Do you remember the first time you defied your parents — and got away with it? Or the first time you told a boss to shove it — and he shoved it? Donald Trump found himself on the receiving end of this sort of abuse Wednesday, as he pressed the 20 House Republicans blocking Kevin McCarthy from the speakership to vote for his man — and they collectively blew him off.
“Vote for Kevin, close the deal, take the victory,” Trump wrote (in all caps) on Truth Social. “Republicans, do not turn a great triumph into a giant & embarrassing defeat.”
But not only did the Gang of 20 defy Trump’s pointed directive, one of their leaders sassed him from the floor of the House. GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, who is as Trumpy as you can get without resorting to a comb-over, said she was unmoved by his phone calls to the Gang telling them to “knock it off,” and issued orders back to Trump himself: “The president needs to tell Kevin McCarthy that, ‘Sir, you do not have the votes and it’s time to withdraw.”
Trump’s ineffectual insertion of himself into the speaker ruckus is only one marker of his decaying political powers. His fervent support of Mehmet Oz, Herschel Walker, Adam Laxalt and Blake Masters for Senate seats bombed at the ballot box. On Election Night, Fox News, once a steadfast ally, labeled him “The biggest loser tonight” for the Republicans’ poor results. His acid tongue, once corrosive enough to end the careers of his foes, has become impotent: His attempt to brand presidential rival Ron DeSantis “Ron DeSanctimonious” backfired, making Trump the object of derision instead of DeSantis. In December, he hit a seven-year low in his standing with voters. His desultory 2024 presidential campaign has drawn only yawns from the press and politicians, setting him up for a devastating magazine profile by Olivia Nuzzi that portrays him as a sad duffer living in the opulence of the past like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard.
This is not to say that current events have completely husked Trump and dumped him in the compost. He still commands a core of supporters and a demonstrable ability to fundraise, so let’s keep his political obituary in the prewrite bin for now. But every politician is born with a sell-by date pressed on his forehead, and Trump is no exception. If he’s starting to stink of irrelevance to politicians like Boebert and Matt Gaetz, people he more or less invented, then his political time might be drawing to an end.
Part of Trump’s decline is his fault. Why did he have to jump into the speaker fight to support somebody who is so untrustworthy and reviled? Why did he think that a buffoon like Walker, an opportunist like Oz, or a barking mallard duck like Masters were bankable Senate candidates? But Trump’s decline is equally structural. A politician out of office never carries the swat of a politician in office, no matter what heights he once commanded. As president, Trump could make the nation snap to with an executive order or a military threat directed at Iran or North Korea or a Cabinet firing or a saucy press conference. He could create loyalists by dispensing jobs and favors. He could maintain them with fear tactics. Today, he has less power to affirmatively direct the national conversation than a late-night talk show host and he no longer frightens anyone. Other ex-presidents, like Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have accepted their diminished powers and conserved what remains of their influence by entering only fights they know they could win. This fundamental lesson of politics has yet to reach Trump.
Another cause of the Trump deterioration resides in the ambitions of others. As long as he was president, Trump had no rival for the White House among Republicans. He was the go-to guy. But once Joe Biden felled him and he lost the crown, other Republicans who aspired for the presidency were freed to exercise their political dreams. They didn’t have to kill the king. The king had been killed, or at least exiled, freeing them to explore the old leader for his weaknesses should he chose to return. But now, Trump is just in their way, and their personal ambitions outweigh their personal fealty. So far, the aspirants haven’t directly rebuked Trump the way the Gang of 20 has, but in ignoring him they’ve signaled that they think his time has passed. Why risk a murder charge by playing the role of Brutus when you can count on the tide to carry Trump away?
“All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs,” the racist British politician Enoch Powell observed in 1977. Trump’s end had to come sooner or later. But it’s coming now.
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Your boss is like your average politician. Eventually he becomes irrelevant, too. Send notes on longevity to Shafer.Politico@gmail.com. No new email alert subscriptions are being honored at this time. My Twitter feed senses it is about to be replaced by my Mastodon and Post accounts. My RSS feed doesn’t worry about death because it is already dead.
