Is Trump already a lame duck?

After a long, ugly summer and fall, the holidays are upon us.

For some, it’s turkey season.

For others, it’s eggnog season.

For President Trump, it’s starting to look a lot like lame-duck season.

He’s got less than a year before power in Congress is likely to change hands, putting a much-needed damper on his reign of terror against American institutions, immigrants, science and medicine, political enemies and free speech.

(Sadly, even if the House of Representatives flips, Trump’s war on good taste will continue. Am I the only one who thinks Trump, with his penchant for covering every surface with gold rococo, is a 21st century version of the Bond villain Goldfinger, who murdered victims by slathering them in gold paint?)

The signs of lame duckery grow as Trump’s popularity dips. His party was trounced in the off-year elections this month. Inflation, which he promised to whip, has not abated. Prices remain high. Consumer confidence has plummeted. Health insurance premiums are about to skyrocket. The Supreme Court does not appear to be looking kindly on his tariff schemes, nor on his plan to end birthright citizenship. Lower courts have defied him at almost every turn, most recently tossing out the absurd criminal indictments of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Atty. Gen. Letitia James.

Now members of his own party are beginning to stand up to him. They effectively forced him to sign the bill requiring the release of the Epstein files, something he’d fought for months. During the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, Trump demanded that the Senate end the filibuster. No dice.

“There’s some signs of cracks,” Bill Kristol said in a recent conversation with Tim Miller on The Bulwark Podcast. “And what we’re seeing in Congress is that fear of Trump is starting to turn into a loathing of him.”

Exhibit A: Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, once Trump’s most fervid acolyte.

What a stunning breakup. Trump called Greene a “traitor” for criticizing his attempts to block the Epstein files release, for accusing him of abandoning his commitment to “America first” principles, and, in my view, for being aware enough to see that Trump’s populist pose is a fraud.

“If I am cast aside by MAGA Inc. and replaced by Neocons, Big Pharma, Big Tech, Military Industrial War Complex, foreign leaders, and the elite donor class that can’t even relate to real Americans, then many common Americans have been cast aside and replaced as well,” Greene wrote in her four-page resignation letter released late Friday.

Small cracks in the MAGA coalition are also appearing over Trump’s expanding, potentially illegal war on drug cartels in the Caribbean. Turns out, one of the lines that a handful of Republicans won’t cross for him is blowing human beings out of the water with no due process, or even reliable evidence that they are drug runners.

Nor is his party entirely pleased with his desire to overthrow the Venezuelan government. His willingness to capitulate (at least so far) to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s conditions for peace in Ukraine have enraged many Republicans.

Trump’s quest for the elusive Nobel Peace prize? I’d have to guess that’s not gonna happen.

The weaker Trump gets, it seems, the more extreme his rhetoric becomes. Last week, after six Democratic elected leaders with either military or intelligence experience made a public service announcement urging members of the military to remember that they have an obligation to refuse illegal orders, Trump accused the Democrats of “seditious behavior punishable by death.”

Our comically underqualified Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced Monday that he wants to court-martial one of the six, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and Navy pilot who flew 39 combat missions in Operation Desert Storm and has a chestful of medals to show for it. (On X, Hegseth mocked Kelly for having his medals out of order.)

Honestly, though, is there a better metaphor for the Trump era than demanding the death penalty for the “crime” of speaking truth to power?

Trump is not just alienating congressional allies. He’s also lost a chunk of voters who played a big part in returning him to office.

In 2024, more Latinos voted for Trump than had ever voted for any previous Republican presidential nominee, some 48%, up from 36% in 2020 and 28% in 2016.

Pundits held forth about a historic, potentially lasting “realignment,” of Latino voters, who have traditionally favored Democrats. But since then, Trump’s popularity with Latinos has cratered. Mainly, it’s the faltering economy. But his mass deportations have turned off many Latino voters. Turns out they don’t like the idea of being racially profiled in their own streets, nor do they like seeing photos of brown-skinned folks being flung to the ground or carried off by nameless, faceless government agents.

A new Pew Research poll lays it out in stark terms: More than two-thirds of Latinos (68%) are pessimistic about their standing in America, and more than three-quarters (78%) say Trump’s policies harm Latinos more than help them. In August, the Latino polling organization Equis Research found that about a third of Latinos who supported Trump last year have no plans to vote Republican in next year’s midterms.

That realignment sure didn’t last long. Quack.

Bluesky: @rabcarian
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