Trump on the Wane Plays Tough at Home
Activism abroad is not paying off and approval ratings are at their lowest level. Thus, with an eye on the midterm elections, the president is reinvigorating MAGA.
With less than a year to go before the midterm elections, there is a turn toward the domestic arena and Donald Trump’s hardest of hard-line agendas. The president has understood that his recent forays into foreign policy -– some successful, others less so, such as the war in Ukraine -– have done little for his popularity. He has thus taken advantage of the attack by an Afghan political refugee on two members of the National Guard in Washington (one of them, a 20-year-old woman who later died) to announce the strictest new domestic measures: another 500 National Guard troops in the capital; a permanent freeze on immigration from “the Third World” and Afghanistan; the possibility of revoking the citizenship of naturalized immigrants “who undermine domestic tranquility;” ending federal benefits and subsidies for non-citizens; and the deportation of foreign nationals who are “non-compatible with Western Civilization.”
By Thursday, Trump had launched a review of permanent residency permissions for immigrants from 19 countries. Trump wants to reinvigorate a MAGA that, for the first time, is somewhat against him and rally an uncertain Christian base, an obvious effort after the death of Charlie Kirk at the beginning of September. The objective? Maintaining control of both houses of Congress in the midterm elections on Nov. 3, 2026. Will he do it? Judging by the mood of the country today, the answer is no. Of course, a great deal depends on the Democratic Party: Will centrist candidates like Abigail Spanberger or Mikie Sherrill, who won gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey respectively prevail, or “socialists” like Zohran Mamdani in New York? For a better understanding, it is necessary to take a step back and look at the digressions into foreign affairs mentioned above.
We have seen how military force directed abroad can distract from the woes of domestic politics in the 1998 satiric black comedy movie “Wag the Dog” with Robert de Niro and Dustin Hoffman, which came out in the middle of the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal. A president nearing an election finds himself in trouble for allegedly propositioning a minor, and a “spin doctor” invents a war in Albania to divert the media. Then all hell breaks loose, but the president is reelected.
The comparison with Trump is almost too easy. This president is forever working to distract public opinion. “We are following one story and he has already superseded it with two more stories; it's an obsessive, exhausting cycle,” the editor-in-chief of a major American newspaper told me a few months back. This worked in the first eight months of the presidency, then it stopped working. From an approval rating of 52% last February at the beginning of Trump’s presidency, the numbers have gradually begun to fall to a 40-42% average. This is another reason Trump began to take decisive action on foreign policy. On Sept. 29, he announced plans for a ceasefire between Israel and Gaza; on Oct. 17, the plan was ratified by the United Nations Security Council.
Trump reveled in the international admiration, no longer the improviser, destroying the multilateral structures perfected over 80 years by every American administration, but a pragmatist, intervening with perhaps a more muscular, unconventional, and personal approach. Also at the end of September, Trump promised $20 billion to Argentine President Javier Milei if his party won the midterm elections. Contrary to predictions, Milei won and Trump did, too. On Sept. 2, he attacked the first Venezuelan drug trafficking boats. Lawmakers protested. In mid-November, Trump sent the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R Ford to the Caribbean. Will he speak to Nicolás Maduro? Maybe.
Meanwhile, on Nov. 28, Trump announced there would be land strikes in Venezuela. His plan is obvious: destabilize the regime in Caracas and install the legitimate election winner, Maria Corina Machado, who recently won the Nobel Peace Prize. In South America, Trump -– along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio -– wants to limit aggressive Chinese and Russian economic expansion. Venezuela has more significant oil reserves than Saudi Arabia.
Trump's international image is changing -– with the exception, for now, in the Ukrainian arena, where he is confirmed as a slave to Putin. Walter Russell Mead, one of the most authoritative observers of American foreign policy, writes, “Those who believe Trump to be restrictive or isolationist should listen to him." This president isn’t retreating from the world. He aims to reshape it.”*
The problem is that foreign policy isn’t worth much. While he tries to correct the polls with successes abroad, Trump is accumulating losses and bitter disappointment at home. His candidates in Virginia and New Jersey lost badly; he triggered the longest shutdown in the history of the American government, an own goal in public opinion; and a judge dismissed the cases against two of his political enemies, former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. And the greatest humiliation of all: By over 400 to one in the House and unanimously in the Senate, Congress voted to release files held by the Justice Department that could contain embarrassing sexual revelations related to the Epstein scandal. Lastly, Trump has reneged on his most solemn promise to reboot the economy and improve salaries and quality of life for American workers. Add in various and sundry other tidbits, such as Robert Kennedy Jr. getting rid of vaccines, and it is thus that Trump, for the very first time, is clearly and relentlessly losing the shine of invincibility, finding himself at the lowest point of his political career. The latest Gallup poll on Friday showed an approval rating of 36%, the lowest for any president from Ronald Reagan onward for the same period. This is the reason for the return to an inflexible domestic hard-line agenda. But perhaps Americans are beginning to weary of this, as well.
*Editor’s note: Although accurately translated, these quoted remarks could not be independently verified.
With less than a year to go before the midterm elections, there is a turn toward the domestic arena and Donald Trump’s hardest of hard-line agendas. The president has understood that his recent forays into foreign policy -– some successful, others less so, such as the war in Ukraine -– have done little for his popularity. He has thus taken advantage of the attack by an Afghan political refugee on two members of the National Guard in Washington (one of them, a 20-year-old woman who later died) to announce the strictest new domestic measures: another 500 National Guard troops in the capital; a permanent freeze on immigration from “the Third World” and Afghanistan; the possibility of revoking the citizenship of naturalized immigrants “who undermine domestic tranquility;” ending federal benefits and subsidies for non-citizens; and the deportation of foreign nationals who are “non-compatible with Western Civilization.”
By Thursday, Trump had launched a review of permanent residency permissions for immigrants from 19 countries. Trump wants to reinvigorate a MAGA that, for the first time, is somewhat against him and rally an uncertain Christian base, an obvious effort after the death of Charlie Kirk at the beginning of September. The objective? Maintaining control of both houses of Congress in the midterm elections on Nov. 3, 2026. Will he do it? Judging by the mood of the country today, the answer is no. Of course, a great deal depends on the Democratic Party: Will centrist candidates like Abigail Spanberger or Mikie Sherrill, who won gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey respectively prevail, or “socialists” like Zohran Mamdani in New York? For a better understanding, it is necessary to take a step back and look at the digressions into foreign affairs mentioned above.
We have seen how military force directed abroad can distract from the woes of domestic politics in the 1998 satiric black comedy movie “Wag the Dog” with Robert de Niro and Dustin Hoffman, which came out in the middle of the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal. A president nearing an election finds himself in trouble for allegedly propositioning a minor, and a “spin doctor” invents a war in Albania to divert the media. Then all hell breaks loose, but the president is reelected.
The comparison with Trump is almost too easy. This president is forever working to distract public opinion. “We are following one story and he has already superseded it with two more stories; it's an obsessive, exhausting cycle,” the editor-in-chief of a major American newspaper told me a few months back. This worked in the first eight months of the presidency, then it stopped working. From an approval rating of 52% last February at the beginning of Trump’s presidency, the numbers have gradually begun to fall to a 40-42% average. This is another reason Trump began to take decisive action on foreign policy. On Sept. 29, he announced plans for a ceasefire between Israel and Gaza; on Oct. 17, the plan was ratified by the United Nations Security Council.
Trump reveled in the international admiration, no longer the improviser, destroying the multilateral structures perfected over 80 years by every American administration, but a pragmatist, intervening with perhaps a more muscular, unconventional, and personal approach. Also at the end of September, Trump promised $20 billion to Argentine President Javier Milei if his party won the midterm elections. Contrary to predictions, Milei won and Trump did, too. On Sept. 2, he attacked the first Venezuelan drug trafficking boats. Lawmakers protested. In mid-November, Trump sent the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R Ford to the Caribbean. Will he speak to Nicolás Maduro? Maybe.
Meanwhile, on Nov. 28, Trump announced there would be land strikes in Venezuela. His plan is obvious: destabilize the regime in Caracas and install the legitimate election winner, Maria Corina Machado, who recently won the Nobel Peace Prize. In South America, Trump -– along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio -– wants to limit aggressive Chinese and Russian economic expansion. Venezuela has more significant oil reserves than Saudi Arabia.
Trump's international image is changing -– with the exception, for now, in the Ukrainian arena, where he is confirmed as a slave to Putin. Walter Russell Mead, one of the most authoritative observers of American foreign policy, writes, “Those who believe Trump to be restrictive or isolationist should listen to him." This president isn’t retreating from the world. He aims to reshape it.”*
The problem is that foreign policy isn’t worth much. While he tries to correct the polls with successes abroad, Trump is accumulating losses and bitter disappointment at home. His candidates in Virginia and New Jersey lost badly; he triggered the longest shutdown in the history of the American government, an own goal in public opinion; and a judge dismissed the cases against two of his political enemies, former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. And the greatest humiliation of all: By over 400 to one in the House and unanimously in the Senate, Congress voted to release files held by the Justice Department that could contain embarrassing sexual revelations related to the Epstein scandal. Lastly, Trump has reneged on his most solemn promise to reboot the economy and improve salaries and quality of life for American workers. Add in various and sundry other tidbits, such as Robert Kennedy Jr. getting rid of vaccines, and it is thus that Trump, for the very first time, is clearly and relentlessly losing the shine of invincibility, finding himself at the lowest point of his political career. The latest Gallup poll on Friday showed an approval rating of 36%, the lowest for any president from Ronald Reagan onward for the same period. This is the reason for the return to an inflexible domestic hard-line agenda. But perhaps Americans are beginning to weary of this, as well.
*Editor’s note: Although accurately translated, these quoted remarks could not be independently verified.
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