Brave New World

Is the House of Cards falling? 18/11/2025

I’m going to make a big call. Trump is finished. Not today, tomorrow, or even past the midterms. He will see out his presidency to 2028, but the project of the authoritarian dominance of one man rule, namely Donald J Trump, is coming to a visible end. As with many, but sadly not all, dictators his rule seems invincible up to the moment it collapses. Honicker, Ceaucesceau, and Qaddafi come to mind. While it is highly unlikely he meets such an abrupt and grizzly end, he will feel its effects of as if they are an assassination. His miscalculations on both Epstein and the cost of living are starting to unravel his coalition and omnipotence. Once the emperor is seen naked it hard to unsee.

Trump has experienced an uncharacteristically rough November. Very poor election results have been analysed as a result of energized Democrats, angry independents, and deflated Republicans. Chuck Todd- probably the pod/broadcaster I trust more than anyone else in US election analysis- predicts this result is almost certain to be reflected in the midterms in 2026. The House will go strongly blue, and he now gives a 50% chance that the Senate will flip too. If that happens the President is a dead, not lame, duck.

Second, the stonewalling over the Epstein files has hurt support from his MAGA base. This is reflected in the ghastly but politically astute Marjorie Taylor Green spotting political space to strengthen her position in a post-Trump GOP by calling for the release of the files as a champion of anti-paedophile swamp draining. She has been accompanied by others- privately, as high as 100 Congressman. This has enraged Trump, but ultimately he has folded. The idea of opposing him is not confined to political suicide or worse. And there is plenty to oppose- the impact of tariffs on prices, the abomination of the East Wing of the White House. In particular, the tin eared approach to the cost of living, the central plank on which he ran and what won him the election has been completely ignored or brushed aside as lies. That does not wash with voters. If there is one thing Americans care about more than the flag, liberty, human rights, even guns and God, and that is money and what it can buy. If people can’t buy things anymore, no amount of gaslighting will persuade them to not vote the bozo out of office. Trump used to know this, but has forgotten. More importantly, he has no policies to address this- at least not in a short-term headline grabbing way, and even those levers no longer work.

Lastly, something that may have been overlooked by pundits and the GOP. The outwardly racist and appallingly violent behaviour by ICE agents has had a strong impression on Hispanics in the US, as seen in voting patterns in early November. Florida recently ceased to become swing state, in large part because the historically conservative anti-Castro Hispanic community swung behind the GOP as a repudiation of the Democratic Party’s increasing emphasis on “Woke” issues. In particular, Miami-Dade county’s voting patterns since 2016 helped seal the fate of the state electorally. As Democrats have steadily moved away from Woke, instead back to focusing on bread and butter issues, and the GOP have recklessly taken Hispanic Floridian votes for granted, what if ICE behaviour has put the third most populous state back in contention? Such stark electoral calculations will add further jitters to a party that may have realised its dance with the Orange mad man was potentially fatal mistake. This cracks in the coalition could burst the party open. Here’s hoping! And we need hope.