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Conservatives are going into self-exile.

The movement that once championed small, business-friendly government is now led by far-right media forces hoping to cash in on attention from raging culture wars, sealing off its adherents from the rest of society.

From a bird's eye view, the state of affairs among MAGA Media diehards as it sits today is remarkable. A subset of America actually purports to boycott Disney, the world's preeminent entertainment company; Bud Light, once America's most popular beer; Target, the quintessential brick-and-mortar shopping destination; Pfizer, the pharmaceutical company that produced life-saving Covid-19 vaccines; Major League Baseball, the nation's favorite pastime; and now Taylor Swift, a generational icon and one of the most successful musical artists of all time.

"There’s something striking about watching the far-right tying itself in knots and attacking Swift and [her boyfriend Travis] Kelce that demonstrates how badly the far-right media has alienated itself from most of society," Charlie Warzel, a staff writer at The Atlantic who covers the intersection of politics, technology, and culture, told me Tuesday. "They’ve built out this alternate universe and reality of grievance and it feels like instead of using it to wage an effective culture war, they’re fully lost in it and can’t see that they’ve chosen as their primary enemy the person with the literal highest approval rating in American life right now."

"This isn’t the first time it’s happened," Warzel added. "The far-right is systematically alienating itself from many of the institutions and people that normal Americans frequent, like, and associate themselves with. And I don’t think they can see how exhausting and off-putting that is to people who don’t spend their days mainlining Fox News or on X."

A crucial factor in this bleak reality is that the incentive structure in conservative politics has gone awry. The irresponsible and dishonest stars of the right-wing media kingdom are motivated by vastly different goals than those who are actually trying to advance conservative causes, get Republicans elected, and then ultimately govern in office.

For a right-wing online influencer, the top incentive is to amass video views and shares — all in a bid to increase one's social media footprint and, thus, power and treasure. When viewed from that vantage point, peddling increasingly outlandish, attention-grabbing junk makes sense. The same goes for Fox News hosts and talk radio personalities, who are simultaneously quietly worried that more provocative newcomers to the scene might eat into their audiences if they aren't hardline enough.

In effect, declaring war on popular institutions like Disney and celebrities like Swift makes business sense for these media personalities. It delivers them the attention they so desperately crave while appealing to a sliver of the population — enough to carve out a lucrative career in this arena.

"Within the conservative base, it's great strategy, but when you are trying to win over swing voters, it isn’t going to help, as they'll see it as weird," Evan Siegfried, a GOP strategist who has written extensively about how Republicans can try to attract new voters to their causes, candidly told me. "Right now, the GOP does not seem to have a real interest in growing, but rather prefers to stick with grievance politics."

The problem is that lies and conspiracy theories can cause enormous harm to the body politic. And the figures who traffic in mis-and disinformation have amassed great power in the Republican Party. In fact, right-wing media stars have far more power over the GOP's direction than most of its actual leaders, like Mitch McConnell. Don't believe me? Just talk to Kevin McCarthy. The people standing at the helm of the ship, actually charting its path, are the handsomely paid talk-show hosts who command legions of fans and excite them into participating in the culture war battles on a weekly basis. Not the boring Washington politicians. Donald Trump is successful because he falls into the former camp far more than the latter. 

The problem for the diminishing few in the Republican Party who hunger for responsible conservative governance is that these MAGA Media celebrities are leading the GOP down a path of isolation, which could ultimately result in its irrelevance with the rest of society. These conspiracy talk hosts have little-to-no incentive to behave in a way that results in Republicans getting elected to higher office. In fact, arguably it's just the opposite. The right-wing media kingdom thrives when Democrats are in office and there are political opponents whom they can demonize.

That's not to say the right-wing media machine holds no power. It certainly does. Just a tiny percentage of the population falling under the trance of its stars translates into millions of people who can, for example, be convinced to head to the nation's Capitol to try to overturn a democratic election. And polling indicates that a good chunk of the country has bought some of the nonsense MAGA Media has been relentlessly selling.

But heading into the 2024 election, alienating the rest of the country — which still handily outnumbers the MAGA loyalists — with absurd conspiracy theories about Swift, Kelce, and some of its most treasured institutions makes little sense as an electoral strategy.

As Alyssa Farah Griffin, the former Trump White House communications director turned vocal critic of the former president, put it on "The View" Tuesday: "I cannot think of a dumber political fight to pick than one with the Swifties."

———   BELOW THE FOLD  ———

Tim Cook's Vision: The embargo lifted Tuesday on reviews for the Vision Pro, arguably the biggest product launch Apple has executed under Tim Cook since the death of Steve Jobs — and while the consensus among critics was that the device is easily the best headset out there (it should be, given it is also, by far, the most expensive, at $3,500), the other theme that emerged was that it is still not a product for the masses. "Apple’s headset has all the characteristics of a first-generation product: It’s big and heavy, its battery life sucks, there are few great apps and it can be buggy," The WSJ's Joanna Stern wrote. "And come on, have you seen what this thing thinks I look like?" Over at The Verge, Nilay Patel wrote, "The shocking thing is that Apple may have inadvertently revealed that some of these core ideas are actually dead ends — that they can’t ever be executed well enough to become mainstream." And regarding its potential to serve as a really expensive television? "I doubt I’ll ever want to watch a 2 ½ hour movie this way," The LAT's Ryan Faughnder wrote. Over at Peta Pixel, Jeremy Gray has a more complete roundup of reviews. 

► A part of Patel's review that stuck with me: "The biggest tradeoff of all is that using the Vision Pro is such a lonely experience, regardless of the weird ghost eyes on the front. You’re in there, having experiences all by yourself that no one else can take part in. ... I don’t want to get work done in the Vision Pro. I get my work done with other people, and I’d rather be out here with them."

The Tech Talks: Shares in Google fell nearly 5% in after-hours trading, while Microsoft's remained rather flat, after both tech companies delivered their respective quarterly earnings reports to investors. Google saw an increase in advertising revenue from the same period last year, generating $65.5 billion in sales. But that figure fell short of analyst expectations, sending its stock price dropping, even though it did show a recovery from the much softer ad market of 2022. Meanwhile, Microsoft beat analyst expectations, crediting its A.I. services for contributing to its revenue in cloud computing. "We've moved from talking about A.I. to applying A.I. at scale," Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella said. "By infusing A.I. across every layer of our tech stack, we’re winning new customers and helping drive new benefits and productivity gains across every sector." Nevertheless, Wall Street had a muted reaction, with the stock standing frozen. Other highlights from the earnings reports:

► "Alphabet’s suite of digital subscription services — including YouTube Premium, YouTube Music, YouTube TV and Google One cloud storage — generated $15 billion in revenue for 2023," Todd Spangler reported. 

► "In a blowout quarter, YouTube saw its advertising revenue soar to $9.2 billion in Q4 of 2023," Alex Weprin reported.

► "Google spent $2.1 billion on severance and other expenses as it laid off more than 12,000 employees over the course of 2023. And the layoff charges keep coming: in just the one month of 2024 so far, the company has already spent $700 million on employee severance," The Verge's Amrita Khalid reported.

First in Reliable | Will's Way: Newly minted The WaPo boss William Lewis on Tuesday held the first pair of what is being dubbed "Post Connects" sessions — internal events offering a more intimate discussion than company-wide town halls. At the events on Tuesday, I'm told, Lewis vowed to staffers that he will outline a more detailed "fix it, build it, scale it" plan in May. The new timeline means staffers looking for specifics on the future of the paper will have to wait a little while longer. But Lewis, I'm told, said his goal is to increase the newspaper's subscriber count from its current 2.5 million to 3 million by 2025. "We have a lot of people rooting for us," Lewis told staffers.

► Of note: Both executive editor Sally Buzbee and chief technology officer Vineet Khosla participated in the "Post Connects" sessions for conversations on the 2024 presidential race and artificial intelligence, respectively. 

TikTok Turns the Table: After reshaping the internet to widely adopt vertical video, TikTok is flipping the script. The dominant short-form video app "now wants you to turn your phone sideways," Business Insider's Peter Kafka reported Tuesday — "at least some of the time." The move, of course, is the latest sign that TikTok is chasing YouTube's dominance in online video, just as the Google-owned company chases TikTok's dominance in the short-form space. "I also wonder," Kafka added, "if this is an effort to get more content that will play well on an actual TV — an ambition TikTok has held for a long time but has yet to really figure out." Read Kafka's full story here.

► And yet another sign of TikTok becoming more like YouTube: The platform is opening up a Los Angeles studio designed for creators.

RIP, Rivera: Iconic singer and stage performer Chita Rivera, who shaped the world of theatre through iconic roles in "Chicago" and "Kiss of the Spider Woman," died on Tuesday. She was 91. The Tony-award winning actress' publicist said she died "peacefully" in New York after a "brief illness." Her death, naturally, prompted an outpouring of tributes, including from Lin-Manuel Miranda, who described Rivera as "the trailblazer for Puerto Rico on Broadway." CNN's Elizabeth Wagmeister has more here. 

Thank you for reading! This newsletter was edited by Jon Passantino and produced with the assistance of Liam Reilly. Have feedback? Send us an email. You can follow us on Instagram,  Threads, and LinkedIn . We will see you back in your inbox tomorrow.