Whatever else you may say about him, President Donald Trump is a consummate salesman. As former House speaker Newt Gingrich once noted to me, the former real estate tycoon did a brilliant job with his campaign slogan: It wasn’t “Trump for President”; it was “Make America Great Again.” Despite his outsize ego, he kept the focus on the country, not on his own ambition. But Trump’s normally deft marketing touch has deserted him during his second term.
In the CNN Poll of Polls, 36 percent approved of his job performance, while 63 percent disapproved. That’s far below the historical average for presidents. He is even more unpopular abroad — and international disapproval of the president has translated into disapproval of the country he leads. A Pew Research Center poll of 36 countries, conducted earlier this summer, found that 76 percent of respondents had “no confidence” in Trump and 57 percent had an unfavorable opinion of the United States. In most of the countries Pew surveyed, people had a more positive impression of China than of the U.S.
There are many factors that explain the collapse of Trump’s support — he has, after all, pursued unnecessary and unsuccessful policies, ranging from trade wars to his actual war with Iran, that have exacerbated voters’ concerns about “affordability.” What makes it all worse is that Trump makes almost no attempt to win over either domestic or foreign audiences to his views. Instead of cajoling or convincing, he tries to coerce and compel others to do what he wants.
Earlier this year, he refused to rule out military action to annex Greenland — a threat that European countries took seriously enough to dispatch their forces to defend Danish sovereignty.
Last month, Trump threatened to impose tariffs on Canada to punish it for wildfires that were blowing smoke into the U.S. One day later, the Trump administration imposed 50 percent tariffs on many Canadian goods, claiming that they were unrelated to the wildfires.
Then last week, Trump threatened to “bomb the shit” out of Oman if it gets “in the way” of his administration’s talks with Iran. I can’t remember any previous president making such a blunt public threat against an ally, but for Trump it’s become routine.
Trump also suddenly announced that he was reducing joint military exercises with South Korea, citing not only his supposedly “very good relationship” with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un but also South Korea’s unwillingness to join Trump’s war against Iran. He had earlier threatened to withdraw U.S. troops from Spain and Italy if they didn’t do more to help in the fight against Iran.
The irony is that South Korea now has a president, Lee Jae Myung, who shares Trump’s (most probably futile) hopes of renewing diplomacy with North Korea, so it would not have been hard for Trump to work out a joint stance with Seoul. But he didn’t bother. By acting unilaterally and suggesting he was doing so in part to punish South Korea, he opened a rift with another close ally.
Trump’s conduct abroad is mirrored at home, where he has never made any effort to win support beyond his MAGA base. Instead of trying to win over skeptics and critics, he targets them for retribution, whether by cutting funds to “woke” universities, launching prosecutions of political opponents or dispatching immigration agents and National Guard troops to Democratic cities.
His strategy is backfiring badly. Judges have blocked many of his executive edicts and dismissed several of his politically motivated prosecutions. Trump’s opponents aren’t intimidated; they’re energized. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Arizona) has turned unsuccessful Pentagon efforts to punish him (for warning troops not to follow illegal orders) into a staple of his stump speech.
Trump’s coercive tactics are also failing miserably abroad. His inability to defeat Iran after almost six months has emboldened its hard-line regime; it continues to hold the Strait of Hormuz hostage and refuses to discuss its nuclear program. U.S. allies aren’t helping to reopen the strait despite Trump’s demands. Meanwhile, countries including Canada and China have pushed back against Trump’s extortionate tariffs, leading him to pull back in many instances.
Even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, one of Trump’s few foreign friends, has defied White House pressure to withdraw from Gaza, to crack down on radical Israeli violence in the West Bank and to stop bombing Syrian military installations.
Trump’s ability to intimidate has dramatically eroded because the whole world has seen how empty many of his threats are. He is not, for example, going to bomb Oman. He talks big but backs down so often that “TACO” (Trump Always Chickens Out) has become a popular acronym.
Here’s a radical and undoubtedly quixotic suggestion for the final 2½ years of Trump’s presidency: Instead of trying to bludgeon the entire world into submission, maybe he should try persuasion instead. A good start would be giving serious speeches to explain and justify his policies, as previous presidents have done, rather than relying on bombastic social media posts — often designed to outrage and infuriate — to get his message out.
Many of Trump’s goals, from ending Iran’s nuclear program to getting allies to contribute more to mutual defense, are actually reasonable. But his bullyboy tactics have boomeranged. Where are his vaunted marketing skills when they are needed most?
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