Challenges Are Mounting for the Trump Administration
It’s no secret that the Trump administration has been facing a series of issues that are proving difficult to navigate.
Some problems are self-imposed, including Trump floating a 50-year home loan and the president’s openness to keeping the H-1B visa program intact, which is especially unpopular among his online supporters. Another issue is the results of the recent elections, which are not definitive but do show some possible weaknesses in Trump’s electoral coalition. Most recently, Tennessee Republican Matt Van Epps won a special election by nine points in a district Trump won by 22 points in 2024.
Overall, there seems to be a growing sense in the MAGA world of stagnation and even possible decline.
According to RealClearPolitics, Trump’s disapproval rating is nearly at 53%, a high going back to September 2024. Though polling numbers historically have never accurately captured the nation’s feelings about Donald Trump, the polls do seem to be tracking with the problems the administration is currently confronting.
Also, cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James were thrown out by a Clinton appointee, federal Judge Cameron Currie. The DOJ, however, is currently mulling over whether it will seek new indictments. Trump voters rightly want to see jail time for at least some of the most prominent individuals who were behind the Russia Hoax or used lawfare to try to drain Trump of his livelihood.
Additionally, a scathing report of FBI Director Kash Patel’s tenure was recently issued by active duty and retired FBI agents. As recounted by the New York Post’s Miranda Devine, the report describes the FBI as a “rudderless ship” and says that Patel is “in over his head.” As one source put it, he has “neither the breadth of experience nor the bearing an FBI director needs to be successful.”
One particularly embarrassing episode happened when Patel flew into Provo, Utah, the day after Charlie Kirk was assassinated. He would not leave his plane without wearing a medium-sized FBI raid jacket. “When a jacket belonging to a female agent was delivered to Patel on the plane, he complained that ‘two areas on the upper sleeves did not have Velcro patches attached,’” Devine reports. He eventually received these patches from members of the FBI SWAT Team and then finally exited the plane.
Though it’s reasonable to be wary of such reports, Devine recently received RealClear Foundation’s Samizdat Prize for her reporting on the Biden laptop scandal in the fall of 2020. Moreover, the authors of this new report wrote “two previous reports [that] warned about crippling DEI and politicization of the FBI during the Biden administration”—both right-of-center beats. And in the latest report, they do point out the FBI’s still rampant anti-Trump culture, which means that the president’s supporters should take their findings seriously.
President Trump needs competent and experienced officials, especially in key positions in the Department of Justice and the institutions under its authority. Though his high-level picks were certainly better this go around than during his first administration, some clearly have not met the high bar set before them. Trump should conduct a thorough review of every cabinet member and high-profile official to see if they’ve delivered for the American people. There is no time to waste.
The problems facing the Trump administration are likely due to multiple factors. These include officials who haven’t lived up to their promises, messaging lapses from the White House communications staff, and possibly a divide between administration officials who are working to implement the MAGA agenda and those who are not.
Another possibility is that we could be finally seeing the limits of Trump’s capabilities, and will have to wait until 2028 or beyond for another leader who can build on the president’s accomplishments and advance an agenda that will restore government by consent. It’s more likely, however, that these current episodes are bumps in the road that Trump will be able to navigate and find his political footing again.
Whatever the case, we also must remember that Trump still has to contend with a veritable army made up of the political class and various public and private institutions with which they are aligned. The leftist order is still trying to do everything it can to derail the people’s selection in 2024.
The media, of course, is always looking to make life hard for the president. But even The New York Times had to fact-check The Washington Post’s attempted take-down of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth for authorizing strikes on a drug boat in the Caribbean. Brian L. Cox, an adjunct at Cornell, laid waste to the analysis produced by former JAGs that accused Hegseth of committing a war crime.
This comes as the Pentagon is looking into a group of Democratic lawmakers, including Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, who were featured in a video telling the troops that they shouldn’t follow “unlawful orders.” The vagueness, of course, is the point.
Cox rightly argued that this entire phenomenon—clothing sedition in the language of high honor and principle—“can corrode good order and discipline in the ranks and result in missed opportunities on the battlefield.” The whole point of stunts like what Kelly and other Democrats are trying to pull is to “foster uncertainty” at best, and “encourage dissent and sedition among the ranks” at worst. Secretary Hegseth is almost certainly aware of this problem, and should tamp it down as much as possible without turning those who are trying to sow rebellion into martyrs.
On foreign policy, legitimate questions remain about the administration’s endgame in Venezuela. Is this a reassertion of the Monroe Doctrine? Will the administration reenact Cold War-era politics, backing specific parties or regimes? Will the U.S. put troops on the ground?
The president should inform the American people of his basic strategy in South America. The publishing of the forthcoming National Security Strategy will surely help shed light on Trump’s intentions in the Western Hemisphere.
But the news from the administration isn’t all negative. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy purged nearly 3,000 commercial driver’s license schools from the federal registry (an additional 4,500 will be placed on notice). Due to the horrific attack on two National Guardsmen the day before Thanksgiving, Trump also seems to be toughening up his refugee policy on Afghanistan, and possibly other countries as well. Also on the subject of immigration, the Border Patrol began “Operation Catahoula Crunch” in New Orleans, which is targeting violent criminals in the city.
Though negotiating the end of the Russo-Ukrainian War might help Trump electorally, what would likely help far more is delivering some tangible results to voters. Getting rid of policies such as Biden-era CAFE standards that have made life more unaffordable for families should be a more prominent part of Trump’s agenda going forward.
If they haven’t already, this comms team should be highlighting the fact that, per Oren Cass of American Compass, the consumer price index actually increased “1.5% over the past six months, since Liberation Day, which is the same increase as during the six months prior.”
Quite simply, an economy in which a staggering 95% of sales on Black Friday were financed and where 67% of that debt will not be paid down by the end of December is a very unhealthy one. Clearly, there’s a dearth of virtue in American consumers these days, as the Boomers are keen to point out.
But material and institutional factors also play quite a significant role. From higher levels of inflation to exponential increases in the prices of goods across the board (prices have risen by nearly 25% since 2020), our unbalanced economy needs to be reformed. As Emma Waters astutely noted, “The man or woman who solves the two-income-trap problem will be the hero of my generation.”
Though some perspective is needed—we are only nearing Trump’s first anniversary in office during his second term—he needs to focus on delivering results for the American people. The 2026 midterms are just around the bend, and the party of the sitting president has historically not done well in those elections. The decisions Trump makes in the next six months could make the difference between his second administration being satisfactory and one that fundamentally shifts the balance in favor of restoring American self-government and building an unbeatable political coalition akin to that which propelled the New Deal.
Just as we shouldn’t be cheerleaders for everything the Trump administration is doing, neither should we simply castigate Trump and work on burning down the Republican Party. Instead, the smart play is to push the president to live up to his stated goals, especially on immigration, trade, and foreign policy. As Auron MacIntyre is fond of pointing out, “Trust the Plan. Always Chimp.”
