Μake us preferred on Google Last Wednesday’s Wall Street relief rally after Donald Trump acknowledged midterm defeat was something of a first. Now it looks like a mirage. “Does anybody really believe this ‘Election’ was honest?” the president posted on Monday. The answer is almost everyone does — except possibly for the one who matters most. Given a choice between grace and the Alamo, Trump seems disposed to a bloody last stand.
Posterity will scratch its head over Trump’s hinge moments. After 2024, he had an opportunity to cement a Republican multiracial working-class coalition. Instead, he kept denying the very affordability complaints that had won him their vote. Now he has the chance to salvage his presidency through modest concessions. With skill, he could even split the Democrats and restore his party’s fortunes. But that is not how Trump plays the game.
His elevation of Stephen Miller because he supposedly gets things done is the reshuffle version of a middle finger. What does Trump want his new White House chief of staff to do? Miller’s specialism is presidential rule without regard for Congress or the courts. He is the unmasked face of immigrant deportations, champion of history’s “iron laws” of might makes right and of an unbound US presidency. In other words, Miller is the architect of what Americans just said no to.
Yet he is Trump’s riposte to Democratic control. You could almost hear Washington’s collective groan when Trump announced his new role last Friday. Shortly afterwards, the embattled US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, posted “patriots in control”, which is a rallying cry of QAnon, the far-right conspiracy movement. “Stand. Fight. Defend the Republic,” Hegseth added next to a picture of himself with Miller. Anyone who was hoping that Trump would play the role of a lame duck and not an angry one has been put on notice.
Yet Trump and Miller will find it much harder than before the midterms to get anything done. Senior Republicans are acting with far less fear of the White House than they were a week ago. Courts already blocked key Trump executive orders during his period of peak supremacy. They are even less likely to be cowed after last week’s sweep. With the big exception of foreign policy, whatever Trump tried before will be more difficult to pull off now.
That will only increase his rage against the dying of the light. It is safe to predict that talk of removing him for “incapacity” via the 25th Amendment will get louder. As time and Trump’s architectural plans march on, calls for his removal may become deafening. But the prospect is a chimera. There is no chance that JD Vance, the vice-president, could persuade a majority of Trump’s cheerleading cabinet to consent to that even if he had the guts to try and Capitol Hill agreed.
Trump always has the option of quitting. The best parallel to last week’s result was the 1974 midterm landslide that followed Richard Nixon’s post-Watergate resignation. Nixon’s former vice-president, Gerald Ford, pardoned him shortly thereafter. It is possible Vance could convince Trump to step down by vowing to protect him through hell or high water. As investigations heat up into what Democrats call the “Trump crime family”, that temptation will surely arise.
But resigning would contradict a lifetime of going for broke. Trump also routinely mistrusts underlings, however loyal their behaviour. Vance is no exception. His ambition to succeed Trump depends on the latter’s endorsement. Yet any hope of converting that into a 2028 victory would mean distancing himself from Trump. He can hardly do both. We should thus get used to the passive aggression that Vance showed last week when he blamed Republican defeat on the Iran war.
The coming months will be a two-front Trump battle against his enemies and some of his friends. On one side there is dynamic tension inside the White House. The battle for Trump’s succession starts under his roof. It could turn Shakespearean. On the other is Trump’s coming showdown with Congress. In theory, nothing could be simpler than joining cause with Vance while extending an olive branch to Capitol Hill. Both goals would be advanced by Trump dismissing Hegseth and winding down Operation Epic Fury. Any such actions would be greeted as statesmanlike.
But that is not the path that Trump is signalling. In a CBS interview aired on Sunday, he was pressed on whether he could forgive his enemies even if he faced God’s judgment. “I don’t want to go to hell,” Trump said. “[But] I do hate some of my enemies and I always will.”
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