The first skirmishes of the civil war to define the future of the Republican Party were fought this week across the sprawling corridors of the Capitol. With Donald Trump’s verbose announcement speech serving as an intermission, the leadership contest among House Republicans on Tuesday and Senate Republicans on Wednesday marked some of the initial cleavages within the party in the aftermath of a disappointing midterm election.

Yet, unlike past intraparty wars, the battle lines are convoluted. This is not a simple fight between the Establishment and the Tea Party or between Trumpers and Never Trumpers. Instead, the party is splintered not just by ideology but also by allegiance to Trump, which is under new strain. The result has been akin to a party full of warlords, each with seemingly divergent alliances to each other.

The chaos was on display Tuesday, when an overwhelming majority of House Republicans voted to choose Kevin McCarthy as their nominee from Speaker by a margin of 188 to 31. That led two Trump foot soldiers to take entirely different views of what it meant to be MAGA on Capitol Hill.

As soon as the vote ended, Matt Gaetz appeared before reporters to bash McCarthy before he could take a victory lap. “Kevin McCarthy couldn’t get to 218 votes today. Couldn’t get to 200. Couldn’t get to 190. So to believe that Kevin is going to be Speaker, you have to believe that he’s going to move votes in the next six weeks that he couldn’t move in the last six years,” he said, referring to the next step in the process when the entire House will vote for Speaker in January, with a majority of 218 votes required to win.