Just four months ago, Donald Trump Jr declared the Republican party dead.

'This isn't the Republican Party anymore,' he told a cheering crowd at Turning Point USA's AmericaFest in Phoenix. 'It's the America First Party. It's the Make America Great Again Party and we are not going back.'

Careful what you wish for, they say. For while the GOP's conventional coalition of fiscal and social conservative voters has given way to a loose bag of moderate and right-leaning populists, it's unclear who will lead this new amalgamation.

And Don Jr, who is credited with corralling a disparate bunch of new media voices – from his hunting buddy Tucker Carlson to comedian Theo Von to Joe Rogan – to help fuel his father's 2024 return to the White House, is now watching these alliances crumble.

'I do think it's, like, a moment to wrestle with our own consciences,' Carlson said on Tuesday, issuing a groveling on-air apology to his fans for ever having supported Trump.

'We'll be tormented by it for a long time,' he lamented, his brow deeply furrowed. 'I will be and I want to say I'm sorry for misleading people and it was not intentional. That's all I'll say.'

Such a significant defection couldn't come at a worse time for Trump, who faces darkening political prospects ahead of the November midterm elections, which will determine control of Congress and set the course of the remaining two years of his presidency.

One of the key foundations of the MAGA movement was a parallel media system consisting of podcasts, with their burgeoning audiences of disaffected Americans, that acted as a kind of hive mind, a background conversation for MAGA in the way talk radio once functioned for traditional Republicans. 

Don Jr, with his own 'Triggered' podcast on Rumble and Spotify, was at the heart of this friendly media cocoon. He was the conduit between it and his father, who preferred to read printouts of newspaper articles and to conduct pitched battles with mainstream media outlets.

Spurred on by his son, the elder Trump went on a podcast tour aimed at wooing the so-called 'manosphere' of young male voters. 

It included, most notably, a three-hour appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience, with the host going on to endorse him. 

The Trump campaign podcast strategy was a driving factor behind the biggest shift to the right by young male voters in two decades, boosting Trump's overall support by between 1 percent and 2.6 percent, according to a study by Dr Raffaele F Ciriello, a senior lecturer at the University of Sydney Business School. Half of that change was linked specifically to Rogan's endorsement.

Fast forward to today and the picture is very different.

In the months since Trump's decision to attack Iran, the unofficial coalition of podcasters and alternative media figures has suffered its own nuclear implosion. Some of its biggest names are trashing Trump on a daily basis.

Last week, Carlson suggested that Trump may be the 'Antichrist' after the President posted an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus Christ. Amid the mudslinging Carlson's son Buckley, 29, stepped down as deputy press secretary to JD Vance, although the White House said the move had long been planned.

Some of the cracks in this MAGA coalition had started appearing at the very same AmericaFest where Don Jr celebrated the new America First Party in December.

Erika Kirk, Turning Point USA's new chief executive in the wake of her husband Charlie Kirk's assassination, tried to keep the peace at the event with a plea for unity. But conservative media figure Ben Shapiro took the stage and slammed 'frauds and grifters,' while pundit and former Trump strategist Steve Bannon accused Shapiro of being 'like a cancer' to the movement.

Shapiro also attacked Carlson for hosting the far-right commentator Nick Fuentes on his show and lambasted Candace Owens for 'vomiting all sorts of hideous and conspiratorial nonsense.' 

In March, anti-war podcaster Megyn Kelly and Fox News host Mark Levin began a vicious personal feud.

'Poor Megyn Kelly. An emotionally unhinged, lewd, and petulant wreck,' Levin wrote on social media. Kelly fired back by dubbing Levin 'Micropenis Mark' and both launched several more salvos.

The White House was alarmed by such spats within the MAGA-sphere. Trump could have stayed above the fray but decided to choose sides, weighing in with a 348-word statement on Truth Social backing Levin over Kelly. Those who 'speak ill of Mark will quickly fall by the wayside,' Trump warned ominously.

Then, Trump lashed out at Kelly and company in another post. 

'I know why Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones have all been fighting me for years,' Trump wrote on Truth Social recently. 'Because they have one thing in common, Low IQs.'

Carlson's stark abandonment of Trump has poured kerosene on the fire already engulfing right-wing circles.

Conservative media titan Jeremy Boreing, co-founder of the Daily Wire, told the Daily Mail: 'We already know what Tucker thinks of Trump. He told his colleagues he hated him "passionately," then endorsed him anyway and helped staff the administration. He isn't sorry. He's a guy who made a bet that didn't pay off and now wants his regret to be the story.'

That is a reference to messages Carlson sent to a Fox News colleague in 2021 saying he 'hated' Trump and that there 'isn't really an upside' to him.

Responding to Carlson, pro-Trump activist and internet personality Laura Loomer wrote on X: 'I'm so glad I permanently cut off everyone who continued defending him. Good riddance.'

Meanwhile, Loomer was even more scathing about Owens, who previously supported Trump but has more recently called for him to be replaced under the 25th Amendment.

'God hates you,' Loomer wrote to Owens on X. 'It's why he gave Charlie (Kirk) to Erika and why you didn't even get to say goodbye to him. God hates you.

'Look in the mirror and internalize how much God hates you. We all hate you. Humanity hates you. And you are irredeemable.'

While the internecine feeding frenzy has reached fever pitch, in truth, the ultimate collapse of its support for Trump was 'inevitable,' said pollster Professor Larry Sabato, Director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia

'There are too many stresses and strains on this coalition,' he said. 'Trump going to war, after fundamentally saying his movement was about not doing that... after a while even the most dedicated public relations specialists, which is what the podcasters are, wake up and smell the coffee and it's a very strong pot of coffee.'

He said Carlson's exit from the MAGA coalition was a 'shocking defection'

'A lot of Tucker Carlson supporters will still be with Trump, but a lot of them won't,' he concluded. 'A lot of them will agree with Carlson about particularly foreign wars.'

Rogan certainly does. 'A lot of people feel betrayed, right? [Trump] ran on "no more wars, end these stupid, senseless wars" and then we have one that we can't even really clearly define why we did it,' he said in March.

On April 3, Rogan interviewed podcast host Theo Von. When Rogan said 'Supposedly, [Trump is] trying to stop the terrorists,' Von burst into laughter.

'That's crazy, though, if you're the f*****g terrorist!' said Von. 'You know what I'm saying? Like, if you wanna stop them, f*****g stand in front of the f*****g mirror and start there.'

The big question now for Trump, and the Republican Party, is what impact the loss of Don Jr's podcast strategy will have on the midterm elections in November.

It seems there will be no repeat of the successful tour Trump pursued in 2024, which included long chats with Rogan and Von. And in making their assessment to cut loose Carlson and Kelly, both of whom have huge conservative audiences, White House officials are gambling.

The move away from the podcast strategy in the midterms could mean Republicans losing 'a point here, a point there, five points here, 10 points there,' said Professor Sabato. 'But in a closely contested country like the United States, that matters,' he said.