Weakened but still dangerous, President Donald Trump faces a relentless, great adversary — time itself, according to a New York Magazine Intelligencer columnist.
Pointing to Trump’s below-40-percent approval rating, Ross Barkan says it will likely never rebound much. There’s also his administration’s “savagery in Minneapolis” that destroyed the popularity he had on immigration, and there are the challenges facing him — and many Americans — on the economy.
“Betting against Trump is typically a fool’s game,” but this time, writes Barkan, what’s different is the passage of time.
Trump turns 80 this year, and “is in his final term, no matter how much he humors the idea of illegally seeking a third term.”
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“If Trump can’t improve his standing in the next few months, Republicans are going to be swamped in the midterms,” Barkan warns. “Democrats are very likely to flip the House and could make a serious run at the Senate. This will make Trump’s 2027 even more perilous. His goodwill with the American people is gone, and there are signs that the grip he maintains over his own party could start to slip.”
The days of Republicans worrying about facing off with Trump “seem to be coming to an end,” as Republicans begin to understand that “the second term of Trump has offered almost nothing to campaign on this fall.”
For starters, there’s the issue of inflation, and Trump’s “messy and expensive” tariffs.
“The immigration regime is violent and alienating. The safety-net cuts punish the working class and poor. In his first term, Americans were largely optimistic about the economy. That world is gone,” says Barkan.
And while some economic realities are out of Trump’s hands, “he’s given no indication he’d care to fix them. Solutions are absent. Instead, in his State of the Union, he pretended the problems didn’t exist or blamed the Democrats.”
But, a “weakened Trump, of course, is still a dangerous Trump.”
“We do not know what he or J.D. Vance might be plotting for 2028,” writes Barkan. “Perhaps they’ll rerun the 2020 playbook and hope for a more successful outcome. All scenarios have to be considered.”
Also, as Trump “weakens on domestic affairs, he’s increasingly turned to sowing chaos abroad.” There are the issues of Venezuela and Iran. In short, Trump “can light the world on fire without congressional authorization.”
And that, “ultimately, may be his legacy,” Barkan concludes, “unless he somehow decides to restrain himself. An American president playing out the string is a little different than a baseball team. He can still kill a whole lot of people.”
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