The person sitting across from you at Thanksgiving hasn’t said anything overtly political yet. They’ve complimented the turkey, asked about the kids, complained about gas prices. Then, casually, right between the stuffing and the pie, they mention that they heard the 2020 election had “a lot of irregularities.” They don’t elaborate. They don’t need to. You’ve just been handed a phrase that packs a whole worldview into a single polite sentence.
Many followers of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement make themselves pretty well known with their bright red MAGA hats or giant Trump yard signs. But with a polarized political climate and not all supporters keen to advertise their affiliation openly, some MAGA-aligned people lean on specific phrases to signal their beliefs without ever saying the pointed part out loud. These phrases turn up at dinner tables, in office small talk, in comment sections, and in the mouths of relatives you only see twice a year. They sound, on the surface, like regular conversation. They’re not.
What follows is a guide to some of the most common MAGA supporter phrases in circulation right now – what they mean on the surface, what they mean underneath, and why they’ve become such durable fixtures of the movement’s vocabulary. This is observational commentary, not a political manifesto. Think of it as a translation guide to a dialect that, depending on your family situation, you may already be fluent in.
1. “Fake News”
Of all the phrases that Donald Trump contributed to the American political vocabulary, “fake news” may be the one with the longest legs. The MAGA movement has an antagonistic relationship with mainstream media, viewing it as biased against MAGA and lying on behalf of MAGA’s enemies. Trump turned that antagonism into a rallying cry, and “fake news” became the two-word instrument for acting on it. When a MAGA supporter deploys the phrase in conversation, they’re not usually pointing to a specific factual error in a specific story. They’re dismissing the entire institution that produced it. CNN reported it? Fake news. The Washington Post covered it? Fake news. The New York Times ran it? Fake news.
The phrase functions as a blanket disqualifier. Any inconvenient fact that arrives via a mainstream outlet can be neutralized instantly. It’s efficient, if not exactly intellectually rigorous.
The reason it’s such a reliable tell is the scope of its application. Most people, when they encounter a story they doubt, will say “I’m not sure about that” or “let me look that up.” The “fake news” response doesn’t question the specific claim – it torches the whole source. If you mention a fact and someone’s immediate reply is “that’s fake news,” you’re almost certainly not talking to someone in the political center.
2. “The Election Was Stolen”
The MAGA movement’s hostility toward mainstream media has created a vulnerability to false news stories and particularly far-fetched conspiracy theories, and none has proven more durable than the claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen through massive voter fraud. That claim has been examined, litigated, and rejected in more than 60 courts of law, by Republican secretaries of state, and by Trump’s own Attorney General at the time, William Barr. None of that matters to anyone who uses this phrase sincerely.
“The election was stolen” is notable because it hasn’t faded with time the way most political talking points do. According to NPR, Trump still falsely maintains that Democrats stole the presidential election in 2020 through voter fraud, even while simultaneously promoting the very same mail-in ballot and voter registration practices he once criticized Democrats for using. As recently as June 2026, with Trump already in his second term and having won the 2024 election decisively, the claim persisted, fueling calls for tighter voting laws and ongoing “audits” in states where the results were never actually disputed.
When someone brings up stolen elections unprompted – especially when they’re talking about 2020 – they’re not raising a legal argument. They’re signaling membership in a community that has agreed to share a specific version of events. Disputing it isn’t going to go well.
3. “Traditional Family Values”
This one sounds wholesome, and that’s rather the point. According to HuffPost, political content creator Jess Britvich, based in Pittsburgh, identifies “traditional family values” as a MAGA-coded phrase heard repeatedly from both conservative politicians and conservative family members. On the surface, there’s nothing wrong with valuing family. Nobody’s arguing against families. But the phrase carries a specific political payload when it enters the conversation.
When you dig deeper, it’s always wrapped in anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, and it’s always about who belongs where in society – these strict gender hierarchies. It’s also about a family made up of the outdated dominant husband and subordinate wife roles, Britvich notes. “Traditional family values” is most often deployed as the polite version of a statement about who counts as a legitimate family and who doesn’t. It’s the phrase you use when you want to oppose same-sex marriage, trans rights, or reproductive freedom without sounding like you oppose those things.
A lot of these MAGA-coded phrases are now wrapped in religious language, including “traditional family values,” and the connection between white Christian nationalism and MAGA is becoming increasingly overt, Britvich says. When religion enters the framing, “traditional family values” stops being a preference and starts being a mandate – one that some supporters believe should be written into law.
4. “DEI Hire” and “Merit-Based”
These two phrases travel together. MAGA supporters frequently use phrases like “DEI hire” along with references to a “merit-based” hiring system. Calling someone a DEI hire is a dog whistle to disparage their qualifications because of their identity, while referencing merit-based hiring is a more subtle way of invoking the same idea.
DEI stands for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion – a set of workplace and institutional practices aimed at increasing representation of historically underrepresented groups. In MAGA-aligned discourse, “DEI hire” has become a way of suggesting that a person of color, a woman, or an LGBTQ person didn’t earn their position. The implication is that their identity, not their competence, is why they were appointed. It’s a charge that conveniently can never be disproved, because any defense of the person’s qualifications can be dismissed as further evidence of the “rigged” system.
“Merit-based,” meanwhile, is the positive framing of the same idea. Who could object to hiring on merit? The problem is that “merit” is doing a lot of unexamined work in that sentence. When the phrase is used politically, it tends to mean “as things were before diversity initiatives existed.” The people who were disproportionately hired before those initiatives were largely white men – a fact that “merit-based” discourse tends to skip over in a hurry. As Britvich explains, “all this misinformation, all of these dog whistles or MAGA-coded things, they lack nuance and they prey on your emotions.”
5. “America First”
The MAGA movement believes the U.S. was once great but has declined due to foreign influence, and supports “America First” policies, economic protectionism, reduced immigration, and what it regards as traditional American values, some of which involve discriminatory policies. “America First” is the bumper sticker version of all of that. It sounds patriotic – of course any president should prioritize their own country – but its actual application in MAGA discourse is more specific than simple national interest.
Historically used in both isolationist and nationalist contexts, “America First” as a political slogan carries significant baggage. The phrase was notably used by pre-World War II isolationist groups who opposed American involvement against Nazi Germany, a history that its current users typically prefer not to discuss. In its modern MAGA form, it signals opposition to international alliances, foreign aid, trade agreements, and multilateral institutions. It also frequently serves as a frame for immigration restriction – the argument being that any resource spent on non-Americans is, by definition, a betrayal of Americans.
According to The Conversation, MAGA is closely related among Republican respondents with an “America First” policy, which includes having a strong military and “making America the superpower” again, as well as strict enforcement of immigration laws and cutting off foreign aid. When someone drops “America First” into a conversation about foreign policy, healthcare, or immigration, they’re not merely expressing generic patriotism. They’re signaling a specific ideological worldview in which global cooperation is suspect and national borders are the primary moral unit.
6. “I Don’t Know About All That”
This one is softer than the others, which is exactly what makes it tricky. Political content creator Anna Connelly, based in Minnesota, identifies “I don’t know about all that” as a very MAGA-coded phrase, used constantly when someone shares facts around any of the divisive topics that separate MAGA supporters from non-MAGA folks.
This response to a statistic or fact is a way to immediately discredit the information being shared. Phrases like this often lead to subject changes or the end of uncomfortable conversations. The conversational door slams shut. You present a fact, and the conversation moves somewhere else.
What distinguishes this from ordinary skepticism is how it works rhetorically. Ordinary skepticism asks follow-up questions: “Where did you see that? What was the methodology? Who funded the study?” The “I don’t know about all that” response asks nothing. It simply withdraws. It’s a way of maintaining a belief system in the face of contrary evidence without having to engage with the evidence at all. You’ll hear it most at family dinners, where the alternative – actually arguing about the data – feels too exhausting to pursue.
7. “Do Your Own Research”
Closely related to “I don’t know about all that” is the instructional version: “you should do your own research.” This phrase became ubiquitous during the COVID-19 pandemic, when it was used to cast doubt on vaccines, public health guidance, and medical consensus. It has since expanded to cover climate science, election integrity, immigration statistics, and essentially any fact that originates from an institution the speaker mistrusts.
The phrase sounds like an invitation to think independently. Independent thinking is generally good. But “do your own research,” in MAGA-coded usage, doesn’t actually mean engage seriously with primary sources. It means: go find the alternative sources that confirm what I already believe. The research being recommended is almost always specific – particular YouTube channels, particular websites, particular figures who exist precisely to provide counter-narratives to mainstream science and journalism.
These MAGA catchphrases often package massive policy proposals and talking points into a couple of words, and Trump uses them with little context, according to NPR’s analysis of Trump’s 2024 campaign trail language. The media environment is so fragmented and algorithmically reinforced that a significant portion of the country is operating from a fundamentally different set of facts. Two people in the same family can watch different news channels and come away with completely incompatible versions of the same event. “Do your own research” is, in practice, an invitation to enter a different information ecosystem – one where the conclusions are already fixed, and the research exists to confirm them.
8. “The Deep State”
The “administrative state” – often referred to in MAGA circles as the “deep state” – is framed as a sprawling, unelected federal bureaucracy running agencies and regulations, characterized as an “unaccountable, bloated” regime that threatens freedom. It’s used to justify sweeping policy actions as reclaiming control from a hidden ruling class.
In daily conversation, “the deep state” is the all-purpose explanation for why good things don’t happen and bad things do. Why didn’t a particular policy succeed? The deep state. Why is a political ally facing legal trouble? The deep state is targeting them. Why did investigations into a preferred figure reach the wrong conclusions? Deep state. It functions, structurally, like a conspiracy theory that can never be disproved, because any evidence against it can be attributed to the conspiracy itself.
In April 2025, political scientists asked 1,000 respondents in a nationally representative online survey to briefly write what “Make America Great Again” meant to them, in an open-ended format, then used AI-based thematic analysis and qualitative reading to understand how Democrats and Republicans define the slogan differently. Across both groups, the sense that hidden forces were controlling outcomes – either a corrupt establishment or an authoritarian in waiting – was a persistent theme. “The deep state” is how the MAGA movement names and locates those forces.
9. “Real Americans”
This is perhaps the most revealing phrase on the list, because it answers a question nobody asked: who counts? The MAGA movement was founded on the belief that the United States was once “great” but has lost this status due to foreign influence, both within its borders via immigration and multiculturalism, and without via globalization – and that this can be reversed through “America First” policies and what members consider traditional American values, according to Britannica.
“Real Americans” is the explicit statement of an implicit idea running through much of MAGA discourse: that there are authentic Americans and inauthentic ones, and that the inauthentic ones – people in cities, immigrants, liberals, LGBTQ people, academics, journalists – don’t fully belong to the national story. The phrase turns up in rally speeches and in casual conversation, often as a contrast: “real Americans are fed up” or “real Americans don’t want this.” It draws a circle, places some people inside it, and leaves others out.
The MAGA self-description “patriot” works on the same logic, used by supporters to distinguish themselves from those they regard as unpatriotic. You’re a real American. They’re not. It’s simple, it’s emotionally satisfying, and it has the added benefit of being entirely unfalsifiable. Nobody can produce a credential proving they’re a “real” American, which means the category can be applied and withdrawn at will.
Read More: Trump’s Great American State Fair opened and it was a mess with melted ice cream, empty booths
What This Actually Means
Language in politics is never neutral. It never was. Every movement has its shorthand, its in-group vocabulary, its phrases that open doors between people who share the same worldview. The phrases above are MAGA’s version of that – phrases that do double duty, saying something benign on the surface while signaling something more specific underneath.
The thing about coded language is that it only works if the code is shared. When you hear “I don’t know about all that” at a barbecue, or “real Americans” in a Facebook comment, or “do your own research” from an uncle who’s been watching four hours of cable news every night since 2016, you’re hearing someone speak a dialect that tells you quite a lot about where they get their information, what they believe, and which communities they’ve decided to trust. That’s not an accusation. It’s just how language works.
Many Democrats view MAGA as a movement designed to protect the status of white people and undermine the civil rights of marginalized groups, while Republican respondents in the same survey interpret the phrase as a call for economic renewal and a return to traditional values. Recognizing these phrases for what they are doesn’t have to make family relationships harder. Sometimes it just helps to know what conversation you’re actually in, rather than the one you thought you were having. The surface-level talk about “values” or “the media” or “real Americans” is often a proxy for something deeper – a sense of loss, of displacement, of a country changing faster than feels comfortable. That doesn’t make the phrases less coded. But it does explain why they have such staying power.
AI Disclaimer: This article was created with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed by a human editor.