D.C. Insider Reveals MAGA’s Secret Despair Behind Closed Doors
“It’s clearly starting to dawn on the MAGA minions that the morning after is going to be a doozy.”
PicMonkey/ Reuters
A legend in Washington, D.C., social circles has revealed that the MAGA mood in the capital is becoming increasingly bleak.
Journalist Sally Quinn—widow of former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee, who oversaw the paper’s Watergate coverage—said the jubilant atmosphere last year that followed President Donald Trump’s victory is beginning to fade among his supporters as the administration faces mounting challenges.
“It’s clearly starting to dawn on the MAGA minions that the morning after is going to be a doozy,” Quinn, 85, wrote in a New York Times opinion piece, arguing that the “vibe” in Washington has shifted.
Sally Quinn was married to Ben Bradlee, who died in 2014.
Rose Hartman/Getty
The journalist recalled a moment last year when Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s campaign manager during his first presidential run, urged her to stop writing about the fear gripping Washington after Trump’s election victory.
“We’re having fun!” Quinn recalled Conway, 59, telling her at a private club event.
“Now they’re the ones in despair, fearful and losing hope,” Quinn wrote of Trump’s MAGA base, arguing that Republicans—from voters to lawmakers—are starting to “quiet-quit” as they grapple with the fallout from the president’s ongoing war in Iran, surging gas prices, and the collapse of a controversial $1.8 billion slush fund.
Sally Quinn has been a fixture of Washington, D.C., social circles for decades. Here, she is pictured speaking with Senator Ted Cruz in 2017.
Paul Morigi/Getty Images
The D.C. socialite recalled another event hosted last month by New York financier and Times Opinion contributor Steven Rattner and his wife, Maureen White. The couple held their annual cocktail party on a rooftop overlooking the White House, where guests had a view of the UFC fighting stage Trump built on the South Lawn to celebrate his 80th birthday.
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“The minute people looked at it, they would burst out laughing,” Quinn recalled. “It was so garish, so grotesque and so bizarre that the only proper reaction was disbelief,” she added.
Trump’s birthday fight night left a lasting mark on the White House grounds, with the 600-ton metal behemoth known as “The Claw” damaging the historically pristine South Lawn after the event.
A temporary arena known as "the claw" was built for the president's birthday.
Evelyn Hockstein/REUTERS
According to Quinn, the mood was “less jubilant” the day before the cage fights at Cafe Milano, a hot spot frequented by Washington, D.C.’s elite that has also become popular among MAGA circles.
Among the restaurant crowd, Quinn spotted Ivanka Trump, 44, and her husband, Jared Kushner, 45, alongside Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison, 43, whose company owned the station with exclusive rights to broadcast the fights.
“The mood felt off,” Quinn wrote, adding that it was “as if they knew that the U.F.C. fights were really going to be the moment when MAGA jumped the shark.”
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