for Vance seems due to his association with the Iran war.
When I’ve asked why Rubio, whose is at the heart of U.S. foreign policy, doesn’t seem tarnished as harshly by the war, the response is usually a shrug.
Amid Trump’s low poll numbers and all the challenges facing him and the Republican Party going into the midterms, it’s easy to forget that there are still millions of Americans who remain extremely loyal to the president.
Take Joe Black, a Trump supporter from Grand Junction, Colorado, who I first met three years ago at a Trump rally in Nevada.
Joe told me ahead of the 2024 election that he wanted Trump back in the White House to bring down gas prices and to end foreign wars.
When I visited Joe a few weeks ago, he acknowledged that the cost of gas was tough, but he was convinced that the president was right to go to war with Iran.
“Nobody likes war,” Black told me. “But anybody who knows this Iranian regime, like for the last 47 years they’ve just been bad guys going around bullying, blowing people up.”
Even those critical of Trump in some areas, like AI, support him in others. Delsia and Ida in Kentucky also agreed that Trump made the right call in Iran.
“The United States was good-hearted,” Ida said of American foreign policy in the Middle East. “We’ve taken care of all these nations.” But “time after time they still chant, ‘Death to America. Death to America!’”
“Well,” she said, “it’s time we put a stop to death to America.”
In 2024, many Trump supporters pointed to the state of former President Joe Biden’s economy and wars in Ukraine and Gaza as evidence of an America in decline and a world in disarray.
They now confront gas prices that are higher than they were two years ago, inflation that is higher than it was when Biden left office, and a new war in Iran.
But supporters like Joe Black say whatever is happening under Trump is better than the alternative.
“Just use your imagination for a second and imagine the world that we’d be living in right now if Kamala Harris got in,” Black said. “Just think of what kind of a hellhole world this would be right now.”
Barack Obama may have left the White House almost a decade ago, but I have heard his name on the campaign trail with increasing frequency in recent months.
Asked about Trump’s war with Iran, Joe Black quickly pivoted: “Obama was the king of killing people with drones,” he said.
The more difficult it gets to compare Trump’s America favorably to Biden’s, the more likely it is I will hear the name Obama.
Trump loyalists say it’s Obama who didn’t love America — not the president who recently suggested he’d allow Los Angeles and San Diego be bombed by an adversary.
Trump loyalists say it’s Obama who was pulling a fast one on the American people — not the president who is making billions of dollars in crypto.
Obama whataboutisms rarely survive serious scrutiny. But the feelings and the memories, real or imagined, his name invokes for many in the MAGA base feel very real. His election, to them, is America’s true original sin.