Trump Is in Retreat

And we don't mean he is spending some down time at Camp David, in Maryland's Catoctin Mountains. No, we mean that he insisted that Congress cut payroll taxes (which would save the Trump Organization a pretty penny)—but then he gave up. He restarted the coronavirus briefings that he himself had shut down after his advice to drink bleach was panned, but no one cared. He was forced to admit that the virus was going to get worse before it gets better, contradicting what he has being saying for months (namely, that it is already a nonissue). He demanded that all the schools in the country open on schedule—until he said, well, maybe not all of them. He was adamant that the Republican National Convention would go on as planned, with 20,000 people roaring their approval—until he decided a convention wasn't really needed. He notably told everyone that masks are not needed—until he started wearing them and said maybe they could be useful.

Timothy Naftali, a professor of history at NYU and the former director of Richard Nixon's presidential library, said: "The good ship Trump has sprung a leak, and it's leaking political capital." Trump absolutely hates to change positions, since that implies he was wrong the first time, but he has two problems: (1) He is sinking in the national polls and in the battleground state polls, and (2) Republican senators sense a blue tsunami on the horizon, and are suddenly willing to push back on ideas of his that they think will hurt them.

Backtracking on so many issues has long-range implications for Trump (where "long-range" may be 6 months). Once Republican senators fully figure out what Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) did many months ago—that if they stand up to him, he backs down—they are going to stand up to him much more often. Being a bully works only if your victims are scared of you. Once that fear goes away, your days as a bully are numbered. We may be approaching that point now.