The same power that helped put President Donald Trump in the White House in 2016 and 2024 may now be out of his grasp, according to one conservative commentator.
During a Tuesday interview with MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace, journalist Charlie Sykes — a prominent Never Trump conservative – opined that Trump's ongoing trade war with China has exposed what could be a fatal flaw for the president. When Wallace pointed out that Trump won a second term based on his promises to rein in costs for basic needs and restore "manliness and masculinity" for young men, Sykes agreed, arguing that voters are starting to notice Trump has fallen short of what he promised last year.
"It's astonishing on so many different levels," Sykes said. "Donald Trump's main appeal is that he's promising prosperity, safety and strength. And what are we actually getting? ... He's undermining all of those things that he ran on."
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Sykes went on to suggest that Trump's attempts to "bully" Amazon and Walmart into not displaying the added cost of tariffs and insisting they eat the cost of the new trade duties is backfiring, and showing that Trump is betraying his conservative credentials. And he posited that one of Trump's biggest strengths as a politician is now quickly eroding.
"One of the things that is astonishing is watching the leader of the formerly free-market, pro-freedom party adopt policies that if they were being enunciated by Democrats, they would call them neo-Marxists," Sykes said. "Can you imagine if Barack Obama or Kamala Harris had said, 'no, you only need two dolls. You only need five pencils.' ... This is the kind of rhetoric that you never would have expected to come from a conservative Republican.
"The one thing about Donald Trump that i give him credit for ... is that he's always had a reptilian instinct about what sells. And I feel that it's slipping away from him," Sykes said. "...People are going to walk into the store and go, 'what's with this? How come all of this costs so much?' And, you know, I don't think he's going to be able to sell Americans on the golden age when we're actually making Barbies in Indiana as opposed to — and they may cost twice as much — as opposed to China. But this is a real problem and it's going to get worse."
Watch the segment below, or by clicking this link.
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