After Donald Trump launched his war on Iran, a spirited debate broke out among a small set of public intellectuals over an unexpectedly relevant question: Is Trumpism dead? The case for Trumpism’s passing rested on the idea that the war is so contrary to his promises to the base that the movement can’t survive such a betrayal. The counterargument held, correctly, that Trumpism isn’t actually antiwar, and its deeper impulses within right-leaning America aren’t close to spent.But a bunch of recent events suggests that Trumpism as a broad ideological project has suddenly sustained a new kind of damage. The findings in this week’s poll from Fox News—a major institutional ally of Trumpism—combined with fresh levels of exasperation at Trump among GOP lawmakers leave little doubt: Some kind of new threshold has been crossed. The Fox poll’s most brutal finding is that Trump is losing major ground among both his most loyal constituencies and those he made surprise inroads with in 2024. On the former, Trump’s approval is underwater with working-class whites (46–54), rural voters (43–57), and even white men (48–52). On the latter, he’s tanking among young voters (31–69), Latinos (33–67), and working-class voters of all races (40–60), suggesting he’s squandered his gains with nonwhite working people entirely.His numbers on the economy are even worse. Only 29 percent of voters approve of his handling of it, while an extraordinary 71 percent disapprove. On inflation it’s an eye-popping 24–76. All his aforementioned core voter groups disapprove of Trump’s economic performance, as well—in very large majorities.Just look at Fox’s write-up of its poll. It reports that Trump’s disapproval is at a “new high,” while even noting that he has slipped underwater on border security. It takes note of sudden new jumps in the percentages who disapprove of Trump on the economy and reports candidly on precipitous declines among base voter groups. That’s as close as Fox will ever come to admitting that Trump is in collapse. As Media Matters’s Matt Gertz, who closely follows Fox, tells me, this is “certainly the most devastating Fox News poll of this presidency” and “portrays a presidency in free fall.”Now look at what’s happening inside the GOP. At a private lunch Thursday, many Republican senators unloaded angrily on acting Attorney General Todd Blanche over Trump’s new $1.8 billion slush fund. They questioned the legality of the fund—which will hand out taxpayer money to Trump allies, including the January 6 rioters, pursuant to a corrupt “settlement” of his lawsuit against the IRS. Some Republicans objected to giving taxpayer money to January 6ers who attacked police officers.This comes just after Republicans dropped their quest to give Trump $1 billion in taxpayer money for his ballroom. And House Republicans just shelved a vote on a measure to end his Iran war because they lacked the votes to defeat it. These too saw serious GOP defections from Trump.What ties all this together? It’s this: Republicans probably wouldn’t be standing up to Trump so aggressively if his approval were in the mid-40s or higher, if his economic standing weren’t dropping so precipitously, and if his war weren’t destroying the global economy.But there’s an even deeper connecting thread here. In recent days, Trump has crowed about his ousting of disloyal Republicans via his backing of primary challenges to them. He has succeeded at that. But suddenly, that’s not cowing the GOP into doing his bidding. Trump’s primary-success boasts are meant to strike fear into GOP lawmakers: He can still turn the MAGA base against them on a whim with a twitch of his Truth Social thumbs. Yet terror of the base apparently weighs less heavily on Republicans when party actors come to genuinely fear the broader electorate outside the MAGA bubble—as evidenced by their apparent belief that Trump’s ballroom, his corrupt slush fund for January 6ers, and even his war are growing too toxic for them to bear.It’s no accident that this comes as Trump is hemorrhaging support from both base groups and 2024 converts. To be a viable political project, Trumpism likely needs a combination of hypercharged core voters (the low-engagement Americans directly energized by Trump and only Trump) and non-MAGA voters sporadically attracted to him by economic dissatisfaction and his lingering cultural aura.Yet it now looks plausible that these constituencies can’t hold together in a plurality coalition—let alone a majority one—under the conditions unleashed by Trumpist governing. Recent events drive this home with fresh clarity: It’s precisely the conditions wrought by the policies most associated with Trumpism and “America First” nationalism that are alienating voters the most.
