President Trump has been dining with Wall Street bigwigs. He has embarked on an opulent revamp of the White House at a time when Americans are struggling to pay their bills. He has expressed support for granting visas to skilled foreigners to take jobs in the United States. He approved a $20 billion bailout for Argentina, helping a foreign government and wealthy investors at a moment when the U.S. government was shut down.
For a president who returned to office promising to avoid foreign entanglements, make life more affordable and ensure that available jobs go to American citizens, it has been a significant departure from the expectations of his loyal base. And it is starting to open a rift with his supporters who were counting on a more aggressively populist agenda.
The divisions within Mr. Trump’s movement, spawned by his own actions, have been only amplified by the latest developments on a story that he has been doing his best to quash: his relationship with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Much of the president’s MAGA movement, and many of his top aides, pushed for years for all the investigative files on the Epstein case to be made public, insisting that a rich and well-connected man — and his network of wealthy and powerful friends — needed to be held accountable for any abuse of young women.
But Mr. Trump, who has emphatically denied any involvement in or knowledge of Mr. Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation, showed again this week that he was resisting further disclosures, leaving a small but vocal group of Republicans angry over his about-face, and risking a further rupture in the movement heading into next year’s midterm elections.
“When they’re protecting pedophiles, when they are blowing our budget, when they are starting their wars overseas, I’m sorry, I can’t go along with that,” Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, said on CNN this week. “And back home, people agree with me. They understand. Even the most ardent Trump supporters understand.”
Trump allies are aware that his more populist message has become muddled in recent months, as the president has spent time courting wealthy donors and making no secret of his desire to win a Nobel Peace Prize for his work on foreign conflicts.
Mr. Trump told aides recently that he might attend the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, a gathering of the political and business elite, according to two people familiar with the matter. Some of his advisers, however, feel such a trip would send the wrong message at a moment when they are trying to recapture a political edge on the economy.
And as some Republicans called on Mr. Trump to become more involved in negotiations to end the longest government shutdown in American history, he largely kept the issue at a distance. During that time, he hosted dinners for wealthy donors of his ballroom project, provided social media updates about his White House bathroom renovation and held a lavish “Great Gatsby” Halloween party with the theme “a little party never killed nobody.”
In recent days, particularly as the shutdown has come to an end, his administration has shifted to talking more about affordability. That was the main message coming out of the White House on Wednesday, when Congressional lawmakers released the latest trove of Epstein emails.
“As the architect of the MAGA movement, President Trump will always put America First,” Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement. “Every single day he’s working hard to continue fulfilling the many promises he made and he will continue delivering.”
Mr. Trump has repeatedly insisted, wrongly, that grocery prices are down. He has teased a 50-year mortgage plan, which critics point out would do nothing to address the supply of homes; and has floated $2,000 payments funded by his tariffs. But details over who will be eligible for the money and when Americans can expect checks remain unclear.
The economy has become all the more urgent after last week’s elections, when Democrats scored important victories by seizing on concerns about the cost of living.
“The White House is clearly not the best at selling economic ideas,” said Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s former chief strategist, adding that he had urged the White House to host more domestic officials in the Oval Office.
He noted that, as Democrats swept to their electoral victories last week, Mr. Trump met with officials from Central Asia, Hungary and Syria.
“If you’re going to have the president of Syria, that’s fine,” Mr. Bannon said. He added: “Next one’s domestic. One Syria, next one’s domestic.”
When asked on Monday about Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, who recently said she would like to see a plan put forth on health care and “nonstop meetings” at the White House on “domestic policy not foreign policy,” Mr. Trump told reporters that his onetime ally had “lost her way.”
“When you’re president, you really sort of have to watch over the world because you’re going to be dragged into it,” said Mr. Trump, who argued in his first term that the United States could no longer be a “policeman of the world.”
“When somebody makes a statement about, ‘he’s devoting time to the world,’ well the world is the United States,” he added.
Dave Carney, a Republican strategist who ran Preserve America, a pro-Trump super PAC, said he could understand the frustration with Mr. Trump’s focus on foreign affairs, but he said it was simply one part of the president’s agenda.
“There’s not a domestic agenda and a foreign policy agenda that are separate,” he said. “They are all part of making America better and saving money.”
Mr. Trump has brushed off the idea that there are any significant splits in his base.
“Don’t forget, MAGA was my idea,” Mr. Trump told Laura Ingraham of Fox News this week. “I know what MAGA wants better than anybody else.”
Ms. Ingraham was pressing Mr. Trump over how his support for welcoming hundreds of thousands of Chinese students into the United States was a “pro-MAGA position,” given his campaign promises to tighten immigration to the United States.
“I want to be able to get along with the world,” Mr. Trump said.
He later argued in favor of providing H-1B visas for highly skilled immigrant workers because Americans lacked “certain talents.” That visa program has pitted immigration hard-liners — many of whom voted for Mr. Trump for his tough stance on the issue — against tech industry leaders, who say they cannot find enough qualified American workers.
And while Mr. Trump and his aides have argued that he has successfully secured peace and trade deals overseas that will help Americans in the long run, some of Mr. Trump’s supporters see a break from his “America First” pledge.
Recent polling suggests his approval is down. According to an AP-NORC poll, 33 percent of American adults approve of the way Mr. Trump is managing the government, down from 43 percent earlier this year. About 68 percent of Republicans said they approved of Mr. Trump’s management, down from 81 percent in March.
Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, acknowledged on Thursday that there was economic anxiety across the nation.
“We understand that people understand, as people look at their pocketbooks to go to the grocery store, that there’s still work to do,” Mr. Hassett said. He said the drop in real purchasing power in recent years was “something that we’re going to fix, and we’re going to fix it right away.”
David Lapan, who recently left his position as senior adviser to the under secretary for benefits at the Department of Veterans Affairs, said he felt Mr. Trump had drifted away from important campaign pledges now that he was in office.
“The messaging before was a means to an end to get elected, but once elected that can all fall by the wayside,” said Mr. Lapan, who has also worked for the Homeland Security Department and the Pentagon.
Mr. Lapan noted that many of the veterans who might have been energized by Mr. Trump’s campaign rhetoric relied on the food stamps he had fought against funding now that he was back in office.
“Now that he’s in office, the mask comes off and it’s all about taking care of himself and fellow billionaires and millionaires,” Mr. Lapan said. “He’s an elitist.”
Zolan Kanno-Youngs is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
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