Ten days since the 2025 elections and President Donald Trump and his allies are reeling, reports Newsweek columnist Jesus Mesa.
“… [a] series of political blows [have] left his allies rattled, his base divided, and his once-durable administration suddenly strained,” said Mesa, explaining that the pain began with different Republican factions clawing one another after a bad off-year election.
“We got our a—— handed to us,” said Trump ally and failed Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy of the 2025 elections.
Trump “moved quickly to deflect blame,” said Mesa, declaring on his Truth Social site that “TRUMP WASN’T ON THE BALLOT,” and he insisted on a Fox News interview the next morning that, “It’s no good if we do a great job and [Republicans] don’t talk about it.”
But exit polls say voters were responding to broader concerns about the state of the country and especially the economy—which they firmly identify as Trump’s economy, Mesa said. Combined with the president’s faltering support among Latinos, voters routed Republicans by unexpected percentages that look bad for the upcoming mid-terms elections if the national mood doesn’t improve.
Then, right after the elections, Mesa said Trump enflamed his MAGA base with an interview with Laura Ingraham, where he was pressed on whether the U.S. should continue issuing H-1B visas for foreign tech workers.
Trump defended the program. “You do need to bring in talent,” he said, adding that the U.S. lacks certain skills for high-tech industries.
When Ingraham pushed back, saying, “We have plenty of talented people here,” Trump responded flatly: “No, you don’t.”
The “America First” MAGA influence-sphere exploded, accusing Trump of betrayal.
“On-again, off-again allies like Ann Coulter and other far-right figures lashed out, calling the comment a slap in the face to American workers,” reported Mesa. “By the next day, aides insisted Trump was talking about the failures of the U.S. education system, not American talent itself.”
And that was not the end, Mesa added. Just as Trump was declaring victory over the government a government shutdown, new revelations pulled convicted sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein back into the spotlight.
“On November 12 … the House Oversight Committee released more than 20,000 pages of files related to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, who died in 2019. Among them was an email from Epstein to author Michael Wolff claiming that Trump ‘knew about the girls.’ Other messages suggested Trump had hosted or spent time with women connected to Epstein at his private properties,” Mesa reported.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called the release a “Democratic hoax,” but Trump allies Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Nancy Mace, and Thomas Massie signed a bipartisan petition calling for a full vote to release all Epstein documents.
Trump did his perception of innocence no favors by personally calling Boebert “to try to get her to change her stance,” said Mesa, and he further aggravated the issue by announcing he had asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Epstein’s ties to former President Bill Clinton and other prominent Democrats, which Mesa argues will keep “the simmering scandal in the news for another day.”
And it’s not over.
“Next week, the House is scheduled to hold a floor vote requiring the Justice Department to release the full Epstein dossier, including thousands of unclassified documents, memos, and internal communications,” Mesa reported. “The vote was forced after Massie’s discharge petition secured the 218 signatures needed to bypass Speaker Mike Johnson.”
“We might as well just do it,” Johnson told reporters.
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