Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments -- now including a war in the Middle East.
The three issues that stood as the unshakable pillars of Trumpism have all at once become political millstones around his neck.
Start with immigration. In line with his 2016 campaign promises, Trump has indeed swept away whatever remained of the GOP’s pro-immigrant past, replacing it with a new nativist orthodoxy that seeks not merely to stem the tide of mass migration but to reverse the demographic changes of the past half-century.
But following the pushback to ICE’s aggressive immigration raids in Minneapolis and elsewhere, the administration is confronting the political risks of that new orthodoxy: Recent polls suggest that nearly half of all Americans — including 1-in-5 voters who backed Trump in 2024 — think his mass deportations campaigns are “too aggressive.” In response, the White House has reportedly urged congressional Republicans to soften their hardline rhetoric on mass deportations, warning them that it could cost the GOP key voting blocs in the 2026 midterms.
The situation doesn’t look much better on trade. As with immigration, Trump’s successful campaign to get the GOP on board with trade protectionism has come with a significant political cost: over 60 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s tariffs, according to some recent polls, and even Republican voters are split about the upsides of his trade war. Even worse for the administration is the slew of recent polling suggesting that a majority of voters blame Trump’s tariffs for raising the cost of living — a significant political liability in an election year where “affordability” remains a top concern for voters.
On foreign policy, Trump’s military moves abroad remain broadly popular with self-identified “MAGA” Republicans. But there are signs that his forays into foreign interventionism — including the ongoing war with Iran — are unpopular with the critical independent and swing voters who pushed Trump over the top in 2024. Inside the White House, Trump’s senior advisers appear increasingly anxious that those numbers could get even worse if the war continues to push up gas and energy prices.
That said, foreign policy poses the most vexing question of the political downsides of Trump’s fidelity (or lack thereof) to pure and uncut “Trumpism.” Unlike on trade or immigration, where the blowback has been prompted by Trump’s fulfillment of an original campaign promise, there’s a case to be made that the president is courting political disaster by betraying Trumpism’s original promise on foreign policy — to prioritize American interests by keeping America out of foreign wars.
