Donald Trump and the MAGA movement’s hold on white voters appears to be weakening. Vice President JD Vance seems to have answered that political danger by leaning harder into rhetoric that directs white frustration toward nonwhite people instead of Trump and the Republican Party.

Numerous polls this year have highlighted declining support for Trump among white voters, especially white working class voters who have been central to his and his party’s political success. Rather than reckoning with that decline, Vance has repeatedly reached for racial grievance.

In speech after speech, Vance has seemingly tried to groom white American voters to blame nonwhite people for their anger. The objective appears to be keeping that anger safely pointed away from Trump, MAGA and the Republican Party.

The latest example came Thursday at a rally Vance hosted in Michigan. There, he suggested that Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed resents certain people and places because they are “too white, too proud or too American.”

Vance then sharpened the personal attack. He called El-Sayed a “weasel who should shut his mouth and show a little gratitude to the country that gave him everything.”

This was hardly an isolated outburst. Vance has returned to this well numerous times during the past year as Trump’s corrupt business dealings, economically destructive tariffs and deadly war with Iran have alienated some people within the MAGA base.

The vice president has repeatedly offered versions of the same appeal to white grievance. Last December, he told an audience of Turning Point USA affiliates that they no longer had to “apologize for being white.”

The message was not subtle then, and Vance has not become more restrained since. His rhetoric keeps framing white identity as something under attack, while presenting MAGA politics as the vehicle through which aggrieved white voters can strike back.

In August, Vance used an interview with Fox News to suggest that white people who support El-Sayed hate themselves. That argument once again turned a political choice into a racial loyalty test, with support for a Democratic candidate cast as evidence of personal contempt.

All of this is coming from the No. 2 leader of a Republican Party that has spent years raging about liberals supposedly weaponizing “identity politics.” Yet Vance’s own pitch relies heavily on identity, resentment and the suggestion that white Americans are being asked to surrender something essential.

The question is whether white voters will accept what has previously been described on air as the “racist slop” offered by the MAGA movement. Polling showing Trump’s support slipping suggests that this constant diet of grievance may not be enough to hold every voter in place.

History offers a useful warning about such efforts. White supremacist movements and organizations, including the Ku Klux Klan, have previously attempted to unite white Americans around a single racial identity and turn that identity into a source of political power.

That history is explored in films including the documentary “White with Fear,” which examines the record of conservative racist fearmongering in the United States. The strategy has sometimes persuaded white people to align themselves with white supremacist groups.

But those organizations have also encountered backlash from white people who came to recognize their corruption and self serving bigotry. Racial solidarity could attract followers, but it did not permanently shield those groups from scrutiny or rejection.

Despite Vance’s efforts, a similar result may be developing for the white supremacy boosting MAGA movement. His increasingly explicit appeals to white grievance reveal how desperately the movement wants to preserve its coalition as Trump’s grip on crucial white voters appears to slip.