World Liberty Financial

Two recent stories sum up the state of Donald Trump’s presidency and underscore the growing gap between him and his working-class support base. First, it emerged that Donald Trump Jr. had his wedding paid for by Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch who is also a friend of Vladimir Putin. Kremlev is believed to have stumped up a good proportion of the costs, which included hiring a $100,000-a-night island in the Bahamas as well as a $70,000 firework display. While Trump’s son is not a government employee and therefore not subject to the rules on political gifts, alarm bells ought surely to have been ringing.

There’s been a change of mood across the country – and not one that is favorable to the GOP. Last November, the prediction markets gave Republicans a 70 percent chance of keeping control of the Senate. Now their odds have deteriorated. It looks likely that the Democrats will win both the chambers – so what’s happened? The latest polls all tell the same story. The economy is no longer Trump’s superpower. Of those polled by Fox News, three- quarters rate the economy negatively, with 70 percent feeling it’s getting worse. Voters now trust Democrats on the economy more than Republicans for the first time since May 2010. Trump’s weakness on the economy brings with it another growing danger for him.