We got some unexpectedly great economic news this morning: Inflation-adjusted GDP grew at a 4.3 percent annualized rate in the third quarter of this year, a much stronger than expected number. (The release of the numbers, like so much economic data recently, was delayed by the government shutdown earlier this year.) This apparent strong growth stands in odd contrast to other, murkier economic indicators we’ve gotten recently, most notably a rise in the unemployment rate. But as they teach in business school: Growing is better than shrinking!

A little bookkeeping: No Morning Shots tomorrow or Thursday. A very merry Christmas to all who celebrate. Happy Tuesday.

MAGA Is Becoming a Leaderless Cult

by Andrew Egger

In recent weeks, right-wing infotainers have spent more and more of their time fighting over an existential question: Are neo-Nazis and hardcore antisemitic conspiracy theorists welcome in the MAGA movement? This weekend, Vice President JD Vance weighed in twice on the matter—once in each direction.

On Sunday, Vance spoke at Turning Point USA’s annual conference, AmericaFest, where he scolded attendees to set aside what divides them to focus on fighting the left. “When I say that I’m going to fight alongside of you, I mean all of you. Each and every one,” he told the crowd. “President Trump did not build the greatest coalition in politics by running his supporters through endless self-defeating purity tests.”¹

And yet there remain some purity tests Vance seems at least half-heartedly willing to enforce. In an interview with UnHerd released yesterday, Vance finally took aim at one of the leading lights of the right’s burgeoning neo-Nazi faction. “Anyone who attacks my wife, whether their name is Jen Psaki or Nick Fuentes, can eat shit. That’s my official policy as vice president of the United States. . . . Antisemitism and all forms of ethnic hatred have no place in the conservative movement.”

There’s a lot to unpack in Vance’s position, which seems facially unsustainable and self-defeating.² If there’s no place on the right for neo-Nazis, but the neo-Nazis are unwilling to self-deport from the coalition, then the only way to get them out is for the rest of the coalition to enforce a no-Nazis standard—exactly the sort of “self-defeating purity test” Vance loves to denounce. (It’s also worth noting that Vance isn’t exactly walking the walk here: The White House still employs Paul Ingrassia, a raging bigot with a self-described “Nazi streak.”)

But the most salient fact about Vance’s stance isn’t that it’s nonsensical. It’s that nobody he’s talking to is paying it much attention. As our colleague Will Sommer reports, other MAGA personalities spent their stage time at AmericaFest escalating the fight rather than making nice. Ben Shapiro fiercely denounced the right’s open antisemites and looniest conspiracy cranks, from Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson to Candace Owens and Megyn Kelly. And the woolier faction punched back: Shapiro is “like a cancer” on the movement,” Steve Bannon told the AmericaFest crowd, “and that cancer spreads.”

It doesn’t matter how many times Vance and Co. issue mealy-mouthed calls for “unity” against the left. The differences they’re trying to paper over are foundational and ever-present. How are right-wing Jews supposed to share a coalition with people who feel that every political problem can ultimately be traced back to Jewish treachery?

There’s one more striking thing to note here. While the various combatants in this MAGA civil war seem happy to ignore JD Vance’s exhortations, there’s someone else who you could imagine them paying a bit more attention to. But Donald Trump has shown himself completely incurious about the fight for the soul of the movement he built.

Last month, Trump was asked to weigh in after Carlson’s softball interview of Fuentes—one of the sparks that helped ignite the current flame. But Trump, as usual, seemed incapable of approaching the question except through the usual lens of his own vanity: “Well, I found him to be good,” Trump said of Carlson. “I mean, he said good things about me over the years. . . . I did an interview with him, we were at 300 million hits.”

The president’s monomania has helped give him unprecedented control over the present state of his party. Over the last decade, it gradually dawned on Republicans that there were no circumstances in which Trump would tolerate dissent, precisely because there was no standard for Republican policy or practice he cared about beyond “are they with Trump or not?” Quickly or gradually, they all either left or fell in line.

But that monomania is a double-edged sword. The exact traits that have given Trump such historic control over the movement’s present are also now leaving Trump superfluous to the movement’s future. He can’t weigh in on questions about what comes after him because it’s not clear he’s even capable of grasping the concept of an “after.” “MAGA was my idea,” Trump said last month. “MAGA was nobody else’s idea.” And what it may turn into later doesn’t seem to be any of his concern.