Of all the rotten clichés in American political discourse, ‘lame duck presidency’ is arguably the worst. It ought to be dragged out back – perhaps by the former homeland security secretary and infamous animal-slayer Kristi Noem – and strangled to death.
Yet commentators have to say something about the midterms. And since it is likely that President Trump’s party will lose on Tuesday night, expect all sorts of explanations as to just what a damaged duck Donald now is.
A weaker position on the Hill will push him back towards his favourite role: the outsider raging against DC
If (as most pollsters expect) the Republicans lose both chambers of Congress, he’ll have been ‘crushed’ and ‘humiliated’. If the Democrats win the House of Representatives (overwhelmingly likely) but narrowly miss out on the Senate, the pundits will still insist that his leadership has been ‘paralysed’ and ‘contained’.
But it’s just not true. Who really believes that, stripped of his congressional majority, Trump will suddenly be restrained?
For all his failures, the current occupant of the White House is less maimed and more popular than the denizens of Capitol Hill. A poll earlier this year put the approval rating for Congress at 10 per cent, which makes Trump’s 36 per cent job-approval score look rosy.
Americans despise Congress for being dysfunctional. Trump understands that, which is why he’s barely ‘worked with Congress’ at all in his second term. It’s too BORING, as he would say on social media. The only truly significant bicameral legislation Trump has passed in the first two years of his second term has been his precious One Big Beautiful Bill, which he signed into law last year. And he deliberately made that a one-and-done act, globbing together all sorts of different spending measures under the OBB header in order to avoid the tedium of having to go through more procedural motions.
On almost everything else, from tariffs to tackling crime and DEI, from ‘unleashing American energy’ to protecting the border, he’s blasted out Executive Orders. Trump barely entertained the notion of seeking legislative approval before starting his war on Iran, and has since simply ignored various war-powers resolutions from Congress. It would be quite an extraordinary volte-face if he now transformed into a meek constitutionalist for his last (we think) 27 months in the White House.
He could start to box clever, wrong-footing the Democrats by offering them legislation they pretend to want – a massive new government programme for American-built solar power, say, or ‘Net Zero Data Centres’. But the more reliable Trump rule is that he goes more crazy, not less. He’s far more likely to double and triple down on his powers and his mayhem. Now 80, with his political future shortening by the day and his mind going to the most peculiar places, he could become utterly unchained – or similar to an alcoholic at last orders. And shorn of his small and annoying Republican majority, he may start to feel strangely liberated.
A weaker position on the Hill will push Trump back towards his favourite role: the outsider raging against DC. He’ll fight lawfare with lawfare, injury with insult and the legislative branch with the more brutal instruments of executive force.
None of this is to say Trump secretly wants his party to suffer next week. Losing is anathema to him. ‘Please pretend I’m on the ballot,’ he’s said, explicitly tying his own fortune to the results. ‘In just 1 week, we might have to say goodbye to each other forever,’ he declared in one of his ever more desperate-sounding fundraiser emails. ‘Do not make me say goodbye… On day 1, Democrats will file the Articles of Impeachment against me for the THIRD TIME.’
That’s hyperbole. His enemies have learned that prosecuting Trump directly plays to his strengths. But the Democrats will use their congressional advantage to make his administration suffer. Even if they only win the House, they’ll use the appropriations process to block or delay funds and bury the White House in paperwork. Democratic oversight committees will launch endless inquiries into executive malfeasance – over the donations to his White House ballroom, his crypto wheezes and the ‘pay-to-play’ schemes that have enriched his children, his buddies and their children, as well as countless other opportunists in his orbit.
The Democrats can see that, according to polls, some 70 per cent of registered voters, and almost 50 per cent of those who voted for Trump in 2024, are ‘very’ or ‘somewhat’ concerned about ‘corruption or conflicts of interest’ in the current administration.
Under the pressure of this onslaught, the Trump machine has started to break down. On Friday, the White House Chief of Staff, Susie Wiles, reportedly held a special ‘panic’ meeting to discuss the fall-out from various corruption allegations. Trump is said to be particularly annoyed by one story about Chris LaCivita and James Blair, two veteran advisers, flying out to Bosnia and Herzegovina to do some highly lucrative consulting. Wiles is rumoured to be on the verge of quitting.
In-fighting will intensify, and the figure to watch will be Vice-President J.D. Vance, who must tread a precarious path as his 2028 presidential campaign starts to take shape. ‘Vance knows he has to be seen as loyal to Trump to keep the MAGA base in the primaries,’ says a Trump pollster. ‘But he also has to carve out a profile as his own man.’
That delicate carving has already begun. The President gave his friend Bibi Netanyahu a full-throated endorsement ahead of the elections in Israel, whereas Vance insisted: ‘I endorse American candidates.’ And earlier this month, on the same day that Trump gave a presidential medal to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Vance held a press conference in which he denounced the tech giant as the worst abuser of foreign-worker visas.
Vance knows that MAGA is disgruntled with Trump’s war in Iran. One of the more interesting wrinkles in the midterm Senate races is that Republican support appears to be relatively stable in a traditional swing state such as Michigan. Yet it is weakening fast in the more conservative strongholds of Kansas, South Carolina and Texas.
At the same time, the Vice-President can’t afford to distance himself too far from the boss, who continues to inspire devotion among large parts of the electorate. Trump cannot be a lame duck. He’ll always be a wild tiger – most lethal when threatened.
Comments