Former President Trump is winning the 2024 election, according to the polls, but the MAGA movement that claims to support him is threatening to drag him down.

“To state the obvious,” writes Neal Urwitz at the National Interest, “Alex Jones, Catturd, and DC Draino are not good faces for the GOP.” This funny observation is not so funny when you consider that Alex Jones and “DC Draino” have been featured on a “conservative” MAGA channel called “Real America’s Voice” and hosted by Stephen K. Bannon on his “War Room” program.

Catturd is the name of a writer on Twitter who has somehow caught the attention of Trump.

Bannon, a former Trump adviser fired by Trump, spends a lot of time these days trying to avoid jail time for a criminal contempt conviction. When he is on the air, he has provided a platform for “D.C. Draino,” who claims to be a Trump supporter and member of the MAGA movement.

Through legal maneuvers and stonewalling, Bannon has so far avoided serving his sentence of four months in prison. His “crime” was refusing to appear for a deposition with the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, a strange development for someone who likes to talk so much.

This tough-talking former Trump adviser failed to make his case before the committee and is now paying the price. As a result of his legal problems, he owes his lawyers hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Jones, a frequent guest on Bannon’s show, is being promoted as another face of MAGA, even as he faces bankruptcy for claiming that the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax. His claims were determined by a jury to be designed to inflict harm on the victims’ families, while making money for Jones. He owes more than $1 billion in damages.

Jones was found guilty not by a politically-motivated court but by a jury of ordinary people not willing to forgive how Jones had made the lives of the Sandy Hook families miserable after losing their loved ones.

No wonder Democrats are running against “MAGA extremists.” Jones is the perfect poster boy for the opposition to Trump, and Bannon and Jones are playing right into their hands. These people threaten to sink Trump’s candidacy through guilt by association.

The writer Urwitz, who is not a conservative, nevertheless has a worthwhile recommendation, saying, “For its own sake and for the sake of the country, the GOP needs to claw its way back to being a normal party focused on real issues.” He asks, “What, for instance, does the GOP want to do about rising healthcare costs? What does it want to do about the exploding cost of housing? How does it plan to do to decrease the national debt?”

Meanwhile, U.S. government debt is on track to surpass $50 trillion by 2033, leading the ratings agency Moody’s to change its outlook on the U.S. economy from “stable” to “negative.”

Bannon’s solution includes advising people to buy gold through one of his show’s sponsors.

As far as health care is concerned, remember that the Republicans had control of Congress under President Trump and failed to repeal Obamacare.

As if the extremes of the MAGA movement were not embarrassing enough, the debate last Wednesday night, sponsored by the Republican National Committee, degenerated into personal attacks, many of them originating with the hothead MAGA favorite Vivek Ramaswamy.

For his part, Trump refuses to debate his primary opponents.

Ramaswamy attacked the Republican National Committee for a losing record while ignoring the fact that RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel’s re-election to the post this year was NOT opposed by Trump.

Bannon, who advertises himself as a “Former White House Chief Strategist,” has been consistently wrong. During the 2022 election, Bannon had declared, “I see 50 [House Republican] seats in 2022. Keep this up.”

Instead, House Republicans eked out a slim edge of 221-212.

To begin with, Republicans, including Bannon, have no real understanding of the opposition.

On November 10, 2017, at a National Press Club event, America’s Survival Inc. (ASI) explained how Barack Obama planned to continue his Marxist revolution in America. Trevor Loudon and I warned of the left’s plan to take the concept of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition and create a new American majority fusing communists, progressive whites, New Agers, felons, minorities, Islamists, potheads, and legal and illegal immigrants, as part of a long-term strategy to put conservative states into the Democratic Party column.

This strategy, known as “Brown is the New White,” is still on track and it worked in Virginia and Ohio, among other states. It is the vision of Obama associate Steve Phillips, who notes that, in Kentucky, Democrat Andy Beshear defeated a Trump acolyte, David Cameron in a state Trump won by 26 points.

Abortion and dope were big winners for the Democrats this time.

As Urwitz notes, “The much-touted popularity of Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin turned out to be a paper tiger when put up against the prospect of actual unchecked Republican governance.”

Virginia voters rejected Youngkin, a favorite of Fox News, and gave Democrats complete control of the state legislature.

While most Republicans remain committed to former President Trump, some conservatives are not convinced that he is the right candidate. Talk show host Derek Hunter says, “I don’t say this from a point of malice, but ever since former President Donald Trump declared we’d be sick of all the winning we’d be doing with him, we’ve pretty much done nothing but lose.”

He cites the Trump-backed campaigns of Senate candidates and losers Dr. Oz and Herschel Walker.

Hunter adds, “In the races that matter, the ones that could flip seats or control, and where Trump picked the candidate, his record is abysmal. Hate me all you want for saying it, dislike of reality doesn’t make it any less real.”

He suggests, “Republicans need to find a way to win again independent of Trump. More than that, they need to find a way to win in spite of him.”

Although Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel is under fire for the results in Virginia and other states, the fact is that she had nothing to do with what happened in those states. If so, Derek Hunter comments, “The national GOP is run by people Donald Trump picked, and their record is about as abysmal as his.”

Hunter concludes, “I was, and remain, eternally grateful for Trump’s defeating of Hillary Clinton. It truly spared us an earlier disaster. But what has happened since matters too. We were promised we’d get sick of all the winning, and I truly am. Unfortunately, the winning I’m sick of is by Democrats.”

Referring to the votes in Ohio, in favor of abortion and dope, Cheryl Chumley writes, “If Ohio is a bellwether, then as America’s once traditionally and biblically minded heartland goes – America’s headed for even more moral degradation. And that means Democrats have the political advantage.”

So let the “MAGA movement” beware of what they think will happen in 2024. They exaggerate their own power and influence.

I would not bet on Bannon’s “Red Wave” predictions. He has been wildly wrong in the past. Instead, I think Derek Hunter and Chery Chumley have a better political prognosis and forecast.