'Trump is torching his coalition' with cascade of controversies: report
President Donald Trump is shedding supporters as he launches bombs and threats against Iran, insults the pope and rattles markets with his policies.
The 79-year-old president won re-election in 2024 with an eclectic alliance made up of MAGA diehards, crypto enthusiasts, non-white men, anti-war isolationists and right-wing Christians, but he has tested their loyalty in recent months with a series of erratic moves and bellicose statements, reported Axios.
"Trump is torching the coalition that made him president, seemingly unaware of — or simply unconcerned by — the depth of discontent permeating his movement," the website reported. "What Republicans celebrated as a once-in-a-generation coalition may turn out to be exactly that, never to be reassembled."
The president has alienated MAGA's Christian base with a profanity-laced Easter post threatening war crimes against Iran and praising Allah, while two days later he warned Iran that "a whole civilization will die tonight," sparking global fears of nuclear annihilation, and then Sunday night he slurred the American-born Pope Leo XIV as "WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy" – but he wasn't quite done there.
"Within the hour, Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself as a Christ-like figure — healing a bedridden man, flanked by bald eagles and the American flag," Axios reported. "The image drew rare condemnation from MAGA loyalists, including allegations of blasphemy and even demonic possession."
The post was deleted Monday morning and insisted the image was supposed to depict him as a doctor, but Axios reported that the president's "war on his own coalition extends far beyond the pews."
"Trump has lashed out at the most powerful voices in the 'America First' ecosystem, disavowing erstwhile allies for their criticism of his Iran war," Axios reported. "The fallout is tearing through the broader MAGA media world, forcing influencers who've spent years in lockstep to publicly pick sides."
The Iran war, the Epstein files and suspicious trading activity around Trump announcements have driven away younger, so-called podcast populists, while controversies involving the Trump family's crypto venture has cast doubts among true believers, and Trump's tariffs have hit farmers and sowed economic fears among his non-white supporters.
"The coalition that got Trump elected is completely fractured and in smithereens," said conservative podcaster Megyn Kelly, who has feuded with the president over Iran. "The question is now not who has Trump lost. The question is who remains."