Why Trumps Reign of Republican Terror Is Really Ending

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Will future historians look back and declare 2022 to be the year when Donald Trumps luster began to fade?

Reports of Trump’s political demise have been greatly exaggerated for years now. But this time it feels different.

We saw hints of Trump’s political decline in late 2021, but his 2022 got off to a rocky start with a rally in Arizona that failed to recapture his old magic. My observation at the time was that Trump needed new material, and fast, because if his rally in Arizona showed anything, it was that the old work wasn’t coming.

Throughout the year, Trump’s problems only increased.

In February, he hailed Vladimir Putin’s use of propaganda to justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as genius. There is nothing new about Trump’s praise of Putin, but his assessment of Putin’s smart strategy became laughable when Ukraine’s strong resistance made Putin look weak.

Trump also bet on the wrong horses in the domestic political arena, as the Republican reaction to Trump’s endorsement of Dr. Oz (who will lose his US Senate race in November) began climbing in early spring.

The trend of Republicans publicly criticizing Trump continued into the summer, with the January 6 committee, wisely focusing on Republican witnesses testifying about the Trumps’ conduct.

There is little evidence that the hearings significantly changed Trump’s mind. But just as they began in earnest, a Granite State Poll showed that, for the first time, Ron DeSantis was ahead of Trump among likely GOP primary voters in New Hampshire.

Next came the FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence. Ironically, the raid seemed to at least help Trump and kill DeSantis momentum. But the rally-around-the-flag momentum Trump received by falling prey to the deep state was short-lived. It also served to show some nasty fans had a penchant for targeting the FBI for violence, drawing Republican rebukes.

In August, Trump’s biggest blow of the year was illustrated when Sen. Mitch McConnell whose concerns about candidate quality have made it more likely that Republicans will flip the Senate.

At this point, Herschel Walker, Trump’s choice Senate nominee in Georgia, has admitted to fathering illegitimate children; revelations that she also paid for an abortion, as reported by The Daily Beast, only added to the foreshadowing.

Unlike most of his presidency (where Trump’s aides would stop him, slow him down on his orders, or otherwise ignore his madness), McConnell and the GOP establishment agreed on at least to some of Trump’s top picks. This means that Trump largely assumes responsibility for the midterm results in 2022 (of course, he tried to claim otherwise).

Giving him what he wants is a tragedy for Trump.

The midterms have been a rejection of Trumpism, and the absence of a red wave is a breaking point for many Republicans. That’s right: Countless Republicans who were willing to stand with Trump through Charlottesville, two impeachments, a big lie, and an attempted coup, suddenly discovered that losing the election was a bridge too far.

Many right-wingers were also upset that he called Ron DeSantis Ron DeSanctimious.

Rather than chastise or bide his time, Trump quickly launched his 2024 presidential campaign. Horribly bad timing aside, it was a low-energy affair. Soon after, Trump celebrated Thanksgiving week by dining with anti-Semite Kanye West and white nationalist Nick Fuentes, leading to another round of criticism from fellow Republicans.

As Christmas approached, Trump made a major announcement: The release of a $99 NFT. Everyone from Steve Bannon to QAnon has criticized the grift. We have a country going down the toilet, and Donald Trump is selling Pokmon cards. No thanks, wrote Blaze TV host Chad Prather.

The January 6 committee voted on December 19 to approve a criminal referral against Trump. And on the last business day of 2022, after years of wrangling, six years of Trumps tax returns were finally released.

Any way you slice it, 2022 is going to be a terrible, terrible, bad, bad year for Donald Trump. And there’s little reason to think 2023 will be any better.

After all, while Trump remains a clear frontrunner, DeSantis has emerged as a legitimate potential challenger for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. And pop culture figures like Kanye West and Elon Musk have replaced Trump in the attention economy.

To be sure, Trump could play Harry Houdini again in 2023. The Access Hollywood tapes that came out in 2016 and the Capitol Riot five years later got a lot of Republican outrage only for him to somehow come out stronger than ever.

But we haven’t seen anything in the last year or so that suggests he has the same energy or magic that allowed him to escape any responsibility in the past.

After years of decline, gravity finally reasserts itself in 2022. The chickens, it seems, have come home to roost. Whether a fellow Republican can successfully step into the void remains to be seen.

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