No one thinks that Donald Trump will deal with being a lame duck president well. How Trump is going to handle being viewed as the guy keeping the seat warm for the next person is an easy question to answer.
PoliticusUSA is reader-supported 100% news and opinion. You can support us by becoming a subscriber.
He won’t handle it well.
In the president’s mind, it is still 2016, and he is the center of the political media world, with every outlet covering his words with wall-to-wall attention, but that was a decade ago.
There are reams of evidence, no matter what metric is used, that interest in Trump has diminished.
The president’s approval ratings are in the dumpster. His MAGA movement is shrinking. When his speeches and interviews are televised, the audience is smaller. Trump slapped his name on the Kennedy Center and ran it into the ground.
Trump is still in office, but no matter how the midterm election turns out, Americans seem increasingly done with him and his failed presidency.
None of this reality has struck Trump or his enablers, who thought that Trump could save the midterm election for his party with a bunch of rallies in October.
The president’s political operation had to yield to reality and keep the unpopular Trump out of swing states, so he is playing the red-state political version of the county fair circuit, and the press isn’t interested.
Trump noticed this lack of interest and melted down on Sunday morning.