Trump denounced as he drags the GOP to a new low

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks as he hosts a Governors Dinner at the White House in Washington D.C., U.S., February 21, 2026. REUTERS Aaron Schwartz

Conservative columnist Nick Catoggio makes no bones about what President Donald Trump is doing to the once proud and policy-driven Republican Party — only now he says there doesn’t appear to be an end to the depth Trump has dragged it.

“Americans have stopped taking the president seriously about pretty much everything,” Catoggio told the Dispatch, referring to a poll published Thursday revealing that “trust in information from the federal government has declined since 2024, across issues ranging from the economy and health care to elections and politics.”

“Already dismally small when Trump returned to office last year, the share of people who say they have ‘a great deal’ or ‘quite a bit’ of confidence in what the feds tell them has since collapsed,” Catoggio said. In fact just 18 percent of respondents now say they have significant faith in what the government is telling them about inflation and the cost of living. And that, warned Catoggio, is the “largest share that expressed such confidence across any of the issues tested.”

“The bill has come due for 20 months of insultingly empty happy talk about tariffs as the key to prosperity and the war being over ‘soon,’” Catoggio said. “Trump is an unserious leader, and everyone whose livelihood and/or emotional well-being doesn’t depend on arguing otherwise now recognizes it.”

And Trump has done nothing for voter confidence in either the White House or political parties when he purported “to play Santa with taxpayer money,” by promising a “$5,000 bribe” if U.S. voters opt to keep the House and Senate in the hands of Republicans in November. It’s a promise that no one beyond “right-wing media types is taking … seriously,’ said Catoggio, and only then “out of obligation.”

Meanwhile the Dow and S&P 500 are revealing their own confidence in Trump by opening “down this morning despite the head of state dangling a $1.3 trillion cash stimulus for the economy on national television.”

Bondholders are also “blasé about the market,” he said and they are treating most of Trump’s claims as an “empty campaign promise.” It’s also reacting realistically to Trump’s mounting national debt.

This may explain why Trump is already laying the groundwork for massive losses in November, said Catoggio, even going so far as to scramble some of his endorsements.

“Trump was warned that endorsing the lavishly corrupt [senatorial candidate Ken] Paxton over incumbent John Cornyn would put Texas in play and potentially cost the GOP the Senate. He was also certainly warned that Paxton is a lazy campaigner and poor fundraiser whom the president would inevitably need to rescue financially with gobs of spending from his own super PAC,” said Catoggio.

“All of that has come to pass. If Paxton ends up fumbling away a gimme Senate seat in Texas, Trump will eat mountains of crow for having backed him over Cornyn. And so the new gag in his speeches is probably a preemptive attempt at disowning defeat: Alas, not even I could drag this slovenly gargoyle over the finish line,” is Catoggio’s argument.

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