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
Now would be an awesome time for a lame duck president to laud his party’s many victories as voters head off to November polls — providing there were any, reports Reuters.
That’s the unenviable situation facing President Donald Trump as the term-limited president prepares to face the public’s judgement on the party that allowed him to crank out one unfettered policy after another with little to no pushback.
As it stands, the Iran war drags on and U.S. voters keep feeling the impact. Gaza and Ukraine peace efforts are still stuck in the mud. Even worse, because Republicans have a government trifecta over both chambers of Congress and the White House, voters are keen to blame them for fuel and grocery prices, according to the party’s battered approval ratings.
But Trump appears to be a bully, not a brainiac. And analysts tell Reuters that his heavy reliance on coercive pressure to blast his way through his war gives Iran's leaders “little incentive to back down and reopen the Strait of Hormuz despite the country's weakening economy.”
"He is obsessed with applying coercion, and sometimes flattery, to bend others to his will, but oblivious to their strategic goals and domestic politics. As a result, he keeps flailing and failing," said Stephen Wertheim, a senior fellow at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Trump’s entirely self-created war with Iran is affecting U.S. prices, as are his months-long tariff policies. And the Republican Congress that approved his undeclared war must now answer for that failure.
“The political clock is ticking,” reports Reuters, “with Trump's Republican Party facing elections that could cost it control of one or both chambers of Congress and sharply curtail his ability to advance his agenda during his final two years in office.”
And Trump’s own self-created enemies on the international front know the frail octogenarian president is already in deep water with his voters, particularly when it comes to looking weak.
"U.S. adversaries understand that his political clock is shorter than theirs, and that while the United States can apply enormous coercive pressure, it may eventually lose patience," said Asli Aydintasbas, a fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington. “Putin, Xi and Iran may therefore want to wait out Washington. After November, the incentive to wait out Trump will become even more pronounced."
However, with Trump’s economy pressing down on regular Americans, businesses and farmers, voters won’t be waiting until after November to exact their price. And Trump has little in terms of policy, beyond the passage of the controversial One Big Beautiful Bill — and its government safety net cuts — upon which to build a case.
