The MAGA Diaries: My Surreal Adventures Inside the Right-Wing (And How I Got Out)

An explosive, first-person account chronicling the rise of the MAGA movement from acclaimed political journalist Tina Nguyen, who began her career—and her education—on the ground levels of the conservative recruiting machine.

Her very first job was working for a little-known journalist named Tucker Carlson. She’s chugged Mountain Dews with the first Breitbart writers, poured over conspiracy theories from COVID-19 deniers, and visited the apocalyptic Patriot Church deep in the woods of the Pacific Northwest. The right is now a MAGA cult. And Tina Nguyen knows because she was raised by it, back when it wasn’t one.

In 2008, in the weeks leading up to the election of Barack Obama, Nguyen was a history-loving, politics-obsessed college student at Claremont McKenna College, drawn there by a boyfriend—and a research institute called the Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom. Swept up by pro-America rhetoric and promises of a career in journalism, Nguyen was drawn into the world of right-wing student activism, and the early days of the movement now known as MAGA. In The MAGA Diaries, she tells not only her story of loving and leaving the conservative movement (well before Trump), but the history of the right-wing, painting a shocking picture of how they recruit, train, and indoctrinate generations of young people in search of opportunity—think dinners with Peter Thiel, conventions that rival Coachella, and the ever-elusive promise of future job security—and shape them into the influential leaders and supporting cast of tomorrow’s Republican party. They are ruthless in building robust networks of power, even if it means demolishing entire civic institutions, from women’s rights to fair elections—and staging a coup when it doesn’t work out.

In The MAGA Diaries, Nguyen pulls back the curtain on the conservative machine for the first time, shining a light on the systematized on-ramp for young Republicans. These are the new leaders of the right, and it’s urgent we start paying attention.