Adviser reveals Trump has just discovered the 'quickest way to become a lame duck'
A "close outside adviser" to President Donald Trump recently told Jonathan Lemire of The Atlantic that the president has just discovered "the quickest way to become a lame duck."
Trump's MAGA base has been fracturing for some time after the administration declined to release the Jeffrey Epstein files in full earlier this year. That move sparked considerable backlash from MAGA figureheads like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who was one of Trump's fiercest defenders before the debacle began.
“No Republican had dared even breathing the word 2028 for fear of triggering Trump,” the outside adviser told Lemire. “But that’s changing. And the quickest way to become a lame duck is to lose your own party.”
Historically, a president tends to become a lame duck "the moment he takes the oath of office for the second time," Lemire noted. But Trump seemed to brush that trend aside, at first. Lemire mentioned the 140 executive orders Trump issued at the beginning of his second administration and his "upending" of the economy.
However, all of that verve seems to have escaped the Trump presidency since the Epstein files saga began.
"Trump seems a whole lot smaller," Lemire wrote. "His party has been battered in recent elections. His poll numbers on even his signature issues—the economy, immigration—have tumbled. He’s seemingly lost touch with what got him elected, instead focusing on projects both petty and self-aggrandizing."