From focus on his ‘greatness’ to deal with Iran: Trump may escape the consequences of his mess

Donald Trump’s obsessions may have exacted serious costs and turned off sections of the electorate, but two factors may shield his party in mid-term elections.

From multiple mainstream news sources, a disturbing picture has emerged of how President Donald Trump spends his time. He remains fixated on a narrow set of concerns: quickly building monuments to his own “greatness”, such as a giant arch to remake the skyline of Washington, DC; clamping down on immigration and pursuing his vain quest to end birthright citizenship; pressuring congressional Republicans to pass his SAVE act designed to make it harder for American citizens to vote; securing a more restrictive nuclear deal with Iran than the one achieved by Barack Obama; and his own sagging popularity, which he insists is vastly understated by public opinion polls.

In the past, a president who showed so little concern for the welfare of the American people would pay a price in the mid-term elections. (Shutterstock)

In the past, a president who showed so little concern for the welfare of the American people would pay a steep price in the mid-term elections. But Trump may escape this reckoning because of the political conditions that now define the electoral landscape.

Let’s start with his obsessions. One striking fact is that most have nothing to do with the issues that concern the broad public. High prices remain a worry for most Americans, even though the rate of inflation has slowed in the years since the Covid pandemic. Trump has made things worse with his war on Iran. Gas prices have surged, but he has dismissed popular complaints and shows little empathy for those struggling to manage. For years, polls have shown that Americans trust Republicans to better manage the economy (an oddity in itself, because the data show generally better economic performance under the Democrats), but Trump has dissipated this partisan advantage.

Tariffs were intended to be the cornerstone of his second-term economic project. They were to accomplish multiple goals — revive American industry by increasing the cost of imports, especially from China and low-wage countries; yield a surge in federal revenues that would allow tax cuts without increasing the federal deficit; and hold down prices because the cost would be paid by foreign manufacturers without being passed along to American consumers. Most economists scoffed at this agenda, questioning how its various goals could be reconciled in practice. Then, Trump decided to use tariffs as a foreign policy tool, raising and lowering rates according to his whims to compel other nations to accede to American demands.

As a result of the inconsistent application of tariffs, it is difficult to say whether they might have achieved any of his economic goals. Certainly there has been no significant industrial resurgence during his second term. Manufacturing jobs have barely increased. Despite pleas from fellow Republicans to focus on the economy, Trump shows little interest.

At the outset of Trump’s second term, he enjoyed widespread public support for an immigration crackdown. His predecessor, Joe Biden, had been slow to recognise that lax border controls troubled a majority of Americans, even if they were sympathetic to the plight of immigrants who had entered the country and lived here as law-abiding, taxpaying residents for years.

The second term crackdown, directed by Trump’s trusted aide Stephen Miller, soon became a political liability, however. Excessive force and violence by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents turned opinion against the administration’s heavy-handed methods, much as they did in Trump’s first term. Although the president’s loyal supporters in the Make America Great Again (MAGA) ranks continue to stand by his restrictive immigration policy, those who gave it their conditional blessing have been alienated by its implementation.

Trump also took aim at the longstanding legal status of birthright citizenship. He hoped that a conservative US Supreme Court would adopt the administration’s assertion that the Fourteenth Amendment did not extend to those who had entered the country illegally. The Court ruled against him. But even that outcome has not put an end to his obsession as he continues to seek to curb birthright citizenship through executive orders.

Ever since he lost the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump has insisted he was cheated out of victory by fraud, with many ballots cast by ineligible voters. Election denialism has become a central MAGA tenet. The president has thrown his support behind the SAVE legislation, which would require prospective voters to provide official documentation of their citizenship status. In fact, numerous studies have demonstrated that voter fraud is exceedingly rare in the US. The measure would disenfranchise millions of voters who lack the required documentation.

Republicans in the US Senate have refused to put the bill up for a vote, knowing it cannot meet the 60-vote threshold needed to overcome a filibuster. None of this has deterred Trump, however, as he has urged them to end the filibuster and vetoed or threatened to veto other legislation until the Senate approves the SAVE Act.

Finally, he has ensnared himself in a conflict with Iran from which he has no clear exit. In February 2026, he joined Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a reckless attempt to overthrow the entrenched Iranian revolutionary regime by attacking its leadership, while also again targeting the Iranian nuclear programme that the US and Israel had claimed to eliminate the previous year. Trump’s war goals have shifted over the course of the conflict (regime change has disappeared from the list, while he now has to resolve access to the Strait of Hormuz since the Iranians have effectively gained control). But the president is most insistent that the US achieve tighter restrictions on the Iranian nuclear programme than the deal Obama negotiated in 2015, from which Trump withdrew during his first term.

The picture for Donald Trump and the Republicans appears bleak. Why, then, might they escape a political backlash in the upcoming midterm elections? Two factors stand out.

First, Republicans have shielded themselves from electoral repercussions by redrawing congressional districts in states they control. Today, there are many fewer competitive seats in the House of Representatives than two decades ago. While it remains likely that the Democrats will reclaim the House, Republican losses will be limited and thus leave Democrats with a slim majority. Add to this the difficulty that Democrats face as they seek control of the Senate, where the bulk of seats contested this fall are in reliably Republican states.

Second, the Democrats have not agreed on a programme or message to take advantage of Trump’s weaknesses. Unhappy though voters are with the Republican brand, they continue to express low approval of the Democratic Party, too. Most of the energy in its ranks is in its progressive wing.

But whether the party’s leftist candidates can win in key battleground states and House districts remains very much in question. If they cannot prevail, President Trump will escape the consequences of his peculiar obsessions.

Andrew J Polsky is professor emeritus, department of political science, Hunter College, CUNY. The views expressed are personal