Opinion The Donald Trump magic is past its heyday
Republicans are recalculating. Fear of a primary challenge from Trump once kept them obedient. Now their greater anxiety may be the Democrat on the election ballot
US President Donald Trump. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) The diminution of US President Donald Trump’s powers and the loss of his ability to bulldoze the Republicans seems to have begun earlier than most predicted. And how things change! If the Democrats spent much of this year in shell-shocked silence, the 2025 electoral cycle — two gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey, and the mayoral election in New York — have reversed the mood. Republicans look rattled confronting what has emerged as Trump’s biggest vulnerability: The economy.
Americans seem increasingly frustrated with Trump’s handling of inflation and the cost of living, two issues key to his re-election last November. There is an irony here. Trump rode a wave of economic pessimism to re-election, but in New York, his ideological polar opposite, Zohran Mamdani, won on almost the same plank: Promising relief from high living costs, in Trump’s own home turf, New York. That convergence of message, and the speed with which it translated into electoral losses for Republicans, is a warning sign the White House cannot ignore.
His ratings have plunged in the chaotic wake of his tariff onslaught. London-based YouGov’s data suggests Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration, another issue central to his re-election. If there were expectations of the presidential honeymoon lasting till the midterms, that hope seems to have been cut short.
A US President’s honeymoon period is generally seen to be an extended window after their inauguration during which they continue to see elevated approval ratings until they fall below 50-55 per cent. This period has been shrinking for decades. President Dwight Eisenhower’s honeymoon lasted over three years, according to Gallup (using the less than 55 per cent approval rating yardstick); JFK’s 32 months, and Richard Nixon’s 14. Joe Biden’s honeymoon lasted six months, permanently falling below 55 per cent in July 2021. Trump has set a new record low.
At the start of his second term, public opinion was even Stevens. His approval rating has reached its lowest point 10 months into his second term and is the lowest since he left office in 2021, according to a new survey by Gallup released last week, which showed his approval rating at 36 per cent, with 60 per cent disapproving of how Trump’s handled the job since returning to the White House in January.
The immediate policy trigger for Trump’s slump is his tariff regime. After weeks of bluster, he was forced to backpedal, issuing executive orders in mid-November exempting a range of essential imports, including coffee, bananas and beef, from sweeping tariffs amid mounting public anger over rising prices. The latest is a flip-flop on high-end Nvidia chips to China.
Add to this the roiling within: The stonewalling by some Republican senators during the government shutdown; noises over Trump’s demolition and kitsch construction in the White House. The biggest one, of course, is the pushback by his MAGA base. On the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, which forced Trump to do an uncharacteristic U-turn on the issue of releasing the files. This was epitomised by Marjorie Taylor Greene’s transformation from Trump’s staunchest MAGA flagbearer to being branded a “traitor” by the man she once venerated.
John Bolton, who served as Trump’s national security adviser before the two fell out, captured the moment neatly: “Trump is now on the downhill slope. That doesn’t guarantee the rate of dissent or how far it goes, but it’s a little bit like the Wizard of Oz. You pull the curtain back, and suddenly everybody’s operating in a different world. I think that’s happening,” he told The Economist.
Some of this may be Bolton’s wishful thinking but behind the curtain, there’s a shift. Mamdani’s reception in the Oval Office was dramatically warmer than many had expected given their bitter standoff. Some see it as Trump’s attempt to recalibrate after the November setback.
What is clear is that Republicans are recalculating. Fear of a primary challenge from Trump once kept them obedient. Now their greater anxiety may be the Democrat on the election ballot. Institutional pushback is also mounting. Most of the US Supreme Court judges hearing arguments in the case challenging Trump’s sweeping use of emergency tariffs in early November seemed to doubt their legality for one reason or another. An adverse verdict could potentially have major knock-on implications. Earlier, the top court allowed Lisa Cook — one of the members of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System — to continue in her job for at least a few months until it heard arguments in a case over whether the President can sack her.
For now, the big boom in artificial intelligence has kept US markets humming, drowning out the noise of inflation ticking up and rumblings of deeper economic weaknesses. That could come unstuck if the bubble were to even partially deflate; a crash could deepen Trump’s dent. New Delhi, working hard to navigate the choppy Washington waters, could do well to keep an eye out for these shifting winds.
The writer is national business editor, The Indian Express anil.sasi@expressindia.com
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