The Villages in Florida, the largest retirement community in the world, has been home to an extremely active MAGA movement. Roughly seven out of ten county residents voted for Trump in 2024, and its MAGA golf cart parades are legendary.

But Sunday’s parade was sparsely attended, according to a letter to the editor in The Villages News, which declares that the MAGA movement there is “dying.”

Casey Marr writes that they arrived at President Donald Trump’s 80th birthday golf cart parade, found many open parking spaces “and only a few people milling around” 30 minutes before the starting time. At 1:00 p.m., the official start time, “there was certainly no big crowd of cheering people” to welcome the parade of golf carts, which numbered only about 100 and lasted just 20 minutes.

Marr explains that there were two smaller starting places, and says that even if they had a similar number of carts, there would only have been “a pitiful 303.”

“This was advertised as a Guinness World Record challenge,” Marr says. “The record was set on Sept. 4, 2005, here in The Villages with 3,321 golf carts.”

According to Newsweek, Trump’s approval in Florida is 13 points underwater. Nationwide, Trump is 23 points underwater.

“Several states that began his term in positive territory, including Florida, Ohio and Texas, are now net negative,” Newsweek noted. “Deep-red states still form Trump’s strongest base, but many of those margins have narrowed sharply since January 2025.”

The golf cart parade fell short of the record, but Marr notes that The Villages’ “No Kings” rallies have grown “exponentially.” The “latest had two locations with attendance close to 6,000.”

“There is now a ‘Leaving MAGA’ billboard here on U.S. Hwy. 441,” Marr writes. “The ‘Trump 47’ website is down. The MAGA Club almost never holds any events. You almost never see a Trump flag flying anymore.”

Trump, Marr charges, “is using the office to line his pockets. Started a war which spiked gas prices along with everything else. Inflation and unemployment are rising. Aligned himself with murderous war criminals like Putin. He continues to protect pedophilia. This weekend he is desecrating the White House by holding a fighting match like Caligula being entertained by gladiators. The list of horrific things being done, especially in this administration, is endless. And he’s even lost former stalwarts like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson.”

“Yes,” Marr declares, “MAGA is dying in the country and even here. Florida is purple now again and turning bluer daily.”

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Democratic candidates running in red states and hoping to flip districts are warning against “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” the president’s and his supporters’ name for reflexive anti-Trump sentiment.

“Arguing about Donald Trump, somebody people voted for probably three times, isn’t going to be very conducive to getting things accomplished or reaching some common ground,” Kansas farmer and veterinarian Don Coover, challenging an incumbent GOP congressman in a deep-red district, told Bloomberg Government. Coover “said his party has to dial back the national rhetoric if it wants to compete in Trump-friendly places.”

Andrew Sneed, who is challenging a GOP incumbent congressman in a deep red Alabama district, told Bloomberg, “If we make this election about President Trump in my district and in districts like this around the country, we’re going to lose.”

Democrats hope to retake the House majority, and have targeted 25 GOP-held seats.

U.S. Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) urged Democrats to focus on the issues, such as affordability, and not on Donald Trump.

“It’s less about him than the fact that he’s not paying attention to the issue of affordability,” Suozzi told Bloomberg. “It’s not about Trump. It’s not about Trump derangement syndrome, and it’s not about his sometimes interesting behavior. It’s about policies that affect peoples’ lives.”

U.S. Rep. Laura Gillen, a vulnerable New York Democrat who is being targeted by the House GOP’s campaign arm, “said she is focused on touting her bipartisan work across the aisle, keeping Trump’s name at bay.”

“My messaging has been focused on what I am doing to try and make life more affordable,” Gillen told Bloomberg. “I ran for Congress and said I’d work with anyone from any party to get things done.”

Some warn that campaigning against Trump directly could backfire, especially should the president’s low approval numbers rebound.

Bloomberg notes that Republicans are targeting 29 Democrats, including 23 incumbents who represent voters in districts Trump won.

Democratic incumbents and candidates have stated their messaging plainly. The Republican National Committee is  accusing them of “TDS.”

“Voters want secure borders, lower prices, safer communities, and a strong economy, not Trump Derangement Syndrome,” RNC spokesperson Kiersten Pels said in a statement. “Americans are seeing through the Democrats’ tired strategy of attacking and vilifying President Trump and his supporters.”

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Do Trump’s “humiliating loss to Iran” and his White House cage fight signal a nation in free fall? Or the moment America wakes up and fights back? Those are the questions The Bulwark’s Bill Kristol is asking.

“The coincidence yesterday of the announcement of an agreement on a deal and the cage match at the White House has led to much discussion of imperial decadence, and of our entering an age of bread and circuses,” writes Kristol in “Bread and Capitulation.” He says that the Roman Empire lasted 80 years after the advent of “bread and circuses,” but warns that “things seem to move faster these days. Our decline shows every likelihood of being far quicker and more thorough than Rome’s.”

Kristol points to The Atlantic‘s Tom Nichols, who analyzed the deal that is expected to end the Iran war.

“The United States has little to celebrate: Trump and his team, in record time, just lost a war to a militarily mediocre—but nonetheless extremely dangerous—adversary,” Nichols wrote. “It is clear that Trump has failed to achieve every one of the goals he put forward for this war of choice, and now he is determined to sign, seal, and deliver America’s capitulation as quickly as possible.”

Iran, says Kristol, “comes out a winner.” But that is less important than the “defeat” of America. He says that “Trump’s failure in Iran has confirmed and accelerated the broader retreat during his second term from our standing as the linchpin and guardian of an American-friendly international order.”

America was “the greatest world power” from 1941 to 2025. But now the nation is just one power “among many, even one bully among many, perhaps the preeminent one, but one without much credibility among either allies or enemies.”

Trump’s failed war, says Kristol, leaves the nation and the world “less feared and less respected,” and the world more dangerous.

But he asks, could “the humiliating loss to Iran—along with the embarrassment of our 250th anniversary celebration—be a kind of blessing?”

Could it provide the catalyst to stop and “reverse our decline in national power and also our slide into imperial decadence?”

He notes that the American people largely opposed Trump’s UFC cage fight at the White House. “Perhaps here, unlike in imperial Rome, it may not be too late to revive the spirit of republican virtue?”

Pointing to the Knicks’ “remarkable comeback,” Kristol asks: Who’s to say America can’t have one too?

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