Trump faces looming reckoning as he confronts future irrelevance: report

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks with the media while walking with Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), U.S. Capitol, in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 24, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

President Donald Trump cannot run for a third term in the 2028 presidential election, has failed to convince the Senate to do all of his bidding and is shedding segments of his once-sturdy political base. Now a political analyst has an argument as to why, and it’s a venerable one: The passage of time

Recent months have delivered a reckoning for Trump, who has crashed hard against some real limits,” wrote The Atlantic's Jonathan Lemire on Tuesday. “The war in Iran, a conflict that he’d once thought would take only a few weeks, hit the five-month mark today. The U.S. casualty count is growing, weapons stockpiles are running low, and gas prices are again surging. Trump desperately wants the war to end. He is receiving conflicting guidance from his advisers—escalate, some urge, as others tell him to cut and run—and has become just the latest U.S. president to be humiliated by hard-liners in Tehran.”

He added, “Trump is also flailing domestically. His approval numbers have sunk, and Republicans are finally, in small doses, beginning to defy him. Trump has demanded that the Senate blow up the filibuster to pass the SAVE Act, which would make voting more difficult and require voters to provide proof of citizenship. But Republicans have refused.”

In addition to occurring because Trump is increasingly unpopular on issues like his handling of the war and his fixation with the 2020 election Big Lie, Lemire argued that this is also happening because Trump is simply nearing the end of his second term — and, with it, his political pertinence.

“Once the midterms are over, Trump could face his worst fear: irrelevance,” Lemire explained. “He will be a lame duck, down to his final two years in office, and at some point will no longer be the nation’s top topic of conversation. As focus shifts to the presidential primaries, Trump risks disappearing from the headlines. Even some of his closest allies don’t know how he’ll react.”

Overall, Lemire said that this will make Trump unpredictable, as he is unlikely to be satisfied with the lame duck status that usually occurs when presidents pass the midterm elections of their second terms.

“But even those in Trump’s inner circle aren’t sure what to expect if people start talking about him less,” Lemire wrote. “The political calendar is relentless: Once the midterms clear, Washington will turn its focus to the 2028 presidential campaign. With no incumbent in the race and no clear front-runner in either party, it will be as wide-open as any race in decades. Trump may no longer be among each day’s top stories—arguably for the first time since he came down the Trump Tower escalator more than a decade ago.”

He concluded, “It’s not as if he will suddenly vanish; he’ll aim to play GOP kingmaker, and he’ll still be commander in chief. But he’ll be staring at life as a private citizen again, one whose businesses and family could face questions from a future Democratic president’s Department of Justice. His widely panned speech at last week’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner seemed to offer a preview of his future: His grievances were met mostly with silence. Some of the president’s allies have begun to privately wonder how he might handle a new, reduced status. No one suspects that he’ll take it well.”

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