Trump’s final rope is 'snapping strand by strand': analysis

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to the media before boarding Marine One upon departure for New York, in Washington, D.C., U.S., September 11, 2025. REUTERS Evelyn Hockstein

Conservative Dispatch columnist Nick Catoggio says non-MAGA mutiny is finally burying President Donald Trump and his Republican machine, and of course Trump has only himself and his venal personal interest to blame.

Well … that and war.

Interpreting polls is usually a “fool’s errand,” said Catoggio, but there’s no denying the numbers when they’re splashing one bucket of slop after another on your head, as Trump’s personal popularity appears to be doing. Trump’s job approval frequently dips below 40 percent, but it’svery unusual for him to fall as low as 35 percent — and he’s done it three times in the last nine national surveys.

This, said Catoggio, means some “meaningful segment of his base appears to have left him,” and Fox News knows exactly who it is.

“I’m tempted to speculate that the mutineers are … Reaganite conservatives whose tribal tether to the GOP has been snapping, strand by strand, over the past 10 years as the weight of their disgust at the state of the right has grown. At last, perhaps, the final atavistic strand has broken,” said Catoggio, pointing to 18 percent of conservatives preferring Democratic Texas senatorial candidate James Talarico.

“It ain’t just the RINOs who are tilting Democratic this time,” Catoggio said. “GOP operatives are worried about it too.”

Internal data shared with the Washington Post last week revealed a “lack of enthusiasm reaching deep into Republicans’ loyal base, spreading to the party’s most consistent voters — who have shown up to vote in all of the past four primaries and general elections.”

One director of an outside right-wing group estimated about 1 in 5 “reliable Republican base voters” in battleground states are considering staying home in November or voting for a Democrat.

This group includes Reaganites, as well as “Roganites,” the Joe Rogan demographic of young men who came for the lower inflation and the decimation of “woke” policies, not continued high prices and war. And you can round things off with freshly hateful Hispanics who still identify as Republican but can’t stand Trump.

Of course, this is about the war, which Catoggio describes as a “fiasco” and “the biggest policy blunder in either of Trump’s terms in office. … And practically every voter in America, left or right, understands that it’s hurting their personal bottom line by driving up gas prices and inflation more broadly.”

But then there’s the corruption, he added, which has “at last grown so promiscuous and degenerate that even elements of the lowly American right have begun to feel sick about it.”

“I’m inclined to dismiss that theory, having been conditioned by the last 10 years to believe there’s literally no behavior so diseased that Republicans won’t overlook or excuse it to preserve a partisan advantage,” said Catoggio, but everybody appears to have their limit.

Take Trump’s “cash for MAGA criminals” slush fund, as Catoggio calls it. The same law inoculates Trump and his family from future IRS scrutiny. And two GOP senators, as a condition of supporting Trump’s AG nominee Todd Blanche, are demanding in writing that the thing is dead, but Trump won’t allow it.

“Forced to choose between getting his nominee confirmed and protecting an indefensibly corrupt abuse of power that places him beyond legal accountability for financial crimes, he’s prioritizing corruption,” said Catoggio. “…All they want from Trump and his deputy is a written promise that he won’t proceed with it if they vote yes. And still, he won’t do it. There is no public interest that he values more highly than his venal and vindictive personal interests, and the evidence of that has grown so overwhelming lately that even some Republican voters might be struggling to cope.”

Catoggio said he believes they’re mostly fine with letting Trump “behave as corruptly as he likes, as that’s part of the unstated price of admission in this rotten coalition.” But some non-MAGA Republicans’ loyalty was always conditional on cheaper groceries and may have grown embarrassed by the president being so open about corruption.

“He’s flaunting the impunity they’ve granted him, almost daring them to do something about it,” said Catoggio. “Maybe they will.”

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