Liberal political commentator, journalist and Vox co-founder Ezra Klein says the MAGA movement took a brutal hit last week after the midterm elections delivered a resounding blow. According to Klein, the Trump economy had already spent years battering the young generation that elevated MAGA and made the movement look so durable on social media. Speaking on the Bulwark's Thursday "Bulwark Daily" podcast, Klein said the blue wave unquestionably rang MAGA's bell.

Even so, nobody should assume that the Make America Great Again movement, or the president who leads it, is down and out — not with President Donald Trump holding two more years in office. That timeline matters: it is both the window in which the administration can still pursue its agenda and the stretch in which the movement's post-Trump direction will start to take shape in public view.

And even then, other personalities have inched along behind the trail Trump blazed — lieutenants waiting in the wings to claim the MAGA mantle.

"I just want to say, I don't, I feel like it's over. I mean, there's a big fight ahead. Like, so people should not check out," said Bulwark podcaster Tim Miller. "I mean, the last two years of Donald Trump's might end up being the most dangerous two years, or he might descend into dementia and just want to go golf and build an arch."

"Well, even if he does descend into dementia and want to golf and build an arch, that's not what Stephen Miller, his new chief of staff, is going to want to do," Klein cautioned. "I think it's really important to realize Donald Trump is not just a person, he's a staff. And what he did is he just made Stephen Miller officially, functionally the prime minister." The chief of staff seat is among the most powerful unelected posts in the White House — the role that gates access to the president and steers day-to-day priorities — which is why Klein reads the appointment as a transfer of running power rather than a retreat.

Miller agreed and acknowledged that "Donald Trump could be replaced by something dangerous and powerful."

"I think that conceivably something from the right could emerge from outside this administration that challenges [Vice President] J.D. Vance effectively," said Miller, citing personalities like entertainer Tucker Carlson. "There's not really a clear leader yet, but I don't think it's impossible that that happens. It doesn't mean we're out of the danger. That just means that we've turned the chapter."

Right-wing influencers, meanwhile, are catching their breath. Some have gone quiet, while others are lamenting that Republicans have lost young men for a generation. The introspection is notable for a movement whose durability, as Klein noted, was built largely on social media — the same channels that will carry whatever message the movement settles on next.

Yet even a weakened Republican Party is determined to elevate its MAGA elements, promoting far-right firebrand Jim Jordan as the party's new minority leader — a post that puts him in charge of House Republicans' messaging and strategy and gives the party's MAGA wing an institutional platform heading into the next cycle.

Former MAGA lawmaker Joe Walsh described his "old friend" Jordan as a proponent of the debunked argument that the 2020 election was stolen, that brown and Black immigrants should be kept out of America, that America is a Christian theocracy and that "Democrats are evil."

Worse, Walsh said, Jordan in charge means the GOP will "double down" on MAGA philosophy, regardless of whether or not voters approve of it.

Meanwhile, a battalion of MAGA podcasters and entertainers have been honing their arguments, despite being temporarily humiliated by voter backlash.

And Trump is not finished as a force "wielding power in American life," Klein said — even if he was "finished as the structuring, organizing, cultural principle of American life." How the remaining threads resolve — whether a clear successor emerges, how Jordan steers the diminished minority, and how actively Trump and the staff around him exercise the power he still holds — are the markers to watch over the final two years of the term.