Incompetent. Unpopular. Loser. Nothing seems to be going right for Donald Trump.

President Donald Trump began his second presidential term with an autocratic offensive aimed at consolidating power in his hands while bending public and private institutions to his will. But ten months later, what seemed like a rapid race toward autocracy has hit a roadblock of opposition, disapproval and a fractured coalition.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg of Trump’s problems. After the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, the Republican Party has begun to fracture due to the invitation of anti-Semitic and racist influencer Nick Fuentes to the party tent. Trump has even begun to clash with his closest allies, as a rift with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) led to her resigning from Congress. Greene was part of the initial faction of the party that broke with Trump to support legislation to reveal Epstein’s files. What started as a minor faction opposing Trump’s wishes turned into a full-blown meltdown, as all but one Republican in Congress ended up supporting the bill after months of Trump trying to stop it.

This, in a very strange way, is normal: Presidents’ honeymoon periods always end, often toward the end of their first year in office. But it’s difficult to understand what it means for the central project of Trump’s deeply abnormal presidency (one in which the goal is not simply to preserve political triumphs, but to fundamentally alter the balance of power in government and steer the country toward autocracy).

“The weakening of the government in terms of its public approval, its own coalition and the social will to push back undoubtedly limits the speed and strength of this authoritarian offensive,” said Steven Levitsky, a political scientist at Harvard University and co-author of the book “How Democracies Die.”

Andrew Harnik via Getty Images

It’s not just Republicans inside the Beltway who are breaking with Trump. They are also reflected in Trump’s public approval ratings, particularly on the economy. Trump’s approval rating on the economy has fallen to 36%, the lowest he’s ever gotten, according to a Nov. 24 News/YouGov poll. That includes 19% of Republicans. Meanwhile, Trump has reached a record level of approval among independents.

Yet Trump’s response to his declining approval ratings and mounting losses has been to double down on his more autocratic tendencies. Just last week, the Trump administration launched investigations against eight Democratic lawmakers for simply stating that military service members must follow the law.

“Weak and desperate autocrats are often much more dangerous and harmful than strong and popular ones,” Dan Slater, a political science professor at the University of Michigan and an expert on dictatorships and democracy, said by email. “The risk of provoking violence and inviting active military involvement in American cities is increasing rather than decreasing as Trump’s popularity declines.”

The administration’s initial autocratic offensive followed on the heels of recent efforts by autocrats around the world to seize power in democracies and consolidate control so that their opponents cannot defeat them. Instead of tanks in the streets, these autocrats use the law to take control and constantly undermine democratic institutions and liberal principles. Opponents fear reprisals from the government simply for their opposition. And while elections may still be held, they are no longer free or fair.

Following the model pioneered by the likes of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, and Türkiye’s Recep Erdogan, Trump launched a full-scale attack to bend institutions to his whim. Their push initially succeeded as elites knelt and institutions capitulated.

“It was an offense that was coming along and gaining steam early in the summer,” Levitsky said.

Trump got law firms to agree to deals that would prevent them from challenging the administration in court. Columbia University partially ceded control to the government. Their seizure of funds from nonprofits and universities forced them to focus solely on their own finances and future. He began to purge the public administration with mass layoffs and closure of agencies such as USAID. The administration arrested and attempted to deport foreign students whose speech it did not agree with. Immigration agents, backed by the National Guard, invaded communities and arrested citizens and noncitizens, and documented and undocumented immigrants alike.

“We were living under an authoritarian government in the sense that the cost of legally opposing the government increased dramatically,” Levitsky said. “Americans across the country – whether law firms, businesses, media outlets, universities or politicians on both sides of the aisle – had to think twice before engaging in legal constitutional acts of opposition to the government because they knew they faced a real risk of retaliation.”

In the face of growing opposition and a fractured base, this is no longer the case in some quarters. But Trump’s autocratic project continues apace thanks to a largely complacent Supreme Court that he filled with three justices in his first term.

“We were living under an authoritarian government in the sense that the cost of legally opposing the government increased dramatically.”

– Steven Levitsky, Harvard University

“Trump seems to be losing popularity and the Epstein thing could come and affect him, but he’s still in charge,” said Kim Lane Scheppele, a sociologist at Princeton University who has studied the rise of autocracy in the 21st century. “He is still in complete control of the executive branch. His supporters are threatening members of Congress to get them to support him. And he is dealing with a judicial system that is overwhelmed at the top.”

That control is expected to increase as the Supreme Court continues to expand presidential power. The conservative justices are expected to overturn a nearly century-old precedent of giving Trump the power to fire officials at independent agencies for any reason. Until now they have allowed him to dismantle agencies and fire officials. And they will hear challenges to their power to deploy troops domestically even without the legally necessary conditions to do so.

“I don’t see the force that will stop autocratic capture,” Scheppele adds.

While Trump’s attempt to consolidate power in the White House may continue to move forward, it faces its own challenges. First, Trump’s autocratic management has suffered from a flagrant lack of competence.

One of the hallmarks of Trump’s second term has been his appointment of unqualified loyalists to positions across the government. Trump did not want a repeat of his first term, in which mostly competent bureaucrats protected him from his worst instincts. Instead, he wanted people who wouldn’t say no.

“What Trump has done is something like a small-time dictator of the mid-20th century,” Levitsky said. “In the pockets of the Department of Justice you see a really shameful level of incompetence and that is holding them back. It’s a double edge because they will do what you want them to do, but they won’t do it very well.”

There is no better example of this than Trump’s efforts to prosecute his perceived enemies. In an effort to get revenge on former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, Trump pressured the acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, Erik Siebert, to indict them. Siebert didn’t want to do it and resigned. Attorney General Pam Bondi replaced him with White House aide Lindsey Halligan, who had never prosecuted a case in her life. Halligan signed his name to Comey and James’ indictments, but a judge ruled Monday that his appointment by Bondi was illegal and dismissed the charges.

The accusations were based solely on political animus and were intended both to punish Comey and James and to instill fear in others so that they would not become angry with Trump. However, the fact that they fell apart so quickly revealed the weakness of the retaliation campaign.

Meanwhile, the loyalist appointees who launched the investigations into James, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), have been investigated for abuse of office. Federal prosecutors in Maryland who were examining a mortgage fraud claim against Schiff are now investigating Justice Department official Ed Martin and Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte for improperly accessing mortgage information and sharing investigation information with outside parties.

Evan Vucci via News

Although Trump’s second term has been highly abnormal, a normal rule of political gravity likely still applies. Presidents live or die by how the public views their economic well-being.

This is what sank President Joe Biden’s mandate. It’s what really destroyed President George W. Bush’s approval rating in his final year. On the other hand, it’s what helped President Ronald Reagan win one of the biggest re-election victories in history and sustained President Bill Clinton’s popularity as he faced impeachment in his second term.

“[T]The big question, to which I don’t know the answer, is whether a regime that inherited a good economy but ruined it and whose non-economic policies are deeply unpopular can still consolidate an autocratic government,” said Princeton economist Paul Krugman. wrote in September.

As Krugman shows, previous attempts by autocrats to solidify their rule were successful thanks to improving economic conditions. For example, Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler’s popularity rose as his unorthodox economic policies helped Germany recover from rampant deflation and unemployment during the Great Depression. In Hungary, Orban managed to get the country out of the austerity imposed by the International Monetary Fund.

But Trump, with his own set of unorthodox economic policies, has moved the economy, which by all accounts was doing well, in the wrong direction. Inflation has risen and unemployment has risen since he took office. And the public has noticed by giving him his worst approval ratings on the economy since he began his career. political career.

“If the economy tanks, that’s not a good idea for the executive in charge,” Scheppele said.

However, he could copy the model of modern autocrats like Orban, who showered the public with extra money, including paying a 13th monthly pension at the end of the year, Scheppele said. Trump has already flirted with this through a plan to hand out $2,000 checks with money raised under his tariffs. In theory, this would require congressional approval and could also be limited if the Supreme Court overturns its tariff policy.

While the economy may ultimately doom Trump’s autocratic impulse, he will still be able to do unfathomable damage over the next three years, just like previous failed autocrats.

“I see clear parallels with Ferdinand Marcos’ failed attempt to consolidate an authoritarian government in the Philippines in the 1980s,” Slater said. “But the painful lesson is that Marcos caused tremendous and lasting damage to Philippine democracy even as he failed to establish a stable autocracy of his own design. I think something similar is developing in the United States under Trump. We will be living with the damage he is causing for a long time.”

The real damage to democracy that Trump has established is the autocratic and illiberal direction he has taken with the Republican Party. That means that even when Trump leaves the scene, the threat of autocracy will not recede. The party’s heirs appear to be even more radical, whether it’s Vice President JD Vance, conservative commentator Tucker Carlson or Fuentes’ white supremacist youth movement.

“Trump has crossed certain authoritarian lines that virtually no other politician alive would have crossed in 2016,” Levitsky said. “The big question is whether that can be unlearned.”