The ghost of 1932 —and the reckoning threatening to kill the GOP

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) speak at the Republican National Midterm Convention in Dallas, Texas, U.S., September 10, 2026.

I have been thinking about why Donald Trump is so unpopular. The conventional wisdom is that it's because he broke his promises – to bring down costs, to stay out of wars, to release the Epstein files. But I think it's important to focus on what's beneath that and bring it forward, and it's this: Trump lies and those who still believe his lies are increasingly few.

Consider groceries. The president has been concocting a fantasy about the cost of food going down since his return to the White House. "The prices for groceries have come way down from Biden," Trump told reporters last month. "Almost every price has come way down.” He has repeated this lie frequently, but not many seem to believe it. A new CBS News poll found that "70 percent say the president's policies are raising the cost of food and groceries, and 64 percent said the war in Iran is driving oil and gas prices much higher."

Knowing this, he has resorted to bribery. At rallies last night and over the weekend, the president repeated the offer of giving $5,000 to every adult citizen if the Republicans keep the Congress. That kind of cash might be tempting for people struggling to make ends meet, but it also depends on trusting him to follow through, which he has not done with previous offers. In any case, trust isn't showing up in polling. The AP's latest polling shows just "17 percent of US adults approve of the Republican president’s handling of the cost of living."

To be sure, Trump broke his promises, but they were lies, part of a galaxy of lies he's been telling for a decade. They were bound to catch up with him, as more people feel the consequences of believing them. It seems to me there's now a pattern in which the more he lies, the more voters distrust him, and the more voters distrust him, the more he lies. During a rally last night, Trump repeated his bribery offer: "Only I can make this promise to you," he said. "This is a big promise, but I've met so many. I've met all my promises, all my promises."

That majorities are losing faith in Donald Trump is one thing. That they are getting increasingly angry in reaction to his continued lying is another. The rage is building such that the backlash may not be limited to him but also include the political project that brought him. On Monday, CNN's Harry Enten, in noting that Trump's approval in Kansas is down by 20 points compared to the same time during his first term, said: "Donald Trump is probably at this point in his term the least popular Republican president since Herbert Hoover."

Herbert Hoover's defeat in 1932 marked the end of an era and the beginning of a long period of dominance by the Democrats under Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. Hoover tried to remedy the destruction caused by the Great Depression, but his policies ended up making it worse. Not only did he lose, his party was discredited. Fair or not, his name became a byword for incompetence, greed and corruption. From his time until 1994, the Democrats controlled the House for 66 years, a period broken only by two years of GOP control in the 1950s.

I don't know if history is going to repeat itself, but it's worth noting what Hakeem Jeffries said in February. Polls were showing a swing in approval among independent voters away from Trump by more than 40 points. At the time, the House minority leader compared those numbers to "an extinction-level event." Since then, Trump launched a war against Iran, oil and diesel prices broke records, mortgage rates rose higher and inflation outpaced wages. Trump's approval rating among independent voters reflects that progression. Eight months ago, the indie swing against him was more than 40 points. Now, according to Enten, it's 99.

Roosevelt was mostly responsible for discrediting the Republicans for a generation. Trump, however, is creating potential for that by himself. On Wednesday, he said he was considering a ban on diesel exports. That came as a relief to vulnerable GOP incumbents and candidates, who are facing rage at home. Two days later, however, the president said there would be no ban. Indeed, after G7 countries in Europe said they would release some of their reserves, Reuters asked if he would still consider a ban. "We were never going to do it," he replied.

On Monday, Trump said he would consider an executive order that would suspend federal taxes on diesel. But as GasBuddy's Patrick De Haan said, that wouldn't lower prices in the long term. It could raise them, he said, as it would increase demand without increasing supply. The best solution to the energy crisis is ending the war and reopening the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran's threats have driven shipping costs skyward. According to Bloomberg's Javier Blas, the daily price for hiring a supertanker to move oil through the Gulf has spiked roughly 2,500 percent. It was $50,000 a day before the war, Blas said. Now it's $1.3 million.

The war, of course, is the mother of all lies. Trump has been saying it will end from the day it started. And he keeps repeating the lie despite evidence to the contrary. Last night, in Nebraska, he vowed that the war is "essentially almost over with." Prices will fall after the midterms, he said. "It's going to end very soon, and it's going to end one way or the other."

But few believe it. The war "will carry on as it has," wrote Ali Vaez last week in Foreign Affairs. "There will not be a comprehensive resolution. There will be no lasting peace deal. ... There will be no dramatic escalation, either. Tehran and Washington won’t be defeated. Yet no one will win." Tucker Carlson agrees. Noting that Trump appears to have used AI to decide to go to war, he said "it is hard to imagine clearer proof that the people running our country are nothing close to the geniuses they want you to think they are. They are faking it as they go. There is no master plan; the White House is not playing 4D chess. Or even checkers."

There are two more years to go. No matter what happens in November, Trump will still be in charge of a war no one asked for. He will still burn up the economy. He will still lie about his role. (Oil executives said last week that diesel prices "will not" return to normal for a year.) No one knows how bad it's going to get, but Republicans under Trump could face the same fate that Republicans faced under Herbert Hoover. Majorities already associate Trump's name with incompetence, greed and corruption. By 2028, that opinion could be unanimous.

The Democrats are prepared to hasten that moment. The DNC released a campaign video last week that featured a clip from Don't Look Up, a movie about scientists trying to warn of a meteor hurtling toward Earth – "an extinction-level event," as Hakeem Jeffries might say. In the clip, actor Leonardo DiCaprio screams into the TV camera as if he were giving voice to the mounting rage against Donald Trump and the Republicans: "The president of the United States is ------- lying! This whole administration has completely lost their ------- minds!"

Two more years from now, that may be common knowledge.

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