Is the Fever Breaking?
The MAGA movement was already fraying around the edges. Revelations in the newly released Epstein emails and files, along with an abundance of other insanity, may be Trump's undoing.
Long before Donald Trump ever entered politics, lying was always his primary skill. Between his lies and an inner circle who were willing to prop him up, Trump has never fully faced the consequences of his behavior and his crimes.
But in recent weeks, Trump has been starting to show desperation. The lies he’s telling are less and less plausible, and he seems exasperated that fewer and fewer people are believing those implausible lies.
I sometimes wonder if he is intentionally doubling down on his lies out of habit or if, instead, he has been so protected from the truth by his lack of contact with reality that he has actually come to believe what he is saying. He has surrounded himself, as usual, with sycophants who tell him and the public only what he wants to hear.
Whether it’s the ever-grinning visage of Kevin Hassett or the hyper-aggressive rantings of Pete Hegseth or the shrill determination of Karoline Leavitt perpetually lying on Trump’s behalf, I’ve seen no reports of anyone in his immediate inner circle taking him aside and giving him a stern talking to. (By the way, has anyone heard word one from Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, who was supposed to have been the calm, stabilizing influence on the second Trump administration?)
Enter Marjorie Taylor Greene, the probable canary in the MAGA coal mine. Her defection started gradually but has now devolved into an outright war of words between her and the tyrant she had previously supported. The verbal slap-fight reached its zenith (at least I hope that’s its zenith) with MTG publicly doing press-conference penance for her previous sins of creating the same political violence she now is bemoaning.
Greene’s recent actions have put renewed and intense focus on the Epstein files and on Trump’s refusal to release them. It seems like she’s has also created a permission structure for other Republicans to push back and try to uphold their promise to get to the bottom of the Epstein matter.
But Greene’s defection is hardly the only sign of the deterioration of Trump’s grasp. Despite trying to conceal his physical and mental decline, Trump himself has been unable to hide his swollen ankles and his further dysregulated speech patterns. He boasts about his supposed “beautiful” MRI results but claims to have no idea what the MRI was for. He has lashed out on social media in the middle of the night and fallen asleep in Oval Office events. More media outlets are willing to describe him as unwell and unhinged. That he has become an international embarrassment is a given.
All of this comes on the heels of an election cycle that proved how little value his endorsement now provides to Republican candidates, as well as a government shutdown that accomplished nothing other than damaging the lives of everyday Americans. (Well, he did break his own record for the length of a federal government shutdown, so he at least acquired some highly questionable bragging rights.) The shutdown also revealed a rift between Trump and the Republican-led Senate, when John Thune refused to change the filibuster rule so that the government could reopen.
Trump’s grip on the Republican party is slipping away, both with legislators and with Republican supporters.
So he reverts to what he knows best — lying. The more Trump doubles down on his lies, the more easily they seem to be disproved. He and his minions can tout lower inflation all they want, but average citizens know better from trips to the gas pump and the supermarket. Trump boasts about ending eight wars, but somehow no one else can find any evidence of either the eight wars or his uncanny ability to end them with the sheer force of his oratory. His delusions and his lies are indistinguishable from each other.
Recent judicial fiascos like those perpetrated by Lindsey Halligan and Jeanine Pirro have proved to the American public that his appointees are as incompetent as he is and that he is truly scraping the bottom of the barrel for members of his inner circle.
Trump’s lifelong modus operandi of pushing the envelope of the justice system may be backfiring as his lawsuits become more and more specious. The courts have been ruling against him in many more instances than they have ruled in his favor, including courts led by judges and justices that he himself has appointed.
Perhaps the most worrisome indicator, at least to Trump, is the abundance of anecdotal evidence in interviews, in polls, and in social media postings stating the disgruntlement of his most devoted supporters — the so-called MAGA base. He has broken virtually all of his campaign promises to them, and his irrational random tariffs have raised prices of everything for all citizens, not just his opposition. Many in the MAGA crowd are just now figuring out that his policies are detrimental to their own interests.
So far, he has convinced enough Republicans in Congress not to allow the extension of the Affordable Care Act subsidies, which will raise the cost of health care for those who are least able to afford it. But given the political pressure on Republicans in Congress from their constituents, that may be subject to change, particularly since the 15-year-old Republican “repeal and replace” pledge has netted absolutely nothing.
Is it any surprise that there are rumblings of defection among even the most faithful?
One of Trump’s most motivating campaign promises among the MAGA crowd was his pledge to investigate the QAnon-concocted cabal of Democratic pedophiles. The sound of that promise backfiring reverberated through the halls of Congress on Tuesday when there was a near unanimous vote in the House and a unanimous vote in the Senate to release the Epstein files — well above the requirement of two-thirds of members to make the release veto-proof.
It hardly needs to be said that Trump’s long association with convicted pedophile and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein may not have been what the QAnon folks were referring. But the focus on the Trump/Epstein connection is certainly what the QAnon relentlessness unwittingly spawned.
Many in the media have been assuming that Trump, like many presidents before him, will be a lame duck president after the midterms. But now some reporters are speculating that this lack of support from his own party may already have condemned him to lame duck status. It’s possible that the Republicans in Congress — frightened by the off-year election results and the steady drumbeat of negative feedback they’ve received from their own constituents — have become emboldened by the success of their collective defiance with the vote on the Epstein files. Congress members may even be coming to terms with just how much of their own power they have surrendered to Trump, and they’re finally beginning to reclaim it.
Despite all this evidence, Trump’s bloated ego continues to tell him that he’s so brilliant that his latest brain flatulence will fix everything, or at least delay the inevitable.
Trump’s willy-nilly destruction of the East Wing of the White House is more than just a national travesty. It has become a symbol of the collapse of the Trump era. This administration may not be coming down as rapidly as the East Wing did, but it’s definitely showing signs of stress.
It’s truly a tragedy that those who oppose him look at the increasing destruction and chaos as a glimmer of hope that the demise of Trump may be near. But these days, we’ll take our hope where we can get it.
