Things Aren't Going Donald Trump's Way

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In the annals of the American presidency, Donald Trump has almost certainly complained more about journalists than any of his predecessors have, maybe more than all of them combined. So when Trump deemed a query 'the nastiest question' he's ever gotten from a member of the press, it was a notable distinction.
The moment came back in May, when CNBC's Megan Cassella asked Trump about 'TACO,' an acronym for 'Trump always chickens out.' The phrase had gained popularity in the financial sector as a derisive shorthand for the president's penchant for backing down from his tariff threats. During an otherwise routine Oval Office event, Trump sputtered angrily at Cassella, claiming that his shifting tariff timelines were 'part of negotiations,' while admonishing, 'Don't ever say what you said.'
Trump's appetite for confrontation is being tested again this week, with the arrival of two of the most important self-imposed deadlines of his second term, related to the tariffs and the conflict in Ukraine. Both present fraught decisions for Trump, and they come at a time when he faces a confluence of crises. A president who, less than a year ago, staged a historic political comeback and moved to quickly conquer Washington and the world now confronts more obstacles than at any point since his inauguration. Three central campaign promises—that he would end the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and boost the economy—are in peril. And for the first time in his 200 days back in office, the White House has begun to worry about members of the president's own party defying him.
Tomorrow, the clock runs out on the two-week window that Trump gave Russia to reach a cease-fire with Ukraine. The president has been upset by his inability to end the war. Without an agreement, he has said that he will impose sanctions on Russia. But doing so would represent the first time in his decade in politics that he truly punished President Vladimir Putin. Trump likewise has grown exasperated with Israel's prosecution of the war in the Gaza Strip, a conflict that could soon escalate; Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhu said today that his military plans to fully occupy the famine-plagued Strip.
[Tom Nichols: Putin's still in charge]
The other deadline is Trump's latest vow on tariffs, which go into effect today for 60 nations, with rates ranging from 10 to 41 percent. This time, Trump appeared to relish declaring that there would not be another TACO moment, writing on social media last night, 'IT'S MIDNIGHT!!! BILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN TARIFFS ARE NOW FLOWING INTO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!' Since the panic triggered by Trump's 'Liberation Day' tariff announcement in April, Wall Street has learned to shrug off Trump's scattershot statements. But the economy has shown new signs of weakness, with stubbornly high prices potentially set to rise again because of the tariffs and, most potently, a recent jobs report poor enough that Trump lashed out against the bureaucrat who compiled it; last week, he fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, claiming, without evidence, that the jobs numbers were bogus. That unprecedented act of petulance risks undermining Wall Street's confidence in the economy and undercutting Trump's campaign pledge to give the United States another economic 'golden age.'
Those geopolitical and economic headwinds have been joined by forceful political ones. Since going out on August recess, Republican lawmakers have been heckled at town halls while trying to defend the president's signature legislative accomplishment, the One Big Beautiful Bill. And some of those same Republicans, in a rare act of rebellion, have questioned Trump's handling of the Jeffrey Epstein matter, a scandal that the president, try as he may, simply has been unable to shake.
The mood in the White House has darkened in the past month, as the president's challenges have grown deeper. The ongoing Russia-Ukraine war has become intensely frustrating for Trump, two White House officials and a close outside adviser told me. The president had truly believed that his relationship with Putin would bring about a quick end to the conflict. But instead, Putin has taken advantage of Trump's deference to him and has openly defied the president—'embarrassed him,' one of the officials told me—by ignoring his calls for a cease-fire and ratcheting up his strikes on Ukrainian cities. Trump has sharply criticized his Russian counterpart in recent weeks as he mulled what to do.
Yesterday, Trump said that his personal envoy, Steve Witkoff, had a productive meeting with Putin in Moscow, leading the U.S. president to return to his original plan to end the war: a summit. A third White House official told me that Trump has informed European leaders that he wants to meet with Putin as soon as next week in a new effort to get a cease-fire. A Kremlin spokesperson accepted the White House offer but said its details needed to be finalized. Trump also told European leaders that he would potentially have a subsequent meeting with both Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, but the Kremlin did not immediately agree to that.
One of the officials told me that Trump is still considering how and whether to directly punish Putin if Moscow doesn't hit tomorrow's deadline. The U.S. does little trade with Russia, so direct levies would be useless, and the West Wing is divided as to the merits of slapping secondary sanctions on nations that do business with Moscow. Trump signed off on sanctioning India this week because, the official told me, he was already annoyed at the lack of progress on a trade deal with Delhi. But he is far more leery of sanctioning China—another major economic partner of Russia's—for fear of upending ongoing trade negotiations with Beijing.
Witkoff's visit to Moscow came just days after he had been in Gaza to urge Netanyahu to ease a blockade and allow more aid and food to reach Palestinians. Although Israel agreed this week to allow some more food in, the humanitarian crisis has not abated. Trump, who badly wants the conflict to end, believes that Netanyahu is prolonging the war and has told advisers that he is wary of Israel's new push to capture Gaza. Even so, officials told me that Trump is unlikely to break with Netanyahu in any meaningful way.
Any president, of course, can be vexed by events outside his nation's borders. Trump's superpower at home has long been to command intense loyalty from fellow Republicans. Yet that power might be hitting its limit. He was able to pressure the GOP to pass his One Big Beautiful Bill last month, but some Republicans, seeing its shaky poll numbers, have already tried to distance themselves from it; Senator Josh Hawley, for instance, has said he wants to roll back some of the Medicaid cuts that the bill, which he voted for, included. And lawmakers who are trying to defend the bill are facing voter anger. Representative Mike Flood was loudly heckled by a hostile crowd at a town hall in his Nebraska district on Monday. One of the White House officials told me that the West Wing has told House leadership to advise Republican members against holding too many in-person town halls.
Then there is Epstein. Trump has desperately wished the story away. He feels deeply betrayed by his MAGA supporters who believed him when he intimated during the campaign that something was nefarious about the government's handling of the case, and who now have a hard time believing him when he says their suspicions are actually bogus. The president has snapped at reporters asking about Epstein, told House Speaker Mike Johnson to send Congress home early to avoid a vote on whether to release the Epstein files, and sued his on-again, off-again friend Rupert Murdoch for $10 billion after The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had sent Epstein a lewd birthday card in 2003. Murdoch hasn't backed down. Neither have a number of MAGA luminaries and Republican lawmakers who keep demanding to see the files.
[Read: Inside the White House's Epstein strategy]
Trump's own efforts to manage the story have only fed it. His account of why he and Epstein had a falling out two decades ago has shifted multiple times. One of the White House officials and the outside ally told me that advisers have told Trump repeatedly to stop saying he has the right to pardon Epstein's former partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking and related offenses, to avoid drawing more attention to his previous friendship with Epstein. Despite hopes that the story would dissipate over the August recess, the White House is preparing for Trump to take more heat from Republicans in the weeks ahead.
Some Trump allies still believe that the president, even as a lame duck, will keep Republicans in line. 'Having survived Russiagate, Hillary Clinton, two impeachments, four trials designed to put him in jail, and two assassination attempts,' former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told me, 'it's unlikely the current situation will be much of a problem.'
The White House also pushed back against the idea that Trump is in a perilous moment. 'Only the media industrial complex and panicans would mischaracterize this as a challenging time. They simply haven't learned anything after covering President Trump for the last 10 years,' the spokesperson Steven Cheung told me in a statement. 'The successes of the first 200 days have been unprecedented and exactly what Americans voted for, which is why this country has never been hotter.'
But others in the party sense signs of trouble. 'He's spending the political capital he's accumulated for a decade,' Alex Conant, a GOP strategist who worked in President George W. Bush's White House and on then-Senator Marco Rubio's presidential campaign, told me. 'Below the surface of the Republican Party, there's an intense battle brewing over what a post-Trump GOP looks like. And that surfaces on issues like Israel, the debt, and Epstein. How Trump navigates that fight over the remainder of his presidency will be a big test.'
There was a time, years ago, when August could be counted as a slow news month in Washington. That's now a distant memory, in no small part because the current president has an insatiable need to be in the news cycle. In August 2017, while Trump was vacationing at his golf club in New Jersey, I asked one of his senior aides why Trump had declared that he would deliver 'fire and fury' on North Korea. The aide told me that Trump was looking to intimidate Pyongyang—but that he was also annoyed that he hadn't been the central storyline on cable news. The bellicose rhetoric worked: Suddenly, Trump had changed the news cycle.
[Read: The desperation of Donald Trump's posts]
In this particular summer of his discontent, Trump is now again trying to regain control of the political narrative. But his efforts have been more haphazard and less effective: a threat to strip Rosie O'Donnell of her citizenship, a revival of the 'Russia hoax,' an announcement of a new White House ballroom, even a walk on the West Wing roof. None of those things changed the news cycle, and instead they only reinforced that, at least to some extent, he is at the mercy of events outside his control.
Trump has long believed that he can create his own truth, often by telling the same falsehood over and over again. He seems to be trying that tactic again, too, especially with the economy. Trump's response to the disastrous July jobs report was to assert, with no evidence, that the Bureau of Labor Statistics had incorrectly reported the statistics to hurt him politically—and then fire the commissioner. That sent a chill through the markets and the business world, which need reliable statistics to function, and sparked fears that Trump will try to bend other government data to his whims.
When it comes to his own political standing, Trump is also trying to create his own reality, seeming to will away the challenges he faces. In an interview with CNBC on Tuesday, he insisted that he has 'the best poll numbers I've ever had,' claiming his approval was north of 70 percent. But that number represented his approval among Republicans, the interviewer told him. In fact, his overall approval rating is hovering at just about 40 percent. When corrected, all Trump could do was call the whole thing 'fake.'
Article originally published at The Atlantic