The Guardian’s Moira Donegan tellsThe New Republic’s Perry Bacon that President Donald Trump’s declinein power is becoming impossible to ignore as his sway over Republicans diminishes.
“I think some of the weaknesses that are inherent to Trump in his second term are becoming a little more obvious,” Donegan said.
Donegan says that while Trump’s “changes to the constitutional paradigm” and empowerment of the executive branch won’t magically disappear, there are some notable challenges to the presidency.
“Trump seems to be in a degree of personal decline,” she said, and “that decline is becoming hard to ignore.”
The government shutdown, for one, “was actually quite damaging for Donald Trump,” Donegan said. “I think the persistence of high prices — particularly now, exacerbated as some of his tariffs go into effect — has been bad for Trump.”
Donegan also believes that the once fiercely loyal base of Republican lawmakers is finally starting to turn on Trump as they see the writing on the wall.
“The very cynical reception that the Supreme Court case about those tariffs got at oral argument fractured the notion that all of these Republican politicians and political operatives — among which I do count the Supreme Court justices, or at least the majority of them — are in a state of permanent and absolute obedience to Donald Trump. That’s beginning to crack,” she noted.
“Democratic wipeouts” at the November elections, coupled with a “fracturing within the MAGA coalition in the ranks below Donald Trump” are signs of this cracking. “[As] some of these more ambitious MAGA Republicans start to look toward their own post-Trump future, they’re beginning to position themselves to be best situated to ascend further after the old man exits the stage,” Donegan said.
These factors have led to Republican lawmakers pushing back on Trump and his policies.
“Now it seems like contradicting him is much more possible,” Donegan noted.
Trump’s physical decline is also hard to ignore, she said, as signs of aging and cognitive issues are apparent.
“I think Donald Trump is a little bit out to lunch. As the president, he is really showing his age,” she said.
“He’s not appearing in public as often, and when he does appear in public, he looks old — he looks like a much older man than he did in 2016, 2017, right? The stress of the presidency and the passage of time have had visible effects on a man who was never very robustly physically healthy to begin with,” according to Donegan.
Donegan said Trump’s role as president has been diminished as well.
“So I think what you have is a president who is occupying a kind of figurehead position, and then some very powerful but not very accountable people within his administration who are doing the actual work of governing,” she said.
“I’m thinking particularly of people like [Director of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB)] Russ Vought and [Deputy Chief of Staff] Stephen Miller,” she added.
As Vought, Miller and others effect policy change in the administration, Trump, she said, is busy doing other things.
“So I think his base is fracturing, his coalition is fracturing, and he’s spending a lot of time doing stuff that doesn’t seem to be helping,” she said.
“He’s throwing Gatsby parties at Mar-a-Lago during the government shutdown. He seems to spend the majority of his time on the ballroom build. And the destruction of the East Wing did have a symbolic hit in a way that maybe some people didn’t expect it to,” Donegan said.
“He seems to be interested in old-man projects — retiree stuff — that seems to be his personal preoccupation,” she added.
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