DC insider: The invincible Trump is cracking —and his allies are jumping ship

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a press briefing at the White House, January 20, 2026. REUTERS Nathan Howard

President Donald Trump is losing the war he started with Iran — and a political expert is warning the president will behave increasingly erratically because he psychologically cannot handle losing.

“We are witnessing what happens to a person who is consumed with the need to dominate, but cannot,” Robert Reich, who served as President Bill Clinton’s labor secretary, wrote for The Guardian on Friday. Describing Iran’s success in imposing economic pressure on the United States by blocking the Strait of Hormuz, and thereby rising prices on gas and food, Reich described Trump’s ongoing failure as “not just a serious geopolitical defeat for the United States; it’s a personal crisis for Trump. Those rising prices coupled with an increasingly unpopular war have increased the likelihood that Democrats will take back control of the House and even possibly the Senate in the upcoming midterms.”

Trump’s problem, Reich argued, is his inability to accept defeat from the perspective of his ego. This is why Trump attempted a coup after losing the 2020 presidential election despite the courts debunking his claims of fraud, and Trump is displaying similar erratic and violent behavior again because of his impending political defeat in the 2026 midterm elections.

As one example, Reich pointed to Trump’s “numerous social media posts, including a bizarre one ‘On Friday night, he posted an AI-generated image of himself, JD Vance, Marco Rubio and Doug Burgum, all shirtless and with young physiques, standing in the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial, along with an unidentifiable woman in a bikini.’” He also claimed that Trump “is fanatically seeking other ways to assert dominance” by attacking transgender college students and falsely accusing House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffried of “INCITING VIOLENCE” by calling for a “maximum warfare” redistricting campaign to counter Republican gerrymandering.

More ominously, though, Reich predicted that Trump would attempt another coup if he loses the 2026 midterms.

“What if Democrats win control of one or both chambers of Congress in the midterms and he claims they lost or cheated?” Reich wrote. “The nation barely survived the last time Trump’s fragile ego faced a major loss. We’ll also have to cope with Trump as a lame-duck president who can no longer dominate and gain submission as he did before. Will he try to remain president beyond his second term to avoid this?”

He concluded, “The man is unwell. Seriously unwell. Lame-duck presidents fade away, but injured dictators can be dangerous.”

Reich is not alone in worrying that Trump is mentally ill. Dozens of psychiatrists and other mental health professionals have written, either in congressional testimony or in private editorials, describing his behavior as troubling because it is consistent with cognitive decline. Speaking with AlterNet last week, psychiatrist Dr. Henry Abraham (formerly of Tufts University) — the chief signatory of a letter warning of Trump’s perceived decline — explained that “the president’s condition appears to be deteriorating,” adding that “there has been a frightening progression of symptoms. These include grandiosity without moral safeguards, paranoia, impulsivity, vindictiveness, easy misperception of being harmed, moments of omnipotence, uncontrolled rage, and sole control over the use of nuclear weapons in a time of war. As a psychiatrist reviewing these, I can only say Yikes!”

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