President Donald Trump, not even halfway through his second term in office, is about to see his worst fear realized as he faces a reckoning within the Republican Party, according to a new analysis.
The Atlantic analyst Jonathan Lemire argued this week that Trump has "crashed into reality" as he "flails" both internationally and domestically.
"Recent months have delivered a reckoning for Trump, who has crashed hard against some real limits," wrote Lamire. "His approval numbers have sunk, and Republicans are finally, in small doses, beginning to defy him."
The president predicted his war with Iran would be a quick surgical strike but it has now metastasized into a five-month quagmire with mounting casualties, depleted weapons stockpiles, and surging gas prices making him "just the latest U.S. president to be humiliated by hard-liners in Tehran," wrote Lemire.
National policy has stymied as well.
"Trump has demanded that the Senate blow up the filibuster to pass the SAVE Act, which would make voting more difficult and require voters to provide proof of citizenship," Lemire noted. "But Republicans have refused."
Once the midterms conclude, Trump will face the grim future, he wrote.
"Trump could face his worst fear," wrote Lemire. "Irrelevance. He will be a lame duck, down to his final two years in office, and at some point will no longer be the nation’s top topic of conversation. As focus shifts to the presidential primaries, Trump risks disappearing from the headlines. Even some of his closest allies don’t know how he’ll react," he wrote.
What comes next for Trump looks worse, Lemire wrote.
"Trump may no longer be among each day’s top stories—arguably for the first time since he came down the Trump Tower escalator more than a decade ago. It’s not as if he will suddenly vanish; he’ll aim to play GOP kingmaker, and he’ll still be commander in chief. But he’ll be staring at life as a private citizen again," he predicted.
