Jordan Klepper is holding out hope that the MAGA movement will die with Donald Trump.
The longtime correspondent and now rotating host of The Daily Show co-host understands, after years of speaking to Trump supporters in the field, that the MAGA base’s loyalty is much more dependent on Trump the man than any sort of actual ideology.
“Donald Trump is an identity,” Klepper told Obsessed: The Podcast. “He created a brand that people can put on their heads and be a version of that bold, brash, cruel id. And they like that. And they’ve lived that identity for 10 years. I don’t know where that gets passed.”
Klepper has garnered widespread acclaim for his comedic field reporting for The Daily Show segments and Comedy Central specials, including multiple Emmy nominations for his latest, Jordan Klepper Fingers the Pulse: Give the Man a Prize.
Since Trump was reelected in 2024, he’s noticed that MAGA supporters meet his mentions of Republican leaders like Marco Rubio and JD Vance with apathy, as opposed to the enthusiasm they show while discussing Trump himself. Klepper thinks this is a result of Trump’s pervasive personality traits more than his actual politics—and he thinks MAGA supporters could swing back towards the left if another politician comes along who can capture their attention.
“I saw somebody like Elon Musk for a while—obviously not going to run for president—but he had a larger-than-life personality mixed with success,” Klepper said. “He was an easy symbol for the MAGA folks to rally around for a little while. And I think it’s a person like that that they’re searching for.”
Klepper added that a leader’s party affiliation only matters to a certain extent. More than concrete policy, showmanship is what attracts supporters. MAGA supporters, he said, seek a politician who can represent something larger than themselves.
“It’s not uncommon for me to talk to people at MAGA rallies who were supporters of Barack Obama,” he said. “And it sounds crazy to be like, ‘You like Donald Trump and Barack Obama,’ but you have to remember, those were people who ran for president who felt like they were offering a true change in the moment.”
“They were performers,” he continued. “They were larger than life; they were people you could hang symbols on top of and draw crowds. They were people who led parades. And I don’t know if I see a lot of people who are grand marshals in parades in the current field, in the MAGA field specifically. But that’s what I see a lot of people gravitating towards. And I could see a real flip to liberal values with people who could lead that parade.”
Meanwhile, he has not seen much evolution in Trump supporters over the past 10 years. Klepper interviewed people at rallies since Trump’s first administration, and he said that Americans seek facts that bolster their pre-existing beliefs, which hinders the ability to shift one’s mindset. When Klepper presents an interviewee with a fact that proves their hypocrisy, they usually double down.
“Every time I check back into the MAGA faithful, they’re still fighting the same fight that they fought eight years ago,” Klepper said. “It seems like they’ve lost the plot. I think they may have lost the energy.”
But even if supporters haven’t changed, the movement certainly has.
“The MAGA party, it ain’t fun anymore,” Klepper said. “I’m looking at what’s happening right now in the culture wars of it all. And, you know, if you remember a year and a half ago when Donald Trump won the election, there was this talk that, like, this is the MAGA culture, that people are embracing what MAGA is, what the right is. And fast forward a handful of months later, as far as policy goes, we’re in another forever war. The inflation numbers are still high, gas is high, all of these things they ran on. But culturally, right-wingers are fighting over whether The Odyssey, the most popular movie in the world, is accurate enough. And that is the lamest s--t I have ever seen.”
Klepper’s—and The Daily Show’s—goal is to expose hypocrisy and dig into certain perspectives. He’s interested in finding what lies behind someone’s beliefs rather than working to change people’s minds. When a piece of news is absurd, he knows he’ll discover something funny—which is his ultimate objective.
“That’s a politician’s job to change someone’s mind,” he said. “It’s an activist’s job to change somebody’s mind. Here at The Daily Show, our job is to find the funny, to call out the bulls--t, and create a story around that.”
The Emmy-nominated Jordan Klepper Fingers the Pulse: Give the Man a Prize is currently streaming on YouTube.
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