Former Bush strategist tears into 'despised' failing Trump

Politically speaking, it is the beginning of the end for President Donald Trump, warned a former aide to a Republican president from recent history in a Wednesday Substack post.

Trump is “unmasked, naked and despised” before the world because of the Iran war, rising gas prices, his humanitarian atrocities and the corruption in his administration, Schmidt warned. Instead of falling as Trump previously promised gas prices “are going to go much higher. The first dead Americans have started to come home, but the story of American casualties is just beginning as the 82nd Airborne and US Marine expeditionary units prepare for an assault on Iranian territory.”

He added, “Prices are rising, airports have gone off the rails, gas is sky high, and America is losing a war to Iran because it was planned by fools. Everywhere there is disaster, and it has not gone unnoticed by the American people.”

For this reason, Democrats have won in every special election where there was a contested race since Trump’s 2024 election victory, and have also flipped many districts they were not expected to win; Republicans have not had a single upset.

“The walls are closing in, and yes, there will be elections,” Schmidt wrote. “A few months back I predicted that Donald would be hovering around 30% approval by the end of March. This is where the deranged 79-year-old is headed.” Explaining that Trump is unpopular with everyone in America except “the MAGA nihilists,” he predicted that “all across the country the American people are going to act against MAGA with ruthless glee. Trump is going to be rebuked at the polls like no president has been in the modern era. It will be a crushing blow, a historic landslide, a knockout.”

The ex-presidential adviser concluded that Trump’s “MAGA emperor” phase is nearing its end as “he is unmasked, naked and despised. Soon, he will be defeated. The dancing at Mar-a-Lago is about to end.”

Earlier in March, shortly after Trump’s unprovoked invasion of Iran, Schmidt noted the irony of Trump demanding a Nobel Peace Prize in 2025 and suggested the president is sufficiently petty that bitterness over losing may have at least partially motivated his attacks.

“He wanted the Peace Prize, and when he couldn’t get it, Trump lost his mind,” Schmidt argued, quoting a letter he wrote Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre in which he said “considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.”

Adding that “I’m no longer interested in it [the Peace Prize]," Schmidt denounced Trump by writing that “no man of violence and venom can resist the siren song of modern warfare, which, after all, is just a game,” using “game” facetiously.

As conservative columnist Jim Geraghty wrote for The Washington Post on Tuesday, polls that consistently find Trump in the 30s with his approval ratings suggest he has indeed lost support among all except his hardcore base of MAGA admirers. After one recent poll found 36 percent of Americans identify as MAGA, he explained that this is a revealing statistic.

“Aligning with MAGA is probably closely correlated to how people feel about the state of the country and their approval of Trump,” Geraghty observed. “When they think he’s doing well, they identify as MAGA; when he isn’t, they don’t.”