Has Trump Given Up?

This is a thought experiment, so don’t get your panties in a bunch. But explore this scenario with me:

What if President Trump saw the writing on the wall in June, when he publicly broke with Netanyahu over his attempt to end the war in Iran? What if, in that moment, he saw that his smash-and-grab strategy for stripping America for parts and pocketing as much value as he could was rapidly coming to an end?

And now he is only looking for ways to memorialize his presidency.

What evidence might we have right now that his state of mind is one of capitulation and escape, rather than a determination to continue pursuing an agenda that has failed?

Let’s see how much fun we can have.

Trump has not given up power. That’s an imaginary bridge too far. But he may have given up the idea that he could turn his presidency into durable power. And while his enablers and co-conspirators are scrambling to get as much influence, legislation and payola as they can, he has quietly turned to extraction, insulation and monument building before the voters write his bitter ending.

Let’s talk through this.

Remember in June when Trump announced that the war with Iran was over, and they even had a preliminary memorandum of understanding? But Israel refused to treat Lebanon as part of the ceasefire. I know, so much has happened since June, but I promise this is one of the more significant things.

There was a short but shocking and public falling out between the prime minister of Israel and the U.S. president. No one has seen a U.S. president say no to Israel since JFK pressured them to permit inspections of its Dimona nuclear facility, warning that American support could be seriously jeopardized if Israel refused. 1

And then Kennedy was assassinated.

This time, the president publicly raged at Netanyahu for jeopardizing the peace agreement, while Bibi and his cabinet raged right back, loudly rejecting Trump’s terms.2

A few weeks later, Trump played decoy switcheroo with Airforce One in Turkey he was so convinced someone was trying to assassinate him. (Iran? Israel? We’ll never know who he really feared.) Leaving more than 100 aides, officials and journalists aboard the decoy.3

With Netanyahu refusing to stop firing on Lebanon, the preliminary agreement never became the promised peace, and the Iran war became an economic and political sinkhole Trump can no longer control.4

Tariffs, birthright citizenship, DOGE all falling by the wayside5 as The MAGA cult is discovering that dismantling and rebuilding a nation the size of the EU is a bigger, more complicated task than they thought.

Poor MAGA, first a laughing stock, now complete failures. And growing numbers of their base abandoning the red hats and pretending they never have, never could have been rightwing lunatics.6

All of this makes Trump’s political future look increasingly hostile. An August Financial Times poll found that 53 percent of registered voters believe they are financially worse off than when Trump returned to office. 7

Even the Heritage Foundation—the architects of all that is evil in this country the nationalist, populist vision, has suffered an institutional crackup. It has been purged and transformed. Sacrificing experts, institutional credibility and traditional conservative relationships in exchange for ideological loyalty.8

Gone? No. Bereft of power, definitely not. More isolated and filled with loyalists? Absolutely. (More about Heritage 2.0 in another post.)

Is this bad for Trump? I think it is, and here is why: They needed Chaotic Evil to destroy institutions. But rebuilding those institutions in their image will require someone they can control.

They know they can’t control Trump. Nobody can.
That makes him increasingly expendable.
Or an outright liability.

Perhaps Trump saw in June that he was no longer the indispensable leader of the regressive revolution. He was instead becoming the used demolition equipment sitting beside the foundation of somebody else’s new building.

From a proposed 250-foot triumphal arch at the entrance to Washington to a $600 million ballroom replacing the East Wing he has already demolished, and four monumental statues near the Lincoln Memorial newly coated in 23.75-karat gold leaf, Trump is reshaping Washington in his own monumental image. He has also claimed the planned National Garden of American Heroes as another of his “great projects.”9

His hand-picked board of the Kennedy Center has vote again to have his name added to the front of the building, even after a judge ordered the previous signage removed.10

At the same time, he’s shoring up his legal protections for when he is no longer president and can no longer rely on the Justice Department’s longstanding policy against indicting or criminally prosecuting a sitting president. They already settled his IRS lawsuit, granting him extraordinarily broad protection from future federal audits. The settlement also protects his family and related businesses. 11

And he’s stepping up the grift! Trump Media is charging financial firms as much as $100,000 a month for early access to the president’s market-moving policy posts. He is happily converting presidential information into a privately controlled product.12

OK, my savvy readers are thinking that many of these 2026 events began earlier in the year, before the pivotal moment when Trump told Netanyahu that he was ruining a wonderful peace agreement, the best peace agreement that anyone had ever made in the history of peace agreements.

True.

But I still think that the blowup with Bibi was the moment Trump realized the jig was up. He was no longer indispensable to the people using him to strip America for parts.

All that remains is to grab whatever he can,
carve his name into as much marble as possible,
and get ready to run.

Tell me what you think in the comments: Is Trump done for, or is he gearing up for a second (third?) act?

—Lady Libertie

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