Ezra Klein says MAGA’s X addiction could pose political costs for Trump
Key Takeaways
- •New York Times columnist Ezra Klein argued that the MAGA right's dependence on X could become a political liability for President Donald Trump.
- •Klein attributes part of Trump's challenge to his difficulty matching the restrained online style that aided former President Barack Obama.
- •Klein claims Elon Musk's removal of moderation rules has amplified racist and anti-Semitic content, which he believes will burden Republican politics for years to come.
- •According to Klein, X now provides Democrats with extensive evidence of what he describes as increasingly radical right-wing views.
- •Klein views the loss of any single platform's influence over political elites positively, though he warns online fringes may now be mistaken for broader public sentiment.
The MAGA right’s social media addiction could spell trouble for President Donald Trump as he struggles to maintain the “staid” demeanor that helped former President Barack Obama succeed, columnist Ezra Klein argued.
In a Sunday column for The New York Times, Klein criticized the far right’s fixation on X, the platform owned by Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest man, and suggested that the platform’s political influence now runs less through elite consensus than through a more fragmented and volatile online ecosystem.
“There is a reason President Obama’s Twitter presence was staid while President Trump’s posts remain electric,” Klein wrote. “There is a reason so many of Twitter’s most addicted users call it ‘the hellsite’ ... we feel worse about our world and each other the more time we spend on them.”
Klein argued that Musk’s effort to turn X into a “hothouse” for far-right rhetoric has made the platform a dark and disturbing environment for the voters Trump and the MAGA right need to mobilize.
He also said the platform gives Democrats abundant evidence of what he described as the right’s increasingly radical views.
“In dismantling Twitter’s guardrails against outright racism and anti-Semitism, Musk has filled the right with Groypers and white supremacists who will be a constant problem in Republican politics for years to come,” Klein wrote.
“Democrats paid a price for forming their politics on Twitter; the right will pay a price for forming theirs on X.”
Klein also argued that Musk’s leadership has broken Twitter’s influence over political elites, and he described that change as positive. He said there is now no single social media platform political leaders can use to gauge and track the overall political climate, a shift that could make online fringes easier to mistake for broader public sentiment.
“This has been a crazy era, on all sides of politics, because much of it has taken place atop platforms that derange us for profit,” he wrote. “Trying to stay as sane as possible requires constant effort. But the alternative is worse.”
