If supporters of Donald Trump were to be studied — and I very much expect they will be for years and years to come — academics may be hard-pressed to find the connective tissue that unites them all together.
It’s clear they’re not with Trump for his ideology — he doesn’t really have one, not that hews to ideas espoused by the traditional political parties at least. His policies have been all over the map, and even within his own presidencies he’s reversed them substantively or abandoned them outright.
It’s not because he’s done anything heroic or admirable, other than get very, very rich using legally and ethically questionable practices — admirable, perhaps, to some.
And it’s not because he’s done anything particularly great for them. He’s broken most of his promises, and by nearly any metric, he’s made the lives of his own voters demonstrably worse.
But they do love him, in spite of all of this. They love what he represents, what he projects back to them, a version of America they miss, even though he cannot deliver it. And they’ve decided to believe that he truly cares about them, even though he’s taken their money to line his own pockets, he’s endangered their lives by pushing baseless conspiracy theories, and he’s threatening to send their children to another endless war.
The thing that has united Trump supporters, if anything, has been their enduring faith in HIM.
But for how much longer?
Thanks largely to Iran, deportations, and the economy, Trump’s approval is at a second-term low, according to a trio of new polls out this week, which show him at just 33% to 36%.
And we’re starting to see one-time loyalists do something the MAGA base has never really done before: Question him.
They’re questioning Trump on his policies. From his decision to go to war with Iran to the efficacy of his tariffs, MAGA media influencers are vocalizing their concerns about his judgment in ways we haven’t heard before. From a crowd that even managed to justify an insurrection against the U.S. Capitol, this sudden skepticism is interesting.
They’re questioning his morality. The Epstein files have rankled Trump supporters in a way that little else has, and his obvious efforts to cover them up have them raising questions about his involvement and what he knew. Trump’s infidelity, his payoffs to porn stars, the “Access Hollywood” tape, the sexual abuse adjudication — none of that managed to turn MAGA voters off the way Epstein has.
They’re questioning his sanity and competence. In the wake of Trump’s deranged threats to end Iranian civilization, and his bonkers attacks on the first American pope and Catholics writ large, folks like Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly and Marjorie Taylor Greene are openly questioning his mental acuity and fitness for office. They didn’t do this during his impeachments, after his 34 convictions for fraud, or when his deportation goon squad killed two American protesters.
And now, they’re questioning his veracity. Several former Trump supporters have come out to question whether the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, in 2024 was staged or is being covered up in some way. That’s questioning whether Trump can be believed, something no MAGA star dared to do just months ago.
Whatever may be motivating these influential one-time MAGA devotees to break ranks, they could very easily give MAGA voters permission to do something they’ve not felt they could do before — question their faith in Trump’s policies, his moral compass, his sanity, and his believability.
And if they start doing that, well, I’m not sure what’s left for them to buy into anymore.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.