Who wants to be the last grifter off a sinking ship? Last week, some leading right-wing podcasters began to answer that question with their feet, defecting from Team Trump—although at least one seems to have been intimidated back into line. It was a rough week for the elderly Republican candidate, who showed a decline in some polls, emerged from semi-seclusion to hold a rambling and disjointed press conference, and fantasized on his Truth Social account about Joe Biden stumbling back into the race. As goes the Führer, so go the Volk; by week’s end, several of Trump’s most influential ultra-online boosters seemed to be waffling in their support.

For the long roster of influencers, podcasters, crypto scammers (a category that now looks to include Trump’s sons), and small-town tyrants who have conned their way into the wallets of MAGA Nation, the prospect that Trump might lose in the fall—again—is both a political and a business problem. Some are trying to triangulate their position, finding a way to remain loyal to Trump while acknowledging that his campaign is seizing up. Others are defecting to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or demanding changes to Trump’s campaign. And a fair number are simply freaking out.

Joe Rogan, America’s most popular podcaster and a lifestyle guru for millions of shiftless men, announced last week in an interview that he preferred Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “He’s the only one that makes sense to me,” said Rogan, praising Kennedy’s temperament and his work cleaning up the East River. (It was the Hudson River.)

In short order, an anti-Rogan backlash took hold on social media. Trump posted on Truth Social suggesting that Rogan should get booed at the next Ultimate Fighting Championship match he attends. (Rogan is a longtime UFC commentator and, like Trump, is friends with UFC honcho Dana White.) On X, Rogan insisted that his comments weren’t an endorsement but rather a nonsignifying bit of character analysis. “I’m not the guy to get political information from,” he wrote.

Nick Fuentes, the proudly antisemitic leader of the groyper clique of young American bigots, took to X to air his dissatisfaction with the direction of Trump’s campaign. “Tonight I declared a new Groyper War against the Trump campaign,” wrote Fuentes. “We support Trump, but his campaign has been hijacked by the same consultants, lobbyists, & donors that he defeated in 2016, and they’re blowing it. Without serious changes we are headed for a catastrophic loss.”

In subsequent posts, Fuentes called for the firing of some of Trump’s campaign advisers. And like all online influencers, he sought to harness this new surge of attention into a cross-promotional opportunity for his brand. He urged his followers to stay tuned to his channel on the hard-right platform Rumble, where he would reveal his own plan to rescue the Trump campaign.

Meanwhile, Tim Pool, the permanently behatted far-right YouTuber, posted, “Ok I’m voting for RFK Jr now.” The third-party candidate immediately reposted the endorsement, adding, “I am so grateful to you, Tim, for your confidence in me but most of all for your steadfast defense of the Constitution and relentless love for our country.” Kennedy punctuated his show of gratitude with an American flag emoji. It’s far from clear how Tim Pool has steadfastly defended the Constitution, but he does own a lot of guns.

Pool’s pledge to vote for RFK Jr. didn’t last long. As The Washington Post’s right-wing watcher Will Sommer noted, “Pool, after facing criticism from Cat Turd and other prominent MAGA figures for abandoning Trump, says he was just kidding and won’t be voting for RFK after all.”

“Oof, I really stepped in it this time,” wrote Pool on X. “Hahaha Holy crap I’m voting for Trump Wtf.”

If all of this seems very stupid, you are correct. But we live in flamboyantly stupid times—the clowns are in charge, and they are making a fortune gassing up MAGA loyalists to believe in migrant invasions, Covid denial, deep-state plots against Trump, and whatever other patently ridiculous viral conspiracy comes across the timeline. A Trump loss in November would likely mean a mortal threat to their positions in the MAGA political firmament and its media economy. As a result, some of them are doing the social media equivalent of a panicked stock dump in order to prepare their audiences, and themselves, for a Trump loss.

Trump is helping the process along, especially by picking a fight with an immensely popular entertainer like Rogan, who went out of his way to praise Kennedy without even naming, much less denigrating, the former president. Trump recently did an interview with Adin Ross, an incel-adjacent influencer who, like Trump, has associated with Fuentes. It’s the kind of interview that might appeal to a niche group of very online, very right-wing young men who should be already in the pocket of the GOP nominee. Ross presented Trump with a Tesla Cybertruck customized with a picture of the former president raising his fist after being shot. Inside was a Rolex watch.

As Trump’s campaign flails away, seeking to regain its momentum, it gives the lie to such groveling performances from the influencers within its base. Trump and his advisers are still grasping to escape the “weird” allegations from their Democratic rivals, and by trotting the perennially glitching hillbilly cosplayer JD Vance to various campaign stops. All the while, the actual candidate seems dour and angry—going through the motions in his sparsely attended rallies and panicked recent press conference, and shit-posting away on Truth Social. But this time, Trump’s posts and public appearances stink of desperation and foolishness. He recently created a completely unnecessary mini news cycle around his own false memory of a rough landing in a helicopter with Kamala Harris’s former political mentor, Willie Brown. (The event in question involved a different Black political figure in California, former state Senator Nate Holden—a mixup that’s unlikely to stanch the migration of Black voters away from the MAGA ticket.)

By virtually every metric of campaign success, Trump’s prospects are dimming. And while he still commands the hold over his following to browbeat critics like Rogan and Pool into renewed obsequiousness, he can’t reverse the damage he’s done. That’s a basic a political truth that even terminally online podcasters can’t avoid.