The Atlantic’s Jonathan Lemire says the president who “staged a historic political comeback” a few months ago is feeling discouraged.
Some of his central campaign promises to end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and boost the economy are derailing before his eyes, said Lemire. His economy is showing new signs of weakness just in time for him to prove to his voters that he is not a “TACO” (Trump Always Chickens Out) president, that he will not back down on painful tariffs that are pushing U.S. prices even higher.
“Those geopolitical and economic headwinds have been joined by forceful political ones,” writes Lemire. “Since going out on August recess, Republican lawmakers have been heckled at town halls while trying to defend the president’s signature legislative accomplishment, the One Big Beautiful Bill. And some of those same Republicans, in a rare act of rebellion, have questioned Trump’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein matter, a scandal that the president, try as he may, simply has been unable to shake.”
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“The mood in the White House has darkened in the past month,” said Lemire, adding that an anonymous source also tells him Trump is unsure how to directly punish Putin if Moscow doesn’t meet a ceasefire deadline with Ukraine. He knows the U.S. already has little trade with Russia, but the White House is leery of imposing secondary sanctions on other nations that do business with Moscow, including China.
Trump also wants the humanitarian crisis in Palestine to end, but sources tell Lemire that Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has tied the president’s hands, even though Trump suspects Netanyahu is intentionally prolonging the war.
Meanwhile, back at home, Lemire reports Trump’s faithful Republican lawmakers who passed his unpopular budget bill are having a difficult time defending their actions to their own voters.
“Representative Mike Flood was loudly heckled by a hostile crowd at a town hall in his Nebraska district on Monday,” Lemire said, but White House officials tell him the best the White House can offer is to “advise Republican members against holding too many in-person town halls.”
And then there's Epstein.
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“Trump has desperately wished the story away,” writes Lemire. “He feels deeply betrayed by his MAGA supporters who believed him when he intimated during the campaign that something was nefarious about the government’s handling of the case, and who now have a hard time believing him when he says their suspicions are actually bogus.”
The president now snaps at reporters asking about Epstein. He told House Speaker Mike Johnson to send Congress home early to avoid a vote on whether to release the Epstein files, and he has sued his friend Rupert Murdoch for $10 billion after The Wall Street Journal reported Trump “had sent Epstein a lewd birthday card in 2003.”
“Murdoch hasn’t backed down. Neither have a number of MAGA luminaries and Republican lawmakers who keep demanding to see the files,” Lemire reports. “Trump’s own efforts to manage the story have only fed it.”
When faced with this storm of problems, Lemire said Trump appears to be “trying to create his own reality, seeming to will away the challenges.”
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Lemire said Trump insisted on CNBC that he has “the best poll numbers I’ve ever had.” But when the anchor pointed out that the numbers he’s referencing represent his approval among Republicans, “all Trump could do was call the whole thing ‘fake.’”
Read the full Atlantic report at this link.