King of MAGA Twitter turns on Republicans (2024)

The king of the Make America Great Again movement on X, formerly Twitter, is sending a warning to the Republican Party.

The anonymous social media account @catturd2, which has amassed more than 2 million followers for its MAGA tweets, said he would not vote for any Republican but former President Donald Trump in the next election, suggesting that the GOP could face losses in 2024, even if Trump were the party's nominee.

"The republican party isn't worth voting for anymore," @catturd2 wrote on Monday. "I'll vote for Trump next election and no Republican on the down ballot. And save your breath twisting yourself into a pretzel trying to tell me why this is a bad idea. They give me nothing - and they deserve nothing."

Newsweek reached out to @catturd2 for comment.

When Trump pulled off one of the biggest political upsets in U.S. history by winning the 2016 election, his victory also ushered in a new generation of Republican voters. As the country heads toward the 2024 election, the GOP may soon learn that those votes do not lie with the party but with Trump alone.

@catturd2 was revealed to be an unnamed Florida man in his late 50s by a Rolling Stone investigation last month, and the account has become a popular figure in right-wing circles.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has taken a selfie wearing one of his T-shirts, former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson has given him prime-time coverage and Elon Musk pledged to address @catturd2's shadowbanning allegations as his first point of order as the new owner of the social media platform.

Even Trump himself has amplified the account. Most recently, the former president shared a poll @catturd2 conducted showing Trump leading over Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in a hypothetical 2024 matchup.

"The gentleman that runs the Catturd account on X is so influential because he represents what most conservatives are thinking and voices that frustration [of grassroots voters] in a unique way," Ben Geller, a managing partner of the conservative group Today is America, told Newsweek.

"Social media has overtaken the reach of legacy media. What is said by influencers is taken seriously," Geller said.

@catturd2's status as an influential social media personality raises questions about what the account's post about not voting red in 2024 means for the Republican Party.

David Karpf, an associate professor in media and public affairs at George Washington University, told Newsweek that @catturd2's comments remind him of the ways in which Rush Limbaugh and other powerful conservative media figures made similar remarks a year before Election Day.

"Voting hasn't begun yet, but the primaries are looming," Karpf said. "The next few months are going to be when influential figures in conservative media send cheap signals that the party isn't ideologically pure enough for them."

Karpf, who studies internet strategies of political associations, said that MAGA personalities are probably not trying to move any conservative votes by telling Trump supporters not to vote Republican. Instead, he said these figures will probably change their tones in a few weeks once they realize a second Trump term won't see success without Republican majorities in Congress.

"So he'll vote for down-ballot Republicans after all," Kapf said. "That's basically what has happened every previous election cycle as well."

Republican consultant and crisis communications expert Mark Weaver told Newsweek that things could also work the other way around—moderate Republicans who may be holding out against backing a second Trump term could end up voting for him if he's the nominee.

"Millions of independents and even some Democrats will take another look at Donald Trump," Weaver said. "And the presence of third party candidates like Robert Kennedy Jr., Cornell West, and Jill Stein means that disaffected Democrats could also leave Biden for one of them. Republicans will continue to unite behind Trump."

But Geller believes things could be different for Republicans this time around when it comes to mobilizing the MAGA vote.

"I do believe that the entirety of the House and Senate are in jeopardy because they have alienated themselves from those that elected them in the first place," he said. "Voters are tired & are unmotivated because they feel like they don't matter, when in reality that's all that matters...the voice of the American people."