MAGA Brain Rot: What Happened to the Movement That Abandoned Its Own Principles
MAGA’s core—once pro-life, anti-government overreach, and Second Amendment-focused—now embraces bombing Gaza, $100B ICE budgets, and militarized federal agencies targeting civilians based on race or speech, mirroring Israel’s "collateral damage" logic. Trump-era attacks on press like CNN’s Caitlin Collins and ICE’s lethal operations risk civil war while framing the U.S. as a "terror regime" via sanctions and bombings against nations with untapped health and economic potential. Even GLP-1 drugs, linked to 100% higher suicide risks in women aged 50–65, face uncritical promotion, exposing deeper systemic decay. The movement’s embrace of unchecked executive power and global aggression may be rewriting America’s founding principles into authoritarianism. [Automatically generated summary]
In America, traditionally, we always like to look back at our presidents as leading the country.
And when you lead, you lead all Americans.
And so your responsibility is to improve the lot and the welfare and the happiness of all Americans, even if they're not in your party.
That's what the president traditionally is meant to do.
Not just his tribe or his people or his base.
And with Trump, he's not leading.
He's ruling.
There's a big difference.
In America, we like our presidents to lead.
But if you're in a banana republic or a third world country, you accept that you're being ruled of.
I want to segue to another segment that I'm going to call MAGA brain rot.
It seems appropriate.
We have all witnessed, those of us who still have functioning rational minds, we've all witnessed the MAGA movement utterly abandon every principle.
We've also seen many Christians in America abandon principles of Christianity.
They used to argue that every life should be saved and every baby was worth saving and oppose abortion.
But now they argue that it's perfectly okay to bomb them and kill them if they live in Gaza.
So, you know, what was pro-life has become pro-genocide.
And that's just the Christian element of it.
On top of that, the MAGA element used to argue, oh, we have to release the Epsine files unredacted.
And now they're like, no, we should move on.
There's nothing to see here.
Who cares if they raped and trafficked girls and killed them and buried their bones on famous people's golf courses or whatever.
We just have to move on from that.
And, you know, one more example.
The conservatives used to say, well, we shouldn't have government agents in the streets violating our constitutional rights.
And now they say, well, we have to.
You know, the ends justify the means.
And these masked ICE goons are shooting and killing Americans.
And they are accosting and coercing Americans who are simply observing them and saying that they don't need warrants, that there's no constitution.
They can do anything they want and kill anyone they want.
And they can put you on a secret list and you'll be designated a terrorist.
And then after they shoot you, the DOJ in the White House will say, you were a terrorist because you carried a gun.
So that the entire MAGA movement, at least whoever's still left in it, have become anti-Second Amendment and anti-First Amendment and anti-Fourth Amendment.
Okay.
I didn't see this coming.
What's your take on MAGA brain rot?
It's, you know, what this has shown us, all of these episodes, which you've very eloquently laid out there, plus a few others we might add.
But it just goes to show you that, and the president himself, how did he get elected?
He made a series of promises that seemed to be revolutionary compared to previous administrations and politics as usual in Washington.
That's where the votes came from.
All the independents mobilized and voted for Donald Trump, put him over the top, at least in 2024.
I wouldn't talk about the previous two elections, a different analysis.
But the last election, especially, he really went for the anti-war vote.
He went for the First Amendment vote.
Yeah, I forgot to mention anti-war.
Thank you.
Yeah, and the no new nation building and polar, you know, we don't want to get involved in the Middle East and so forth.
So, and also conservativism or conservative values.
It's small government.
They love to eulogize about Ronald Reagan.
And they say, oh, Reagan, this, Reagan, that.
Well, Reagan was, yes, Reagan was a small government advocate, but the federal government grew at record rates under the Reagan administration.
Separate story.
But what you're really concerned about is executive power.
And the executive power that has been concentrated from the Clinton administration through to Bush Jr., then to Obama, then to Trump 1, and then to Biden, it's just an unbelievable amount of power vested into the executive branch.
And that really throws the balance off of the U.S. system.
And this is where the rhetoric of Ronald Reagan was correct.
And, of course, Ron Paul and these types of libertarian conservatives being probably the most authentic and consistent, but this isn't very popular, this type of talk in Washington, because they are all basically rinsing it off the back of this federal gravy train, the DHS being the biggest gravy train of all, which didn't exist before 2002.
It was only because of the fear of 9-11 that they felt they needed a department of homeland.
We never used the word homeland in America before 2002 or before 9-11.
That was an anathema.
It's very close to fatherland.
It's not a very American thing.
But that came in, and that was the biggest federal department by expenditure, aside from the Pentagon.
And what is it?
What is DHS with ICE nested within it?
It's a huge contractor, subcontractor kind of array, a gravy train grift is unbelievable.
They do all the mass shooting drills in the schools and scare the hell out of all these kids and turn, you know, they're responsible for all of these different boondoggle schemes and equipment and all this.
They've militarized U.S. police.
They've changed the face of America because of this.
This is what happened when you start allowing federal budgets to just go balloon like this.
And look at ICE.
ICE's budget now is bigger than the U.S. Marine Corps.
$100 billion.
I mean, how did we get to this?
And they're better equipped than the U.S. Marine Corps in some cases, not all.
So this is allowing a federal, effectively a secret police force, masked, drawing weapons against unarmed American citizens.
And quite frankly, anybody, the way our law works in America is that if you're a citizen or not, or let's say you're on a work permit, or you're somebody who is an asylum seeker or whatever, there's due process.
That's guaranteed in our Constitution, due process.
Now, whether you want to remove them, that's the purview of the government, and they'll do that if they feel they need to.
And people will vote on that as an issue.
But when you start saying these people don't get due process, these people do.
These people are suspected, even though they're American citizens.
They don't get due process.
That's somebody who's getting in the way of a legitimate law enforcement activity of ICE in Minneapolis.
Therefore, we're going to shoot and kill them, even though they're an American citizen.
It's absolutely out of control.
Not even getting in the way of just recording, just filming from a distance is now considered an act of terrorism in America.
Yeah, and terrorism.
They're using this word.
Yes.
That's the problem when you abuse this term terrorism, because this is being used in Britain to basically outlaw people protesting Israel's genocide in Gaza.
That's right.
Protesting the U.K. government sending weapons or allowing Israeli firms based in the UK to ship weapons to Israel.
And so that protesting that is now terrorism?
And where does it end?
You know, when Antifa was totally out of control during Trump's first term and Portland was like a battle zone, I remember all that.
Okay.
Now, at that point, a lot of people were coming out, including Alex Jones and others, who were calling Antifa a terrorist organization.
I oppose that because I'm like, you've got to be careful how you apply this term terrorism because if you start using it willy-nilly against your political enemies when you're not in power, that can be used against you.
And of course, it was with January 6th and so forth.
And that was abused by the Biden administration.
And the Trump administration have taken that abuse of the term terrorism to another level.
And what it does is it means that you can suspend due process in the law and you don't have to treat people like humans if they're supposed to terrorists.
This is the Israeli policy over the entirety of Gaza and South Lebanon, is because they've said, oh, they're terrorists.
So we can do what we will, even if it means carpet bombing them.
And whatever civilians are killed, that's just unfortunate collateral damage because we need to fight this terrorism problem.
That's the problem with this type of thinking.
That's a critical point.
And also, many ICE agents are being trained by Israeli forces.
Yes.
That's well known.
So we're having the Israelification of U.S. policing.
And I tweeted out one day as all these conservatives were defending what ICE did shooting Alex Predi.
I said, gosh, wait until the MAGA people of 2026 find out what MAGA did on January 6th, 2021.
Because according to today's MAGA, all those MAGA people should have been shot dead by the Capitol Police, you know, because they were doing things way more aggressive than anything Alex Predi was doing as they were pistol whipping him in the face and screaming, you know, stop resisting.
You know, it's like it's become completely insane.
But my last question to you, which is related to this, is what's the backlash going to look like?
And let me set up a couple of things.
Not just the midterm elections, but the promise by some Democrat leaders in some of these cities to criminally investigate and prosecute every member of ICE that operated within their cities once they gained sufficient political power to do so.
And it's not hard to imagine that Trump is going to lose the House and lose the Senate in the midterm.
So what's going to happen to Trump?
Is his whole family going to jail at some point if the Democrats get back in power?
Where is this going?
That's the problem, Mike.
And this is the problem with the Trump administration.
Now, by the way, I criticized Obama heavily on this: when Obama was elected by a pretty broad majority, in fact, he kind of ran as a populist and he got a lot of support from places that Democrats hadn't got support previously.
But over time, he started only sort of leading his political party and maybe even a more kind of ideological faction within that party and then was treating everybody else pretty much like persona non grada, playing up racial divisions and so forth.
And that created a lot of division in America.
And power is also accumulated through that process.
Okay.
Biden, of course, did the same.
Trump, I think, was on his back heels during his first term most of the time anyway.
So he wasn't really able to achieve a whole lot.
But in America, traditionally, we always like to look back at our presidents as leading the country, leaders.
You lead.
And when you lead, you lead all Americans.
So your responsibility is to improve the lot and the welfare and the happiness of all Americans, even if they're not in your party.
That's what the president traditionally is meant to do, not just his tribe or his people or his base.
And with Trump, he's not leading.
He's ruling.
There's a big difference.
In America, we like our presidents to lead.
But if you're in a banana republic or a third world country, you accept that you're being ruled over.
And that this is the problem with this president.
And I really am frightened to think what comes after this, whether it's another something else cast in his mold or a more authoritarian Democrat president that will use all of these tools against their political adversaries.
And then where are we again?
We'll get another super fascist right-wing leader after that.
And the country is just the victim here is the U.S. Constitution, because that's the thing that makes the U.S. unique and different from all other countries in the world.
But this current president is laying waste to the First Amendment in a way that's just shocking and attacking universities, suing universities for having students protest a genocide in Gaza and claiming that's anti-Semitism or terrorism on U.S. campuses.
That's a direct attack on the First Amendment.
Trump himself has attacked the Second Amendment in Minneapolis and his comments afterwards.
I mean, it's unbelievable.
So, and the 10th Amendment, and that's what you're talking about, Mike, the 10th Amendment, states' rights.
You heard the mayor of Philadelphia basically saying, ICE, get the F out.
And Minnesota would be well within its rights if they had more of a ballsy mayor and governor, just basically invoke the 10th Amendment.
You have federal agencies.
You've got no jurisdiction at all.
I'm a big fan of the county sheriffs because they're elected.
And in Minneapolis, what should have happened in a constitutional state is the county sheriff comes and basically says, stands between the people and ICE with his deputies.
And he says, I have a mandate from the people of my state.
You need to leave.
You need to put your guns back in your holster and leave.
Check out of your hotel.
You can't go around terrorizing the people of our state.
I've been elected here to keep the peace in this community.
But you don't have that in some of these other states where either that or their powers or they've been reduced or neutered to such a degree.
But you couldn't get away with this attack like Trump has done with ICE.
You couldn't deploy that sort of attack in Arizona.
You couldn't.
It would just be anarchy.
And also because we have county sheriffs that are elected right across the state in Arizona, which is my home state.
But I would say the same with other parts of the country.
But re-capturing your state's rights and your local rights, I prefer to have local law enforcement that are accountable rather than 2,000 or 3,000 masked federal paramilitaries showing up who do not respect any constitutional rights at all.
You don't want them running around in your city or your state and pulling guns.
They don't have people.
They don't have police training.
They're not policing.
They are a paramilitary force that they're trigger happy and they're arrogant.
You've seen lots of videos and they, I mean, gosh, for some of them, you know, this is the Reud rage they've been waiting for their whole lives, a chance to put on a mask and go out and terrorize other people behind a badge.
And they're actually enjoying it.
And then they're killing Americans.
I'm going to say one other thing.
And this might sound controversial to some conservatives, but it's true.
Paramilitary Force Rage00:02:13
They're profiling people based on their skin color or their accent.
That's just kind of in America, that's outrageous.
You could say that's racist, of course, for a lot of these ICE agents.
And the reason is, is because they've been given license to do this, because they've been given license to basically disregard due process.
That's a problem.
That leads to anarchy.
Then what next?
An armed insurrection?
And then what do you have?
Civil war.
We have systems and people and precedents in place to prevent that from happening.
But the leadership needs to start at the top.
And it's for all Americans, not just those who support Trump.
He attacks people, media people.
I mean, I'm no fan of CNN, Mike, but the way he attacked the CNN reporter, who I can't stand, by the way, Caitlin Collins, she annoys me to no end.
But she asked him a perfectly legitimate question about justice for the victims of ICE, I believe, in Minnesota.
And he started attacking her personally and just calling her names.
He wouldn't answer the question.
And I thought, when did our president become such a loser?
Like, the behavior is just like, you know, you can't stand up.
Even if you don't like the question, he's capable of answering it.
But he just, he's attacking the press saying they're fake news and you're, you know, nobody watches your network and you never smile.
You know, you're not going to be allowed in here again.
And this is like he's he's being all those things that the radical Democrats accused him of before he was even sworn into president in his first term.
Right, right.
You know, he's become that thing.
They've created a monster.
Yeah, I said to all the Democrats listening, your problem is you called him Hitler before he acted like Hitler.
Exactly.
It's like you were premature.
But now he's got his own private, thuggish, masked police force answerable to no one that really can be characterized as execution squads.
They run around America's cities, killing whoever they want, and then the DOJ supports them and backs them up.
History Repeats00:03:54
We've seen this before in history, and it never ends well.
So, Patrick, are there any last thoughts you want to add here before we wrap this up?
No, but I'm going to tell you, it's not a popular thing to say, but people need to hear it, is that history is going to look back at this presidency, this administration, as probably the most reckless and corrupt in the history of the United States of America ever.
And that's saying something.
But the fear we have here is that we hope there's a country going forward where we can look back in history and evaluate and learn from the mistakes of this presidency.
But there's also a huge risk that if left unchecked, both at home and away, you know, I think the future of the United States as a cohesive country and also the world, you know, avoiding World War III, I think those are questions that are up in the air at the moment, just looking at the behavior at home and away of this administration.
I hope that course changes.
I really do.
Because, you know, whatever your beliefs are about, you know, who should lead the world or who should be the unipolar superpower, and many Americans believe that should be America and they should lead and be the leading edge of everything culturally, economically, and so forth.
But whatever your beliefs are, whatever you know preferences as to who is going to dominate the global order in the future, you do have to accept the fact that what good is it being on top if you've created an absolute hellscape?
Well, right.
America used to be able to argue that we held the moral high ground, that we supported human rights, that we supported freedom of speech, that we supported free trade, et cetera.
And none of those things are true any longer.
That America is the terror regime of the world and pillages, steals, bombs, assassinates, runs color revolutions, lies, does everything possible to destroy everybody else, to try to keep America as the last nation standing on its pile of soon-to-be-worthless debt.
So that's not a moral position from which you can lead any civilization, period.
No, it's not.
And America has the tools to be all those things that all those values that abuse.
It has all the tools.
It has a great constitutional republican system of government and governance and a fantastic array of independent states within a federation.
I mean, it has all the resources.
It has the human capital.
It has everything.
So, I mean, but it does have that problem, Mike, is that giant pile of worthless fiat paper that the bill is coming due now finally.
And we're starting to see the sort of tantrums, I think, of an empire.
I mean, you and others in this space have been Gerald Salente, even Alex Jones in the early days were warning that this day was going to come, that the fiat bubble would eventually rupture.
And it won't be pretty when it does.
And that day is now upon us.
But the question is, we have to decide where we want to be in the world.
I think it's a lack of imagination on the part of the great and the good in America.
They lack the imagination of seeing the future, a compelling future that can be good for themselves and also their neighbors.
That's the problem.
I would just add, I agree with what you just said.
Why We Should Eat Like Palestinians00:03:27
I would add also that, you know, we have 31 million Americans injecting themselves with GLP-1 drugs.
And then we now know that they cause 100% increase in the risk of psychiatric disorders and over that of a risk of suicidal ideation, especially among women.
And that the group that takes these the most is like 50 to 65 year old people.
And Trump is working to make them more affordable so that more people can take them so that, I don't know, maybe half of U.S. adults will be injecting themselves with a drug that's literally based on the venom peptides of the Gila monster, which is a paralyzing agent.
And then they're going to go mad.
And maybe we've just lost our minds because people decided to take all the poisons and inject all the poisons.
And I don't know.
They just lost their minds.
And, you know, Rome, right?
Lead poisoning.
You know, we've seen this before.
What's it called?
Ozempec?
Is that a GOP one?
Ozempec, yeah, that's one of them.
But I mean, there's so many people that are taking these drugs, as you said, Mike, for vanity purposes because they want a shortcut to looking healthy.
But it doesn't mean that you actually are healthy.
Right.
And again, you're avoiding the biggest issue of all is that, you know, what are we putting in our bodies?
You know, what sort of environment are we in?
How are we treating ourselves in this world?
And we have an opportunity to correct that, to improve that situation.
And many are, by the way, many are taking that opportunity today.
But at the same time, these forces of big pharma and big business are coming in with this fantastic solution here that reminds me of Operation Warp Speed.
You know, what's funny is that if the American people wanted to be healthier, they should eat like Palestinians or Lebanese or Persians because those diets actually have the most anti-cancer nutrients, the most neuroprotective nutrients.
You look at Middle Eastern cuisine or Mediterranean cuisine.
It's the healthiest in the world.
But instead of us using their recipes, we just bomb them.
It's a form of Western suicide.
It's like we could be exchanging great gifts of health and joy and economic abundance.
Instead, we're bombing and killing and maiming.
And it's just sickening, sickening to watch.
Yeah.
No, exactly.
All these countries, Mike, these people are very compatible with Americans.
I'm always surprised when I travel how compatible we are with everybody.
But the way that these countries and cultures are portrayed, Japan I'll put in that category as well because they used to be demonized back in the day by America.
That's another fantastic, healthy, natural diet that they have and lifestyle and longevity and so forth.
But, you know, all these countries, the way that we pastiche and characterize all these people, the way Marco Rubio talks about the Chinese, like that they're just hell-bent on, you know, killing all Americans or destroying us or something.
That's so far from the truth.
And the same with Arabs in the Middle East.
Why We Appreciate Chinese Culture00:04:04
That's right.
The 5,000-year-old, 6,000-year-old cultures, we have more to learn from them than they do from us, quite frankly.
America has become a culture of hate toward the rest of the world.
I mean, just flatly stated, that's truthful.
You know, the White House pushes hatred.
The media pushes hatred towards everybody else out there to justify these actions of genocide and bombing and sanctions.
And, you know, look, I speak Mandarin.
I lived in Taiwan.
I know the Chinese culture very, very well.
And they're highly compatible with Americans.
And I mean, we could go on.
I'm just underscoring your very point.
You're exactly right.
The people of the world don't want to fight with each other.
It's the governments, especially our government, run by, I think, satanic pedophiles, let's just be honest, that is really running around the world as terrorists and causing harm and destruction and suffering.
So if you want to defeat Satan, you got to dismantle this satanic system.
I mean, but the Christians don't want to do that because they are on the side of Satan if they're supporting Israel.
I mean, you know, look, I know it's not popular to say this, but this is true.
Anyway, whatever.
Before I dig a deeper hole, let me wrap this up.
I just want to thank you for joining us.
I appreciate everything that, you know, your analysis, your honesty, your courage to tell the truth is just extraordinary.
You're welcome back anytime.
Let me just give out your website again, 21stcenturywire.com.
And is there anything you want to tell people about what they can find on your site or your Sunday show, things like that?
Yeah, with Sunday Wire is our sort of main program every Sunday, which has been going for over 10 years.
I think 2013, we started as an audio podcast.
We're doing video now in recent years, but we do daily content.
We're really good investigative pieces.
I invest a lot of money in investigative journalism.
I train and I develop journalists as well.
And some of them have worked with us and gone on to win awards and things like that.
And we have a new crop of great people who are producing fantastic work for us.
I'm also very busy on the journalistic front as well.
I do a lot of interviews on other people's shows, podcasts to people that I like, and we share very similar kind of approach to geopolitics.
So, but yeah, we're having a winter fundraising drive right now.
So we're very close to meeting our target.
That helps us to fund the operation for 2026.
So if you want to subscribe or donate to us, we really appreciate it.
And we've been around since 2009.
We still got a long way to go.
Got a lot of work to do.
So yeah, please consider us.
Outstanding.
Outstanding.
Well, thank you so much, Patrick.
It's an honor to have you on.
Keep up all the great work, and I'll keep sharing your social media posts along the way.
Okay.
Thank you very much, Mike.
Appreciate it.
Thank you.
And for those watching, thank you for joining us.
Hope you found this informative and also, you know, hopefully thoughtful.
I don't say things just to trigger people.
I say things to try to get you to think about what's actually happening.
You know, step back for a moment and really think about this.
We are losing our civil liberties.
We're losing our freedoms.
We're losing the America that our founding fathers gave us.
We no longer live in that America.
We live in something that's been distorted and twisted.
And we have to work hard to try to bring it back to the original vision.
At least that's my take.
But you can watch this interview at brighteon.com and share it.
And you can post it on other channels and platforms.
And thank you so much for taking the time to share this video.
I'm Mike Adams of Brighteon.com.
Take care.
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