Axios co-founder Jim VandeHei talks about the “interesting divide in MAGA” on Thursday’s broadcast of MS NOW’s “Morning Joe.”

JOE SCARBOROUGH, ‘MORNING JOE’ HOST: Regarding Texas, I’ve got to say, if I want to get a laugh, I go on X and I see how much the maga right is melting down about Texas. And James Talarico, how quickly I forget. And Jim, it’s funny. Don’t forget him. You’ve got these people who have completely checked everything they were ever taught growing up in said evangelical church over the last decade, have forgotten everything. And now they’re the ones going, oh, my gosh, this Talarico guy, he may not be consistent with the gospel of Jesus Christ. And I just sit there going, oh, but the level, there are a couple of guys I like very much who I follow. Every second tweet is about Talarico. I have never seen Republicans obsess about anybody since Barack Obama first emerged on the scene. I’m not comparing him. I’m not saying Texas is not fool’s gold. For Democrats, it probably still is. But there is a massive meltdown on Talarico, the likes of which I haven’t seen since Barack Obama first came onto the scene. There’s just this singular focus. And I think they don’t like him because he actually does, even if they disagree on a couple of things, he knows the Bible. And they don’t like that. Republican candidates are supposed to be going around preaching about Jesus and then ignoring just about everything that Jesus said about taking care of the poor. JIM VANDEHEI: And he’s a super talented politician. He’s obviously overperforming in a state that’s usually tough for Democrats. And as you said, he’s really good at talking about faith and talking about how his policy is grounded in faith. And there is a lot of hypocrisy happening in the Christian movement in terms of their tone and being in conflict with what the Bible actually says. I will say there’s still this interesting divide in MAGA. Like at the MAGA leadership level, they’re definitely breaking with Trump on Iran, the Epstein files, everything else. But the voters and the members of Congress are still with him no matter what. It’s almost like there’s three types of Republicans now. There’s kind of your establishment Republican. There’s your Tucker Carlson MAGA. And then there’s just Trumpians that whatever he believes, they believe. You see those people supporting him on Iran, despite the fact that Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson and go down the list of every popular MAGA podcaster have turned on the war. They’re with him, not them. And that mesmerizing hold that he has over the voter and then therefore members of Congress. There’s a reason we keep talking about Massey. He’s like one of a couple who ever say anything in critique with any consistency of the president, despite the fact that every conversation any of us at this table have with Republicans that’s off the record, they don’t sound a whole hell of a lot different than we do, do they?

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