Three signs Trump's presidency is in a death spiral

President Donald Trump entered his second term with significant political advantages but, according to a former Washington Post political journalist, a “trifecta” of political blunders has put his presidency into “freefall.”

“Consider three of the biggest developments in our politics right now,” Greg Sargent wrote for The New Republic. “We just learned that the economy lost 92,000 jobs, a capstone to a terrible year in terms of job creation. President Trump has fired widely despised Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, a key architect of his mass deportations. And reports are indicating that the killing of scores of Iranian schoolchildren might have been the handiwork of the United States.”

While these three news items might seem unrelated, Sargent argued that the poor economy, his controversial immigration policies and the Iran war are all linked as part of a “trifecta” by which Trump “is frittering away the strength he and Republicans have enjoyed in recent years on three major GOP-friendly issues: The economy, immigration, and national security.”

According to Sargent, this was not inevitable. “When Trump took office last year, it was reasonable to fear that the American public would rally behind mass deportations and tariffs—that is, embrace two of the main tenets of right-wing nationalism,” he opined. “Meanwhile, the launch of the largest military attack in the Mideast in decades might have plausibly produced a rally-around-the-war-president effect. None of that is happening. And that’s significant in not-so-obvious ways.”

Sargent observed that Trump has eroded the public’s confidence in his ability to do his job at a basic level of competence. For perhaps the first time in American history, “no rally-around-the-flag effect is materializing” after America’s involvement in a major war. Citing a CNN poll which shows 59 percent of Americans do not trust Trump to make the right decisions regarding Iran, Sargent speculated that Trump and top foreign policy aides like Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are miscalculating the spirit of the American public.

“I guarantee you that Miller and Hegseth believe a latent majority out there is quietly rallying behind zero-sum malignant nationalism (tariffs regardless of the consequences), the treatment of all undocumented immigrants as criminals (mass deportations), and a kill-first-think-later military posture (what Hegseth calls the “warrior ethic”),” Sargent wrote. “This calculus assumes most voters will unthinkingly glimpse ‘strength’ in nationalist belligerence, in unshackled state violence at home and abroad, in nakedly authoritarian abuses of power.” They assume that as long as Trump persecutes the right “enemies” — “whether they’re Euroweenie elites, ‘criminal illegal aliens,’ or what Miller calls the ‘savages’ in the Mideast” — Americans will rally behind them.

“That supreme hubris is now breaking up on the shoals of Trump’s malevolence and incompetence on tariffs, his undisguised white nationalist brutality on immigration, and his sociopathic warmongering amid an obvious lack of any real war rationale,” Sargent concluded.

Trump’s political weakness is already evident in the special elections that have occurred since he took office. In these, he has been 0 for 9, with NBC News reporting that since Trump took office last year “Republicans have not flipped a single state seat controlled by Democrats.”

Mona Charen, a conservative commentator for The Bulwark, argued in February that Trump’s tariffs in particular are taking a terrible toll on Republicans’ 2026 midterm chances.

“Voters are rarely able to connect policy to outcomes, but they have done so in the case of tariffs,” Charen explained. “Back in 2024, Americans were about equally divided on the question of trade, with some favoring higher tariffs and roughly similar numbers opting for lower tariffs. Experience has changed their views.”

Because Trump’s political prospects are so poor, and historically presidents do poorly in their second-term midterm elections, conservative historian Robert Kagan told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that he is worried Trump will not accept the results if they go against him.

“It's clear that he has no intention of allowing the elections to play out and allow a Democratic victory,” Robert Kagan told CNN's Christiane Amanpour. “And I think it's important to understand his motives here. He knows perfectly well that, in effect, his presidency will be greatly diminished once the Democrats take either one or both of the Houses.”

Kagan added, “He himself is saying right now that he'll be impeached, and that is why he wants to prevent the Democrats from taking power.”

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