LAME-DUCK TRUMPISM LOOKS A LOT LIKE NON-LAME-DUCK TRUMPISM

I understand why many people are saying that President Trump looks like a lame duck.

For the first time in his second term, President Donald Trump was confronted by his fellow Republicans. And he fell in line.

Rather than face a massive defection of Republican votes in the House, Trump flipped to support a bill to force the Department of Justice to release non-classified files related to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

He's getting pushback from Republicans on other issues -- for instance, Senate Republicans rejected his call to eliminate the filibuster, and many Republicans are grumbling about his support for H1-B visas.

But for now, it appears that every day following congressional Republicans' defiance of Trump on Epstein will look more or less like every day before that defiance. Here's St. Paul yesterday:

Unbelievable, ICE unloaded Pepper spray directly in the face of protesters yesterday in St. Paul MN -

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— Guardrails of Democracy (@demguardrails.bsky.social) November 19, 2025 at 11:19 AM

Will a reportedly weakened Trump stop doing this? No, because the Republicans who defied him on Epstein strongly approve of this and want it to continue -- and he wouldn't stop even if they objected. There's pushback in the lower courts, but he won't be stopped by the Supreme Court. And here in New York City, we know this is coming as soon as Zohran Mamdani is sworn in as mayor on January 1.

Immigration is the issue on which Trump's support is strongest among Republican members of Congress and the GOP rank-and-file. But what about healthcare? On that subject, there's very little daylight between congressional Republicans and Trump. Republicans have hated Obamacare since before Trump entered politics. The Democratic capitulation on the shutdown happened because Republicans refused to do a clean extension of Obamacare subsidies. I'd believe that the Trump era is over and Trump is genuinely a lame duck if there was any chance that Republicans might extend the subsidies now. In a saner world, they might look at a poll showing them losing the 2026 congressional vote by double digits and agree to defy Trump again in veto-proof numbers, this time on extending the subsidies. Instead, they're talking up the terrible ideas they've had since the pre-Trump era -- health savings accounts and junk plans that don't protect consumers from massive medical bills.

Most of Trump's tariffs are still in place. I assume congressional Republicans are hoping the Supreme Court will do the job they're afraid to do by ruling against Trump on tariffs, but as I've noted a few times, the case before the Court involves only one method of imposing tariffs, and Trump could use other methods to reimpose them. Would Congress try to stop him? That's highly unlikely.

And Trump's corruption and self-dealing continue without interruption. Jamelle Bouie writes:

This week, President Trump welcomed Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia with a lavish reception at the White House. Part of the president’s relationship with Prince Mohammed includes lucrative ties between the Trump Organization and Saudi firms, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars....

Earlier this month, top Swiss business leaders arrived at the White House bearing lavish gifts fit for a king. The chief executive of Rolex gave President Trump a gold-plated desk clock. Not to be outdone, the chief executive of a gold-refining company presented him with a 2-pound gold bar engraved with 45 and 47, in honor of his two presidencies. A week later, the president rewarded Switzerland with a favorable break on tariffs, reducing them from 39 percent to 15 percent.

This summer, The New Yorker reported that the Trump family had earned $3.4 billion through deals it had arranged since Trump entered the White House in 2017. The Trump Organization is also expanding its operations around the world, developing more than 22 properties in at least 10 countries, whose leaders have every incentive to flatter the president with gifts and handouts.

Do you see any pushback anywhere? I don't.

I think many of us are imagining a time when Trump is so unpopular that Republicans, in effect, become moderate Democrats in order to defy him. That simply won't happen. It won't happen because many of Trump's policies are simply mainstream Republicanism -- and it won't happen based on the history of the GOP the last time it had a very unpopular president.

George W. Bush's approval ratings were consistently in the mid- to low 30s for most of his second term, eventually slipping into the 20s -- yet no mainstream Republican candidate in the 2008 presidential primaries was willing to break with him on support of the Iraq War. Ron Paul ran for president as an opponent of the war, but he didn't win a single state and he earned only 35 delegates, of the 1,087 he needed to win. A typical poll from 2007 showed Bush with 75% job approval among Republicans -- a low number, but a number that's too high to make apostasy a winning strategy for Republicans. (In the latest NPR/Marist poll, in which Trump has a 39% job approval rating overall, 89% of Republicans approve of the job he's doing.)

Trump is very unpopular. Trump may continue to be very unpopular. But he's still in charge, and it's likely to be a while before much can be done about his misrule. The immediate future, sadly, is likely to look a lot like the recent past.