Donald Trump is rapidly approaching his Wile E. Coyote moment.
You know the one I mean, when the constantly scheming but dim-witted Looney Tunes predator races off a cliff only to realize, moments later, that there’s nothing beneath him but a canyon floor far below.
This is what is happening to Trump. He’s churning along confident that the MAGA rocket pack that has boosted his political career for the past seven years will continue to carry him forward, intimidating his rivals, and guaranteeing him political relevance and all the grift that goes with it.
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But that MAGA rocket pack was apparently supplied by the ACME Rocket Pack Company and as everyone knows, ACME is the only company that rivals Trump’s own enterprises for its record of failures.
Sure, you’re hearing that Trump being indicted is actually helping him with his base. But that is pure hooey peddled by the hooeymongers in the media who have been serving as stenographers simply repeating verbatim talking points produced by Team Trump’s ACME Hooey Machine. The facts show that Trump’s support is beginning to erode in multiple meaningful ways. The ground is literally giving way beneath his feet, even if he and a goodly chunk of the punditerati don’t know it yet.
What is more, it is a phenomenon that is only likely to accelerate.
To those who say Trump’s base is being energized by his arrest for endangering U.S. national security, you wouldn’t know it from the sparse MAGA crowd assembled outside the Miami courthouse where Trump was arraigned on Tuesday. Despite manifold efforts by the Trump messaging operation to gin up a Jan. 6-type crowd of flag-waving loonies, the actual turnout was unimpressive. There were almost certainly more media and police in the crowd of a couple hundred than there were pro-Trump protestors.
This is not the first time Trump’s power to draw a crowd has failed him. He got a similarly anemic turnout at the time of his arraignment in New York for the charges brought by New York City district attorney Alvin Bragg against the former president in the Stormy Daniels hush money case. Trump rallies have also produced disappointing results over the course of the past year or two. Of course, to hear Team Trump tell it, it’s all part of the plan, a desire for “more intimate” interactions with voters. Hooey.
After a couple of years, the plummeting turnouts have to be seen as a trend. The sad sack old coyote is losing it.
And if things look bad with the crowds Trump is drawing, they look even worse with his former cabinet. One by one, a really astonishing array of former senior Trump officials have come out criticizing their boss and suggesting that he got himself into a real mess as a result of stealing nuclear secrets and military plans among other highly classified documents. Former Vice President Mike Pence, now running against Trump for the 2024 GOP nomination, said after reading the Trump indictment, “These are very serious allegations. And I can’t defend what is alleged.”
So far, the cabinet members who have taken serious shots at Trump include his former attorney general Bill Barr, who said that if “even half” of what the indictments brought by special counsel Jack Smith were true, Trump “is toast.” Former White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney was also critical and warned of the peril Trump was in, saying, “You can lie on TV, but you can’t lie in court.” Former Trump national security adviser John Bolton called the indictment “devastating” and said the former president should withdraw from the race.
Once seemingly loyal former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Trump put U.S. soldiers at risk with his behavior. Former Trump White House lawyer Ty Cobb predicted Trump will go to jail as a consequence of the crimes he allegedly committed to undercut U.S. national security. Chris Christie, once the head of the Trump transition team, eviscerated the former president repeatedly for his abuses in a recent CNN town hall appearance. Even Trump’s former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, who has often defended Trump, recently started to change her tune, calling Trump’s actions “reckless.”
I’ve heard commentators minimize the number of prominent Republicans who have criticized Trump. But that’s quite a cross-section of the man’s own cabinet that has come to feel comfortable speaking the truth about his dangerous behavior. And they are not alone. Sen. Mitt Romney called Trump’s behavior disqualifying while Sen. John Thune complained of the “exhaustion factor” and “drama” around Trump.
Behind the scenes, there are reports of top Republican legislators fretting out loud about the drag Trump will be on the party and their collective futures. (An excellent thread by NYU Law School’s Ryan Goodman includes many others who have been moved to comment on the gravity of the charges against Trump. These include a group ranging from the editorial board of the National Review to Fox News legal talking head (and Daily Beast contributor) Jonathan Turley.
The last refuge of the commentariat is polling. They note that recent polls have shown that most Republicans believe that the indictments against Trump are politically motivated. One from CBS suggests that about three-quarters of Republicans believe this. But of course, only about a quarter to a third of registered voters identify themselves as Republican (the majority are independent or Democrats). And Trump does not have his entire base on his side any longer. And while the CBS poll shows only about 40 percent of Republicans thinking Trump holding onto the documents that were found in his possession posed a security risk, that is a pretty substantial number—indicating a big group that could have their minds changed at a trial and, notably that 80 percent of the rest of all voters saw his behavior as a security risk.
A more recent Reuters/IPSOS poll showed that while Trump was holding on to his lead among GOP presidential candidates, his edge over Ron DeSantis had diminished by 6 percentage points since May. Further, nearly two-thirds of those polled believed the charges against Trump, and a substantial plurality said the charges against Trump, if proven, would be disqualifying, with a substantial majority of independents aligned with Democrats in that view.
That is where the rubber meets the road in the political discussion. With Trump’s most prominent supporters abandoning ship, a big field of GOP candidates who have obviously entered the race because they felt Trump might be weaker than previously thought, a bunch of GOP voters open to the idea that Trump has damaged national security, and the vast majority of Americans feeling that his behavior poses a security risk, the former president looks like a potential big-time loser in the general election.
And Trump’s recent electoral track record is lousy. Not only did he not win the popular vote in 2016—but in 2018, 2020, 2021, and 2022 (plus in a variety of special elections during the past couple of years), Trump and Trump-backed candidates have done very poorly. And we’re only two indictments into this process. There may be two or more to come. And we have heard none of the evidence the trials will uncover. And we have seen none of the out-of-control outbursts that are certain to come from Trump.
This means that for multiple reasons—from the self-interest of Republican politicians who don’t want to have to run with the carcass of a humiliated coyote hanging around their necks to the ever-greater clarity with which the world will see Trump’s crimes, abuses, and egregious behavior—you can pretty much count on the fact that all the talk of Trump’s power and influence will grow hollower and hollower. Until, in all likelihood, he is the only one that believes in the myth he once successfully spun about himself.
This will leave Trump, still running perhaps, but hanging out there in mid-air with an unhappy future rapidly approaching him from below—and an end that lands him not in the White House again but in a small purple cloud of dust somewhere deep down in the abyss of U.S. history.
