Politics
Key Voices In Trump’s MAGA Movement Are Divided On Marijuana As President Considers Rescheduling Proposal
The MAGA world is divided on how it wants President Donald Trump to come down on a proposal to federally reschedule marijuana, with key right-wing influencers sharing voicing positions on the issue after the president announced an imminent decision on Monday.
While polls have repeatedly shown bipartisan support for cannabis rescheduling, as well as a broader end to prohibition, some of the most prominent Trump-allied voices are pushing back against the proposed reform.
That includes people like The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh, who claimed a social media post that “no country of potheads has ever thrived, or ever achieved anything at all. Every city that legalized it became an even bigger shithole basically overnight.”
“The entire history of western civilization tells us that marijuana is far, far worse for society,” he said, claiming that “our society thrived when everyone was smoking cigarettes and drinking whiskey.”
On the other side of the debate, Trump advisor Alex Bruesewitz has made a series of posts touting the merits of rescheduling recently, including one in which he aligned himself with podcaster Joe Rogan on the “absurdity” of the current scheduling classification for marijuana, for example.
“Schedule 3 still keeps it as a crime, but would allow for medical research. Most Veterans I know supports this as well,” Bruesewitz, who’s political consulting firm X Strategies received $300,000 from a marijuana industry-funded political committee for “media” this year, said.
To be sure, the Biden administration-initiated proposal to move marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) wouldn’t legalize cannabis. It would, however, allow cannabis companies to take advantage of tax write-offs and credits that are available to businesses in other sectors and reduce barriers to research.
While Trump endorsed moving marijuana to Schedule III during last year’s presidential campaign—along with cannabis industry banking access and a Florida legalization ballot initiative that ultimately fell short—this week he merely said he is considering the issue, with a decision expected within weeks.
Meanwhile, there still seems to be some conflation between rescheduling and descheduling, or legalization, among certain MAGA influencers.
Jack Posobiec, for example, said on Monday that “America deserves better, our kids deserve better, I don’t want to have to be smelling weed anytime I take my kids anywhere in a city or a national park,” as Axios reported.
He did address the criticism that he was mistaking rescheduling and legalization, saying in an X post that those who drew the distinction “are ignorant of how the bait and switch always ends up happening with this stuff.”
“It went from ‘just medicinal’ to being everywhere in less than 5 years. You can’t even go to parks anymore,” he said.
“Rescheduling marijuana is is a massive corporate handout to Big Leaf. Billions will flow in tax deductions, and within 5 years the cannabis industry will double to a $50 Billion industry,” Posobiec said in another post last week. “That’s why they’re lobbying so much to support rescheduling.”
But there’s far from a unanimous consensus around the issue, and other notable figures in the president’s orbit see an opportunity for Trump to make political gains by leveraging the popularity of cannabis reform.
“While I support descheduling entirely along with some reasonable regulation, I think rescheduling cannabis from schedule 1 to schedule 3 is a step in the right direction and would help solve the issues surrounding banking for companies legally sell medicinal marijuana,” Roger Stone, a longtime confidant of the president, told Marijuana Moment.
“Barack Obama and Joe Biden could have done this, but they did nothing. Trump has always viewed cannabis as states’ rights issue,” he said. “It’s time for cannabis policy for to be aligned with state law at the same time avoiding overregulation of the hemp industry that President Trump created in the Farm Bill in his first term.”
But Charlie Kirk, another key voice in MAGA circles, said he hopes rescheduling “doesn’t happen.”
“We need to protect public spaces for kids,” he said. “Everything already smells like weed, which is ridiculous. Let’s make it harder to ruin public spaces, not easier.”
By contrast, MAGA influencer Rogan O’Handley made a point to clarify that rescheduling cannabis “doesn’t legalize it, but it does allow for more medical research.
In an X post under his handle @DC_Draino, O’Handley said that large pharmaceutical, alcohol and prison companies are opposed to reform, in contrast to military veterans who use cannabis for medical benefit.
CJ Pearson, another person in the president’s orbit, said Trump’s “openness to rescheduling is research driven and shows he’s listening to the countless veterans whose lives have been changed for the better by its medicinal benefits.”
Mike Cernovich, a prominent MAGA figure who disavowed his prior support for marijuana legalization last year, has made a series of posts since Trump’s rescheduling announcement where he’s argued against reform, linking legalization to illicit grow operations and complaining about the smell of cannabis.
MAGA influencer Gunther Eagleman, for his part, embraced the push for rescheduling.
On Tuesday, for example, he promoted a bill from a Republican congressman that would legislatively move marijuana to Schedule III, writing that the legislation “will enable vital research for our veterans!”
“Rescheduling marijuana NEEDS to happen if we want to allow our veterans to improve their quality of life!” he said.
Bruce LeVell, a senior advisor to Trump over his three campaigns for president, has also been vocal about his support for reform, including ending prohibition altogether.
“As long as federal prohibition lingers, cartels and traffickers rake in the cash while the U.S. forfeits billions in tax revenue and job creation,” he said. “Legalize it, regulate it, and we can starve the black market, create thousands of good-paying jobs, boost local economies, and give people safe, legal choices.”
MAGA influencer Juanita Broaddrick also responded to Kirk’s post opposing the reform, emphasizing that rescheduling marijuana “doesn’t legalize it.”
“This won’t be an issue. I support Trump’s efforts to reschedule. (But I agree it shouldn’t be allowed in public spaces),” she said.
Trump didn’t clearly indicate one way or another how he intends to address the issue at the press conference earlier this week. In fact, his latest comments were significantly more ambiguous than his direct endorsement of rescheduling while he was campaigning for a second term.
But the conflicting responses from his core base of supporters indicate that at least some major figures in the MAGA sphere will ultimately be disappointed however he decides to approach rescheduling.
The overall bipartisanship of the issue, however, was also reflected in recent comments from one Democratic and one Republican member of Congress, who urged Trump to federally reschedule marijuana after he announced that a decision would come within weeks.
A new political committee that shares the same treasurer as Trump’s own super PAC is also pushing the president to follow through on rescheduling marijuana, releasing an ad that highlights his previous endorsement of the reform on the campaign trail.
The treasurer of the PAC, Charles Gantt, is the same person named as treasurer of Trump’s political committee, MAGA Inc., which recently reported receiving $1 million from a marijuana industry PAC that’s supported by multiple major cannabis companies.
That committee, the American Rights and Reform PAC, separately released ads in May that attacked former President Joe Biden’s marijuana policy record in an apparent attempt to push Trump to go further on the issue.
Separately, a post that recently circulated on social media appears to show that MAGA Inc., which is also referred to as also called Make America Great Again Inc., itself created an ad that touts Trump’s support for “commonsense reform” such as removing cannabis from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) and letting states set their own policies.
The ad ends with the narrator saying “Donald Trump for president,” however, indicating that it may have been prepared prior to the 2024 election.
The owner of the major gardening supply company Scotts Miracle-Gro recently said Trump has told him directly “multiple times” since taking office that he intends to see through the marijuana rescheduling process.
Trump’s former acting head of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) also recently predicted that the administration will soon “dig in” to the state-federal marijuana policy conflict, emphasizing the need to “eliminate confusion, not create it” amid the rescheduling push.
Meanwhile, Terrence Cole, who was sworn in last month as the new administrator of the DEA, declined to include rescheduling on a list of “strategic priorities” the agency that instead focused on anti-trafficking enforcement, Mexican cartels, the fentanyl supply chain, drug-fueled violence, cryptocurrency, the dark web and a host of other matters.
That’s despite the fact that Cole said during a confirmation hearing in April that examining the government’s pending marijuana rescheduling proposal would be “one of my first priorities” after taking office.
Last week, former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer predicted that Trump would not legalize marijuana, though that is a separate issue from the current rescheduling proposal under consideration.
Former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), who Trump initially nominated to serve as U.S. attorney general during the current term, has also renewed his call for cannabis rescheduling—saying the “game is over for Democrats at the ballot box” if the president moves forward on the reform.
Meanwhile, a strategic consulting and research firm associated with Trump—Fabrizio, Lee & Associates, LLC—conducted a survey of registered voters that showed a majority of Republicans back a variety of cannabis reforms.
Separately, the Republican governor of Indiana recently that, if Trump moves forward on federally rescheduling marijuana, the national reform could add “a little bit of fire” to the local push for cannabis legalization in his state.
