Speaking at a rally in 2016, Donald Trump delivered these now-famous lines:
“We’re gonna win so much, you may even get tired of winning. And you’ll say, ‘Please, please. It’s too much winning. We can’t take it anymore, Mr. President, it’s too much.’ And I’ll say, ‘No, it isn’t. We have to keep winning. We have to win more!’ ”
Since then, he’s repeated a version of this cartoonish promise over and over again, only to be reminded of it by his opponents when he seems to be on the ropes.
But now, entering the second year of his second term, the wins have been increasingly hard to locate. Trump’s first attempt at winning — appointing Elon Musk to head up DOGE — was a chaotic, ineffective, and ultimately humiliating endeavor that saw the very public fracturing of their relationship.
The president’s signature economic initiative — tariffs — have done little to stimulate the economy and a lot to piss off our allies. His anti-crime and anti-immigration efforts, which initially had voters’ blessing and approval, have turned into deeply unpopular and divisive liabilities for both Trump and Republicans.
And if the last month has felt like a year to you and me, imagine how it has felt to Trump, whose losses are piling up on top of each other like a precarious and chaotic game of Jenga — and it’s poised to topple over. The question is, does he care?
There was Trump’s Greenland folly. Seemingly all-consumed with the bruising impact of losing the Nobel Peace Prize, he set his beady eyes north, attempting to muscle his way into owning the Danish territory with the surgical skill of an axe murderer and the diplomatic soft touch of the Kool-Aid Man.
After insisting America needed Greenland for national security, promising we would get it, and threatening to take it by force if necessary, Trump stormed Davos in hopes of leaving with the island as a souvenir. Instead, rebuffed by Europe and NATO, he was left announcing a vague (and possibly made up?) “framework” of a deal that has amounted to nothing so far.
In Minneapolis, where Trump deployed ICE in response to cases of Somali-American fraud schemes, the shooting deaths of two U.S. citizen protesters, mother of three Renee Good and VA nurse Alex Pretti, have sparked widespread outrage and condemnation.
While the administration and its supporters started out with a lot of tough talk in defense of ICE, often throwing the acronym “FAFO” around to justify violence against anyone who would get in their way, the tone has shifted considerably.
Controversial Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino was moved off of Minneapolis, where DHS Secretary Kristi Noem was also leading the charge. Sen. Thom Tillis called for her ouster, and both Noem and Bovino will reportedly be replaced by Border Czar Tom Homan.
Numerous Republican lawmakers, aware of a looming midterm election, have come out to say enough is enough, and call for Trump to change course. Rep. Mike Lawler penned an op-ed in the New York Times saying what Trump has been doing “is not working,” acknowledging “Americans’ many legitimate concerns about how the government has conducted immigration policy,” and calling for the investigation of both deaths by law enforcement as well as Congress.
Right-wing media, too, has begun calling for a shift in strategy, with many on even Fox News ringing alarm bells.
There’s no other way to describe Trump’s results in Greenland and Minnesota as losses, ending with his retreat from a once emboldened position that no longer was tenable or politically prudent.
Undergirding both of those abject failures, of course, is Trump’s flailing economy. Trump’s approval rating on the economy, the issue most people care about the most, has swung a whopping 26 points in just a year, starting at plus-6 points to negative-20 now. Trump’s faring worse now than former President Joe Biden was at the same point.
Quite simply, Americans do not feel like this economy is working for them. That’s bolstered by reality, the impact of Trump’s dumb trade wars, but it’s also bolstered by perception, a belief that Trump is indifferent to the economic pain of his own voters and is focused on literally everything but affordability. That’s a dangerous combination in an election year.
It almost feels like Trump no longer cares. He’s running the country like a guy who was just told he has a year to live, checking off items on a bucket list. Only, instead of “skydiving,” it’s “depose a dictator,” “steal a peace prize,” and “invade a sovereign nation.”
He may not care, but Republican lawmakers definitely do. And they are tired of so much losing. Can they corral him back to the plot in time? The clock is ticking.
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.”
____
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.