Donald Trump's Biggest Problem

Daniel McCarthy

Politics,

"The president has lost his base, or is in grave danger of doing so." 

Before he gets more deeply involved in Syria’s civil war, Donald Trump will have to win one at home. The Republican Party was already divided after failing to repeal Obamacare. Now the conflict has spread to the White House, where Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner are at daggers drawn. Even Trump’s most loyal grassroots and media supporters are in an uproar over the president’s evolving foreign policy, which has taken a turn toward the establishment as his domestic agenda sinks into the swamp he promised to drain.

How much damage has the Syrian attack done to Trump? He’s lost Ann Coulter, who took to Twitter to vent her outrage and retweet lesser-known supporters who felt equally betrayed. He’s lost Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com and the sizable blocs of Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan activists who had flocked to Trump’s “America First” banner. He’s even lost InfoWars, whose readers are overwhelmingly against the attacks, to judge from the site’s self-polling and user comments. Commenters at Breitbart.com are not less outraged over Trump’s move.

The president has lost his base, or is in grave danger of doing so. But he has also picked up new support: from John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Bill Kristol, all of whom praised the airstrike on Syria. Neoconservatism is suddenly back in fashion at the White House, or so it seems.

Trump’s supporters had been growing restive over a litany of setbacks and reversals even before this. The president’s executive order to restrict immigration from countries with active Islamist revolutionaries has bogged down in the courts. Obamacare repeal turned into a fiasco, with the White House getting behind an unpopular plan that neither conservatives nor right-wing populists could get behind. Bannon, the tribune of the right-wing populists, appears to be losing ground by the day in the White House’s internal battles. Word that Reince Priebus may soon be replaced as chief of staff by a more moderate Washington insider led Laura Ingraham to quip on Twitter, “Trump is going into the Swamp he promised to drain for his new Chief-of-Staff.” (A former chief of staff to Sen. Arlen Specter is among those being considered)

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