A decade in the past, Donald Trump descended the golden escalator at Trump Tower in New York Metropolis and ignited a political motion that has reshaped American politics. In a memorable flip of phrase, Trump promised supporters of his 2016 presidential marketing campaign that “we’re going to make our nation nice once more.”
Since then, the Make America Nice Once more motion has dominated the U.S. political dialog, reshaped the Republican Party and become a lucrative brand adorning hats, T-shirts and bumper stickers.
When requested what MAGA means to him, Trump, in a 2017 interview with The Washington Post mentioned, “To me, it meant jobs. It meant trade, and meant army energy. It meant taking good care of our veterans. It meant a lot.”
However Democratic leaders have a unique interpretation of the slogan.
Former President Bill Clinton in 2016 mentioned of MAGA: “That message the place ‘I’ll offer you America nice once more’ is should you’re a white Southerner, precisely what it means, don’t you? What it means is ‘I’ll offer you an financial system you had 50 years in the past, and I’ll transfer you again up on the social totem pole and different folks down.”
Whereas MAGA is ubiquitous, little is understood about what it means to the American public. Ten years on, what do People assume after they hear or learn this phrase?
Based mostly on the evaluation of People’ explanations of what “Make America Nice Once more” means to them, we discovered proof suggesting that the general public’s views of MAGA mirror the views supplied by each Trump and Clinton.
Republicans interpret this phrase as a name for the renewal of the U.S. financial system and army would possibly, in addition to a return to “conventional” values, particularly these regarding gender roles and gender identities. Democrats, we discovered, view MAGA as a name for a return to white supremacy and rising authoritarianism.
Christopher Gregory/Getty Images
What MAGA means
We’re political scientists who use public opinion polls to study the role of partisanship in American politics. To higher perceive American views about MAGA, in April 2025 we requested 1,000 respondents in a nationally representative online survey to briefly write what “Make America Nice Once more” meant to them.
The survey query was open-ended, permitting respondents to outline this phrase in any approach they noticed match. We used AI-based thematic evaluation and qualitative studying of the responses to raised perceive how Democrats and Republicans outline the slogan.
For our AI-based thematic evaluation, we instructed ChatGPT to offer three overarching themes most touched upon by Democratic and Republican respondents. This method follows latest analysis demonstrating that, when correctly instructed, ChatGPT reliably identifies broad themes in collections of texts.
Republican interpretation of MAGA
Our evaluation reveals that Republicans view the slogan as representing the “American dream.” Partly, MAGA is about restoring the nation’s satisfaction and financial energy. Reflecting these themes, one Republican respondent wrote that MAGA means “encouraging producers to rent People and strengthen the financial system. Making the USA self-sufficient because it as soon as was.”
MAGA can be carefully associated amongst Republicans with an “America First” coverage. That is partly about having a robust army – a typical theme amongst Republican respondents – and “making America the superpower” once more, one respondent wrote.
Republicans additionally wrote that placing America first means emphasizing strict enforcement of immigration legal guidelines in opposition to “illegals” and slicing off international support. For instance, one Republican respondent mentioned that MAGA meant “stopping illegals on the border, ending freebies for illegals, including extra police and constructing a robust army.”
Lastly, Republicans see the slogan as calling for a return to “conventional” values. They expressed a robust need to reverse cultural shifts that Republican respondents understand as a risk.
As one Republican put it, MAGA “means going again to the place males would be part of the army, girls had been house elevating wholesome minded youngsters and it was simple to achieve success, the crime fee was extraordinarily low and it was once secure for teenagers to hang around on the streets with different youngsters and even stroll themselves locations.”
One other Republican made the connection between MAGA and conventional gender roles much more specific, highlighting the hyperlink between MAGA and opposition to transgender rights: “MAGA folks know there are solely 2 sexes and a person can by no means be a lady. If you happen to imagine in any other case you might be destroying AMERICA.”
Kevin Carter/Getty Images
Democratic MAGA views
Democrats have a really completely different understanding of the MAGA slogan. Many Democrats view MAGA as a white supremacist motion designed to guard the standing of white folks and undermine the civil rights of marginalized teams.
One Democrat argued that “‘Make America Nice Once more’ is a regular borne by individuals who’ve seen a lower within the efficiency of their privilege (see: cisgendered white males) and want to see their privilege restored or strengthened. In essence, it’s a chant for all racist, fascist and in any other case bigoted actors to unite beneath.”
One other Democrat wrote that MAGA was a name to “take us backwards as a society with reference to girls’s, minority’s, and LGBTQ folks’s rights … It will take us to a time when solely White males dominated.”
Democrats additionally view MAGA as a type of nostalgia for a closely mythologized previous. Many Democratic respondents described the previous longed for by Republicans as a “delusion” or “fairytale.” Others argued that this mythologized previous, although interesting on the floor, was repressive for a lot of People.
One Democrat mentioned that MAGA meant “returning America to a fantasy model of the previous with the objective of advancing the success of white, straight, rich males by any means vital and nearly at all times to the detriment of different segments of the inhabitants.”
Kevin Carter/Getty Images
Lastly, many Democrats interpret the slogan as reflecting an authoritarian cult of character. On this vein, a Democratic respondent mentioned of MAGA, “It’s a name to arms for MAGA cult members, who imagine that Trump and the Republicans get together will one way or the other enhance their lives by focusing on folks and insurance policies they don’t like, even when it’s in opposition to their greatest pursuits and any rational thought course of.”
Whereas some Republicans expressed racist, xenophobic or anti-trans sentiments of their understanding of MAGA, some Democrats revealed outright condescension towards MAGA believers.
“The MAGA’s are brainwashed, idiotic members of society who know nothing greater than to comply with the lead of an idiotic president who has the vocabulary of a third grader,” one Democrat wrote. “It’s nonsense idiots parrot,” one other respondent mentioned.
In all, within the 10 years since Donald Trump burst onto the political scene, much has been written concerning the conflicting visions of previous, current and future on the coronary heart of America’s partisan divisions.
With the Trump administration’s proclaimed dedication to return the U.S. to its “golden age” and a strong resistance to his efforts, solely time will inform which imaginative and prescient of America will prevail.
