Iran is breaking Trump’s spirit

Donald Trump‘s address to the nation last week was supposed to be a big rah-rah moment, his chance to rally Americans behind his war on Iran. Instead the president sounded like a whipped dog, barely able to summon the energy to make false promises about ending the war “very shortly.” Thick layers of make-up were unable to make Trump come across as anything but a tired old man, even though the speech centered heavily on his two favorite topics: inflicting violence from afar and whining about how everyone misunderstands his unique genius. 

Seeing him in such a defeated posture came as no surprise. The president was having a no-good, very bad week. On the morning of his speech, Trump had been at the Supreme Court in what appeared to be an elaborate effort to intimidate the justices into ruling in favor of his demand to end birthright citizenship. From the first few minutes of argument it was already becoming that even this far-right court doesn’t seem ready to simply nullify the 14th Amendment, and a mere 13 minutes into the defense of birthright citizenship, Trump left in a huff.

After his speech, in which he ricocheted between saying the war was nearly over and threatening to escalate America’s attacks on Iran, oil prices rose. Even the investor class, which tends to be credulously optimistic toward Trump, is losing faith. The stock market is suffering. Firing Pam Bondi as attorney general probably boosted Trump’s mood temporarily; other people’s suffering seems to be his happy zone. But even if he sacks more people, which he is reportedly considering, it won’t save him from his decision to start a war in Iran that he is losing.

There is no telling how bad the war and the economy will get, but one thing is starting to become certain: The war in Iran and the escalating economic damage from it is getting in the way of Trump’s true love, which is waging culture wars that stir up the ugliest impulses within the MAGA base. The president desperately wants everyone to stop talking about oil prices, bombed schools and the Strait of Hormuz, and get back to stoking racist hysteria and leading revenge campaigns against his perceived enemies.

Trump’s desperation to refocus attention on his obsessions and grievances was on full display over the weekend. For nearly two days, the White House avoided press questions about the downed fighter jet, presumably to shut down any discussion of the rescue mission that was underway. Instead, the president bellowed a few of his incoherent threats at Iran on Truth Social, but largely focused on his usual obsessions: complaining about ABC News and the New York Times, posting misleading polls to convince himself he’s popular and repeating white nationalist slogans about non-white immigrants. It was only after both Air Force servicemen were recovered that Trump deigned to acknowledge the situation — and of course, to take credit for their rescue.

Trump and his allies are working in tandem to redirect attention away from the war and onto their culture war fixations. On Wednesday, as the Supreme Court was hearing arguments about birthright citizenship, White House staffers and some of the more odious members of Congress fanned out on X, cheerleading for the justices to strip children born to immigrants of their citizenship. Deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller called the 14th Amendment ” the gravest and most preposterous of all constitutional abominations.” On Truth Social, Trump tailored the sentiment to his vocabulary level, calling the constitutional guarantee “STUPID.” Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, one of the most compulsive MAGA social media users in Congress, tweeted, “The Constitution isn’t a national suicide pact.” The following day, Trump kept whining after realizing the Supreme Court looks likely to rule against him. “Kangaroo Court!!!,” he posted on Truth Social, along with a Fox News video claiming birthright citizenship is a “constitutional wrong.” 

Despite the administration’s hyperbolic efforts to portray a 158-year-old amendment as an immediate threat to civilization itself, Trump and his allies could not turn media attention away from the very real disaster that is the Iran war. Thursday’s headlines were dominated by the surge in oil prices that followed Trump’s failure of a speech. It’s not that the press ignored the birthright citizenship case, but most coverage outside of Fox News focused on how skeptical the justices were of the president’s position.

Trump reportedly fired Bondi  for similar culture war reasons. She failed to indict and imprison high-profile people who have stood up to him in the past, including Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., New York Attorney General Letitia James and former FBI Director James Comey. As this trio is often portrayed on Fox News as villains, Trump is not wrong that throwing them in jail would have been an exciting time for the MAGA base. But Bondi did her level best, opening investigations and trying to get charges filed. But she was stymied by a court system that still requires evidence and isn’t keen on imprisoning innocent people just because Trump wants to see it.

Similarly, the White House and their backers have been trying — and failing — to turn the SAVE Act into a big deal. Despite bellowing many empty threats at Republicans in Congress, Trump can’t seem to get any real movement on a bill meant to disenfranchise millions of citizens from voting. But it’s arguable that the bill is also falling short on its other purpose, which is likely even more important to the president: spreading panic over America’s changing racial dynamics.

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As Jamelle Bouie wrote last month in the New York Times, the bill isn’t really about voter fraud, which is so rare as to be functionally non-existent. It’s about pushing the president’s belief that the only legitimate citizens are “a particular caste and class of Americans, defined by race, religion and nationality and united by their devotion to Trump.” As the 2024 election showed, there are a lot of Americans receptive to the message that only white conservatives count as “real” Americans. But as a vehicle to hype them up, the SAVE Act doesn’t seem to be doing much. As the What’s Resonating newsletter shows day after day, even GOP social media barely pays attention to the bill. Recent Gallup polling illustrates that concerns about so-called election fraud don’t even rate a mention among Republican voters listing their top concerns. (As the aggregate polls show, Gallup does ask about this.)

The failure is not for a lack of effort from the White House and their propagandists. The usual suspects have deployed the same overwrought language about civilization annihilation. Mike Lee even tweeted a meme picturing a hypothetical White House administration if California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, were to win the presidency. The implication was not subtle; every person pictured below Newsom belonged to a racial or religious minority.

Lee’s post did get a lot of engagement, but mostly because it appeared to be generated by artificial intelligence. Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s name was wrong, and the meme used a picture of some random dude to stand in for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. But the supposed dangers of letting people who aren’t white Christian men hold power didn’t seem to fire up the MAGA people Lee was trying to speak to. Even a provision added to the SAVE Act by its sponsors depriving trans people of medical care — a hot-button topic on the right — failed to fire up the base about the legislation, or to refocus media attention away from the Iran war and onto the phony debate over Trump’s false claims of election fraud.

This is all bad news for Trump, because it comes as his approval ratings are cratering, even with Republicans, on big ticket issues like the economy. A recent CNN poll shows that 64% of voters disapprove of the president’s performance in office, up 10 points from this time last year. Even among GOP-leaning voters, 32% admitted they disapprove of Trump’s handling of the economy. His overall approval rating among Republicans has slipped — although it stands at a robust 80%. An analysis of the dates suggests that Republican voters are squelching concerns about the economy and the war in Iran because they want to see Trump as the man who punishes immigrants, women, racial minorities and queer people.

Because of this Trump has a reason, however awful it may be, to keep his culture war obsessions front and center. The unbending loyalty of the MAGA base has always been his shield, protecting him from political collapse even when everyone outside of 65% of Americans disapprove of his performance as president. As the Covid-19 pandemic showed, these people will go to great lengths, including refusing to protect themselves against a deadly virus, if they feel it serves their larger cause of winning the culture war.

But if it seems Trump’s attention is fully pulled away from their paranoias and hatreds, he risks demoralizing them — especially since he’s a rapidly-aging lame duck. But by foolishly starting a war that is spiraling out of control, his ability to redirect public attention to issues that better serve his political ambitions seems to have been crushed.