Donald Trump’s greatest remaining service to the America First movement might be his most unlikely act yet: resigning the presidency in favour of Vice-President JD Vance, his natural and more polished successor. An inevitable presidential pardon would free the master showman to a luxurious retirement of golf, punditry and unsolicited character assessments. One couldn’t rule out a return to TV, his natural habitat.
The traditional midterm rebuke for the ruling party turned out to be a rout. Democrats could win 56 Senate seats, including Texas and Kansas that hadn’t put a Dem on the red carpet since the 1980s and 1930s respectively.
Urging voters more than 40 times during the campaign to pretend his name was on the ballot, only to declare afterwards that he would have won “in a landslide”, made him look even more ridiculous than promising to end the Russia-Ukraine war on day one.
Staying in office guarantees a pointless two years of political gridlock and, even worse for Trump himself, a deluge of congressional inquiries, litigation and perhaps even a fresh set of impeachment proceedings. “We’re going to toss out subpoenas like Mardi Gras beads,” warned newly elected New Jersey representative Analilia Mejia. If the past is any guide, you can count on that.
Departing gracefully would give Trump’s historic movement a fighting chance at retaining the White House in 2028, giving the colossal rancour its founder generates a chance to fade. It would deny salivating Democrats the opportunity to humiliate Trump and his family, and shift the focus to Democrats, who won the midterms handsomely only because of Trump’s unpopularity.
Much of their platform on gender and climate change is increasingly unpopular. Even in California, their foolish 5 per cent wealth-tax proposal failed.
I hope I’m not betraying journalistic conventions, but I was rapt standing in the Palm Beach Convention Centre in November 2024, at the tail end of my time as The Australian’s Washington correspondent, when Trump pulled off a remarkable victory, winning all seven swing states.
There was lots to like: overcoming an outrageous thicket of lawfare, sticking it to the establishment, a moratorium on hugely costly wars, and a promise to stop the influx of millions over the southern border. His comeback was a repudiation of the Democrats’ harebrained “climate change” and Covid policies. And Trump was and remains the most entertaining leader the world has ever seen.
But humour isn’t enough to sustain an administration, especially for the bulk of Americans who pay little attention to the daily political grind. Voters turned not on Trump’s agenda but on his failure to live up to it.
Most importantly, as Vance strongly hinted in his own post-mortem, the President should have stuck to his popular anti-war agenda. Waging war on Iran in March after declaring in June last year its nuclear facilities had been “completely and totally obliterated” looked gratuitous and foolish. Iran was no Venezuela. The only regime change occurred in congress, not Tehran, which has learnt it can disrupt the Strait of Hormuz with relative impunity.
“I don’t think it’s the (Iran) war, I think it’s the gas prices,” the President said in trying to explain his historic drubbing. But they are one and the same – wars have consequences.
US inflation was 2.6 per cent in late 2024 when Trump promised to bring the cost of living down. Now it’s 3.7 per cent, obscuring a 34 per cent jump in the price of petrol. In a lesson our own government struggles to learn, the midterms confirmed rising prices, which affect everyone every day, as public enemy No.1.
Purchasing power has stagnated over the past two years, and has declined for black Americans who helped him win big in 2024.
Moreover, the US fiscal outlook has become diabolical on his watch, foreshadowing a public-debt crisis that could embroil the world in a recession. DOGE, the much-vaunted Elon Musk-led cost-cutting probe proved to be a joke. September capped another $US2 trillion ($2.8 trillion) annual deficit, adding to the almost $US11 trillion his two administrations have added to the US debt. His promise to give $US5000 to every American – at an estimated $US1.3 trillion cost – if Republicans won, not only failed but looked desperate and foolish.
As the sun sets on the Trump era, it’s worth emphasising the achievements that are starting to echo around the world, such as the end of “net zero” lunacy in the US and the disintegration of woke culture.
For all the fireworks of his second term, his most enduring legacy stems from the first, cementing a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court. It overturned Roe v Wade, returning abortion policy largely to the states. It struck down racial preferences in university admissions, and thwarted the Biden administration’s extravagant student debt forgiveness scheme.
Arguably the biggest win for economic freedom was the court’s rescinding of the 40-year-old Chevron doctrine, which had required judges to defer to bureaucrats’ interpretations of vaguely crafted laws. Indeed, this achievement will make Trump’s own capacity to govern by executive order more prone to challenge.
Donald Trump has enjoyed one of the most remarkable political careers ever. Will he, at 80 years old, see the benefit in stepping down early to help protect his legacy?
Voluntarily relinquishing power would be his greatest surprise of all – and perhaps the only one that could save his by now global movement.
