Donald Trump’s imperial presidency faces a popular uprising

{"text":[[{"start":8.72,"text":"Donald Trump plastered his image over federal buildings, plated the Oval Office with gilded trimmings, mused that America could control the entire western hemisphere and launched a brazen new war in the Middle East."}],[{"start":20.72,"text":"But on Tuesday, the 80-year-old president’s dream of ushering in a “golden age” for the US through an imperial presidency faces a reality check from America’s voters, who have grown increasingly sceptical of his self-aggrandising tenure."}],[{"start":35.16,"text":"Although Trump’s biggest political weakness has been his failure to tame inflation, as he had promised during the 2024 White House campaign, his attempt to stretch the limits of presidential power on everything from tariffs to military action to the construction of a massive ballroom on White House grounds has fallen flat with the public."}],[{"start":53.64,"text":"“The actual exercise of aggressive presidential power . . . was much more unpopular than he imagined,” said Julian Zelizer, a political historian at Princeton University."}],[{"start":62.88,"text":"“I think he thought that the president can do whatever the president wants and that he can push the boundaries. And that there was something appealing about that . . . [but] it hasn’t really worked that way.”"}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":73.68,"text":"On Monday, on the eve of the midterm elections, Trump is expected to give a speech to tout the administration’s accomplishments around the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC — near the “reflecting pool” which he has tried to refurbish in a project that has been dogged by problems including peeling paint and algae formations."}],[{"start":91.36,"text":"But Trump’s bigger problem throughout the midterm election campaign, including during his rallies across the country, has been that many voters see his comments about affordability undercut by his grandiose embellishments of the US capital, American power and his own legacy."}],[{"start":106.64,"text":"“A lot of people think he’s a narcissist, because he wants to make sure that everything is only about him, with his name on everything,” said Aicha Tahirou, a 31-year-old hospitality-sector union member who was canvassing for Democrats in a battleground House district including the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania on Sunday."}],[{"start":123.48,"text":"“A lot of people are disgusted, really disgusted, they want to see him gone,” she said."}],[{"start":129.08,"text":"An ABC News poll released on Saturday found that 56 per cent of Americans oppose the construction of the 90,000-square-foot ballroom, 52 per cent are against Trump’s plans for a triumphal arch near Arlington Cemetery, and 68 per cent do not want to see his signature on US currency."}],[{"start":147.72,"text":"At a campaign rally in Iowa on Sunday, Trump defended his work on renovating Washington, calling himself a “reverse tornado”."}],[{"start":154.72,"text":"“The thing I do best, I think, is I build things,” he said."}],[{"start":158.88,"text":"An FT-Focaldata survey last month found that 69 per cent of Americans were worried about graft during Trump’s second administration, while the same poll released in July found that 58 per cent of US voters thought the war in Iran was not worth the cost."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":173.76,"text":"Elaine Kamarck, director of the Center for Effective Public Management at Brookings, said Trump’s second term began to lose touch with public opinion last summer when he moved from the popular policy of closing the southern border with Mexico to aggressive deportation tactics inside the US that became a show of executive force."}],[{"start":192.6,"text":"“He went down and he’s never come back,” she said."}],[{"start":195.82,"text":"But Kamarck does not believe that sweeping defeats on Tuesday will change Trump’s approach."}],[{"start":200.72,"text":"“What he’s been doing in his second term is essentially throwing spaghetti against the wall and seeing what sticks. All the politics of resentment and revenge, all of that stuff, even though he’s losing most of those court cases, they’re going nowhere and they’re backfiring with the public, he doesn’t care, he keeps doing it,” she said."}],[{"start":218.84,"text":"White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said that Trump was “the unequivocal leader, best messenger and unmatched motivator for the Republican Party, and he is committed to maintaining Republican majorities in Congress”."}],[{"start":230.76,"text":"Listing a series of measures that Trump had taken to tackle “affordability”, Ingle said “the choice has never been more clear: doubling down on President Trump’s winning, commonsense agenda or the Democrats’ extreme liberal policies and obstruction”."}],[{"start":245.4,"text":"While some Republicans on the campaign trail sought to distance themselves from Trump on certain issues, including tariffs and the continuation of the Iran war, the internal backlash against the president may not be massive, since he is expected to dominate US politics, particularly on the right, for at least two more years."}],[{"start":264.4,"text":"“He will . . . be the sitting president during the upcoming 2028 presidential GOP primary. And anyone who doesn’t think he won’t look to play a commanding role in picking his successor in the party hasn’t been paying attention for the last 10 years,” said Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s chief of staff during his first White House term."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":283.64,"text":"But Steve Bannon, Trump’s former political strategist, has warned that there would be a wider reckoning within the Republican Party starting after the midterms, including on Israel, Iran and what he described as the “deep state”."}],[{"start":296.32,"text":"“You’re going to see a huge fight on these issues and where people line up,” he said. “That’s why I keep telling people: ‘hey, it’s not going to happen in six months. It’s happening next Wednesday.’”"}],[{"start":296.82,"text":"Republicans are still hopeful that they can avoid a Democratic takeover of both houses of Congress by depicting their rivals as socialists and taking advantage of internal rifts on the left, like the one rocking the campaign of Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Michigan."}],[{"start":297.32,"text":"They also acknowledge that Trump is suffering from the typical midterm backlash that has dogged previous presidents, including Bill Clinton in 1994, George W Bush in 2006 and Barack Obama in 2010."}],[{"start":297.82,"text":"But many are frustrated that Trump has not helped himself or his party, and in his quest for absolute supremacy of US politics and American military prowess, has lost his connection with Americans who propelled him into power in the first place in 2016 and 2024."}],[{"start":298.32,"text":"“He underestimated the kind of resistance that this country is capable of producing towards something historically the country always gets angry about, meaning very centralised power,” said Zelizer."}],[{"start":303.28,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1793671499_8718.mp3"}