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The
Saturday read
Donald
Trump
Two weeks
that pushed Trump to the edge. Is his presidency unravelling?
David
Smith in Washington
The
president has opened fissures in his base by starting a war he couldn’t finish
with Iran, stoking inflation and offending Christians. Barred from running
again, he may feel he has nothing to lose
Sat 18
Apr 2026 06.00 BST
Lance
Johnson voted for Donald Trump three times. Now he is feeling buyer’s remorse.
“I haven’t been too happy with the third time around,” said the 47-year-old
contractor, sitting at a bar in Crescent Springs, Kentucky. “We’re supposed to
not start any new wars. Prices were supposed to come down. We were promised a
lot of things and we’re not getting them.”
Johnson
is not the only Trump voter having doubts about a US president who, after
defying political gravity for a decade, finally seems to be crashing back to
earth. The past two weeks have arguably been the most bruising of Trump’s two
terms in office, suggesting that his tried and trusted playbook could finally
be falling apart.
Having
launched an unpopular war with Iran, the president was scrambling for a way out
as fuel prices climb; he insulted the pope and posted an AI image of himself as
Jesus Christ on social media; he lost in a court hearing over a lawsuit against
the Wall Street Journal newspaper relating to the Jeffrey Epstein files; and
his intervention on behalf of an autocratic ally in Hungary was rebuked by that
country’s voters.
Just 38%
of voters approve of the way Trump is handling his job as president, while 55%
disapprove, according to a poll released this week by Quinnipiac University. A
mere 36% of voters approve of the way the president is handling the situation
with Iran, while 58% disapprove. Two in three voters blame him for the recent
rise in gas prices.
Elaine
Kamarck, a former official in the Bill Clinton White House, said: “He’s in the
most serious trouble he’s been in, and that includes his first term, where
there were some constraints on him. It’s hard to tell whether it’s the absence
of constraints or the fact that he’s getting old and cranky but he seems to
have a dramatic loss of judgment. The best description of Trump – apparently
it’s British slang – is shambolic.”
Since he
ran for president in 2016, Trump has cultivated an aura of invincibility,
memorably declaring that he could shoot someone on New York’s Fifth Avenue and
not lose any voters. Insulting war veterans or being caught on tape boasting
about grabbing women’s private parts could not derail him; if anything, his
coarse, taboo-busting style animated a support base sick of establishment
politicians.
The aura
was punctured by the Covid pandemic and election defeat in 2020, only for Trump
and his allies to spend years spinning a false narrative that the election had
been stolen. He survived an assassination attempt by inches in 2024 and roared
back into power, claiming that he had been “saved by God to make America great
again”.
Although
the honeymoon did not last long as Trump imposed sweeping tariffs, federal
government cuts and hardline immigration enforcement, his support base kept the
faith. But now the unlikely coalition that put Trump back in the White House is
unravelling as he alienates Maga influencers, religious conservatives,
anti-interventionists who wanted an end to forever wars and anyone who craves
relief from years of inflation.
A
majority of Catholic voters supported Trump in his 2024 presidential victory.
But last Sunday night he launched an unprecedented verbal assault on Pope Leo
XIV, the first US-born pope, calling him “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for
Foreign Policy” after Leo spoke out against Trump’s bellicose threats to Iran.
The president was swiftly condemned by Catholic leaders, including
conservative-leaning bishops.
Taking
on the pope, allowing memes to go out that pretend he’s Jesus Christ: that is
absolutely blasphemous
Elaine
Kamarck
Then
Trump posted an AI image seeming to depict himself as Jesus healing a bedridden
man, surrounded by bald eagles and the US flag, on his Truth Social platform.
The backlash was swift. David Brody, a prominent Trump-supporting commentator
with the Christian Broadcasting Network, responded: “TAKE THIS DOWN, MR.
PRESIDENT. You’re not God. None of us are. This goes too far. It crosses the
line.”
By midday
on Monday, the image had been removed. The president claimed that he never
intended to liken himself to Jesus when he posted the picture. “How did they
come up with that?” he asked unconvincingly. “It’s supposed to be me as a
doctor, making people better. And I do make people better. I make people a lot
better.”
But on
Wednesday Trump posted a new image of himself being embraced by Jesus while
bathed in an angelic light against a US flag backdrop.
Kamarck,
a senior fellow in governance studies at the non-partisan Brookings Institution
thinktank in Washington, observed: “Taking on the pope, allowing memes to go
out that pretend he’s Jesus Christ: that is absolutely blasphemous. It’s even
offensive to people who are not religious but it’s particularly offensive to
religious people and many of them – Catholics and evangelicals – have been part
of his base.
Trump and
the image he reposted of himself as a Christ-like figure healing a sick man,
which many people considered blasphemous. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty
Images
“Between
the war cracking up the America First part of his base over no foreign
entanglements, and this religious stuff cracking up the religious part of his
base, I’d say that this is the first time we’ve seen cracks in his support from
the base and that’s a big, big development.”
Conservatives
agree that the voters’ patience is wearing thin. Erick Erickson, a radio host
based in Atlanta, Georgia, told Politico: “They’re not getting what they voted
for to begin with. On top of that, whether he’s mocking their religion
intentionally or not, he still is. I think we are looking not really at a Maga
crack-up per se but a lot of the base becoming exasperated enough to start
looking beyond Trump.”
Trump
purports to despise nothing more than losers. But his own losses continue to
pile up. This week a federal court dismissed his defamation lawsuit that
claimed Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal tarnished his reputation with an
article describing a birthday card to deceased sex offender Epstein bearing
Trump’s signature. District judge Darrin Gayles said the president had not come
close to meeting the “actual malice” standard that public figures must clear in
defamation. Trump has said he will refile the lawsuit.
Meanwhile
Trump suffered a setback on the global stage with the election result in
Hungary. His vice-president, JD Vance, travelled to the country in a late bid
to bolster Viktor Orbán and put Trump on a speakerphone to address a rally but
it was all in vain as rival Péter Magyar stormed to victory. The journalist and
historian Anne Applebaum wrote in the Atlantic: “Orbán’s loss brings to an end
the assumption of inevitability that has pervaded the Maga movement.”
Some
warn that the Iran war could become Trump’s Hurricane Katrina, which inflicted
huge damage on George W Bush’s reputation
But
perhaps nothing threatens that support more than the war in Iran, launched with
Israel on 28 February without any evidence of an imminent threat. Trump has
claimed victory several times but the Iranian regime remains entrenched and
radicalised, its nuclear ambitions still intact, emboldened by its ability to
choke oil commerce in the strait of Hormuz. The US has also lost credibility
with European and Middle Eastern allies.
His
frustration boiling over, Trump lashed out in an Easter Sunday social media
post: “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell
– JUST WATCH. Praise be to Allah.” Two days later, he warned Iran that “a whole
civilization will die tonight”. The genocidal threat and mocking use of
religious language was too much for podcasters such as Tucker Carlson, Alex
Jones and Candace Owens, all former allies.
Some warn
that the Iran war could become Trump’s equivalent of Hurricane Katrina, the
catastrophic tropical cyclone that killed 1,392 people in and around New
Orleans in 2005 and inflicted huge damage on President George W Bush’s
reputation, from which he never fully recovered.
Olivia
Troye, a former intelligence official in the first Trump administration, said:
“This will follow him because he did run on a platform of no wars and clearly
there is no end to this conflict in sight and it’s only getting worse. This is
a conflict that he started that no one on his team in that cabinet knows how to
get out of. I don’t know how you look at this man and not truly see him for
what he is: a fraud.”
Trump ran
for president promising to lower prices but his approval rating on the issue of
inflation is lower than Jimmy Carter and Joe Biden’s at the same stage of their
presidencies. Last week he admitted that the cost of oil and gasoline may
remain high beyond November’s midterm elections, telling Fox News: “It could
be, or the same, or maybe a little bit higher, but it should be around the
same.”
Does
he care about any of this? I would submit he does not. He’s entered the
nihilistic stage of his political career
Anthony
Scaramucci
Troye,
who this week launched a run for Congress as a Democrat, added: “The longer
this war goes on, the more it impacts us here at home. Gas prices are going up.
We haven’t even seen the impact on our grocery store prices yet because that’s
going to have longer-term effects. Farming communities are upset right now
because it’s going to hurt them in terms of their access to fertiliser.”
Trump has
faced political crises before and bounced back, most notably after the January
6 insurrection at the US Capitol in 2021, when the Republican party seemed
ready to abandon him – only to nominate him for president again three years
later. This time he is constitutionally barred from running, which could mean
he feels like he has nothing to lose.
Anthony
Scaramucci, a former White House communications director, wrote on the X social
media platform: “Here’s the real question: Does he care about any of this? I
would submit to everybody – he does not. He’s entered the nihilistic stage of
his political career. The polls don’t matter. The people don’t matter. The
consequences don’t matter. That is the most dangerous version of this man.”
An
approval rating hitting the lowest levels of his second term in office is
raising concern among Republicans that his party is poised to lose control of
Congress in the midterm elections. A Democratic majority in either chamber
could launch investigations into the Trump administration while blocking much
of his legislative agenda. That could make the president more unhinged than
ever as he refuses to accept lame duck status.
Larry
Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the
University of Minnesota, said: “Donald Trump is a wounded political animal.
There’s no fading away for this guy. The more damaged he gets, the more
reckless he gets and he is someone who is so consumed with a delusion of his
grandeur that he’s a politically dangerous existentially threatening figure in
America and the global scene. He is unbound. This is a reckless force moving
through America with enormous global complications.”
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