There are presidents who manage bad news. And then there is the current arrangement at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where the bad news is managing itself quite efficiently without any help from anyone.
According to the Washington Examiner, allies and political operatives are privately describing the current stretch as “the most challenging of his second term.” Trump’s approval rating is sitting 17 points underwater in the RealClearPolitics aggregate. Economic confidence among his own base, which Breitbart tracked falling from a net positive of 40 points in February to 2 points in May, has not recovered. The Iran memorandum of understanding, which Trump signed at Versailles last week, has cracked open what the Examiner describes as “foreign policy fractures within his 2024 coalition,” with hawks calling it appeasement and loyalists calling it genius, with both groups currently fighting in the same conservative media outlets. And the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which Trump’s administration renovated at considerable expense and fanfare, is still green.
One former Trump campaign staffer told the Washington Examiner it is “the perfect storm.” The White House’s response, per the Examiner, came from spokesman Kush Desai, who said: “Pundits and armchair experts have written President Trump off dozens of times, only for him to come back stronger than ever before.” This is accurate as a historical observation and completely unrelated to the question of whether the House stays Republican in November. The midterms are not a pundit prediction. They are an election.
A former senior official told the Examiner that increased media scrutiny “would actually bolster Republican electoral performances in November,” which is the theory that the way to improve your polling is to be covered more, and which has never been tested in conditions quite like these.
Karoline Leavitt is returning from maternity leave. According to the Washington Examiner, her first briefing could be as soon as next week, which means the person most trusted to explain this situation to the press has been on leave for the duration of the perfect storm, and is returning to a podium that Vance, Rubio, Bessent, and Mehmet Oz have been taking turns behind, which is a casting choice nobody planned.
When the White House’s answer to a 17-point approval deficit is a historical citation about pundits, who exactly is the argument for?
Sources
Washington Examiner: Trump stares down a ‘perfect storm’ as midterm elections loom
Washington Examiner: Karoline Leavitt returning to White House at crucial juncture for Trump
Slate: I Visited Washington D.C.’s Putrid Reflecting Pool. What I Saw Was Far Worse Than I Expected
