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What Happens as Trump’s Losses Mount?

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To a vastly greater degree than most executives and national leaders, Trump has surrounded himself with toadies and sycophants. But what happens when even their efforts to keep telling Trump what he so badly wants to hear, that he is still a colossus astride the world and the prime mover of events, can no longer be maintained? As we’ll explain in due course, Trump already defaults to solving nearly all problems by trying to exert dominance. We can see how that’s already failing on the world stage ex with vassal states. What happens when Trump is met with more resistance from those he can’t successfully bully?

One of his measures of the success of his Liberation Day tariffs was the way other nations were supposedly eager to prostrate themselves to get “a deal”:

But as we recounted yesterday, at least for the moment, US courts have taken away Trump’s retaliatory tariffs weapon. Alligator Alcatraz is being closed. Trump, who very much does not want to be tarred with losing Ukraine, may be able to escape that in the self-serving information bubble he has around him, but not with the broader public or history. The spectacle of the Alaska summit with Putin accomplished little save perhaps extending Zelensky’s sell-by date as European leaders rallied around him. That was admittedly enabled by Trump in talking up a bilateral Putin-Zelensky or trilateral, with Trump in the mix. The Trump spin apparatus also tried to depict Putin as the source of the dead on arrival land swaps idea, and has made another error in not shutting down the UK and Europeans coming back to another non-starter, that of peacekeepers from some NATO members in Ukraine. It has now hit the point where the Russians, who have made a point of not contradicting Trump, are now feeling compelled to do so:

The Trump team seems to be beside itself over its inability to influence Russia either directly or through economic partners. Not only had Indian prime minister Modi refused to knuckle under to Trump’s additional 25% tariffs imposed as a sanction for buying Russian oil, but Modi has also rejected at least four Trump attempts to speak to Modi.1 The Trump team is now trying to get the EU to stop buying Indian and presumably also Turkiye petroleum products made from Russian oil. As Alexander Mercouris pointed out, the alternative sources would either be the US or the Middle East, and the level of demand would likely increase oil prices, something Trump does not want. Recall that one of India’s beefs about Trump’s campaign against its Russian oil buys was that the Biden Administration encourage India to make them, so as to reduce pressure on oil prices.

Another problem primed to get only worse for Trump is Israel. Not only is global opinion hardening even more against the ethnosupremacist state, but more nations are staring to take action, and not just the feel-good of recognizing Palestine as a state. Belgium is set to impose sanctions. More dockworkers on the Mediterranean are refusing to service ships from and to Israel, and I have yet to detect official pressure on them to handle these cargos. Yet many experts see Israel as gearing up to attack Iran again, likely this fall, when it is hard to imagine that Israel will do better, ex nukes, than it did in its surprise cyber attack/decapitation strike. And Iran has strengthened its defenses.

But Trump’s biggest vulnerability, and one he will also find hardest to deny, is the economy. Trump’s desperation to fire Powell or otherwise get control of rate policy is an admission that he sees conditions as weak and wants a monetary goosing. But the Trump deficits are massively stimulative. What more does he want? Both the fiscal spending and now the impact of the tariffs will keep inflation alive, if not increase it. Unless the US has a financial crisis, such as an AI bubble unwind which would whack confidence and spending, stagflation looks baked in.

And that’s before getting to the flawed thinking about lowering rates: not only do they not stimulate economic activity, except by leveraged speculators, but with investors correctly seeing Trump’s policies as too-inflation-prone, lowering short term rates will have little if any effect on longer maturities. So the Treasury won’t get interest expense relief, save by continuing to fund at the short end of the curve, and the housing market will not get much of a boost, since mortgage rates are typically set in relation to five to seven year bond yields.

Polls are already turning against Trump even before these dodgy dynamics get worse. Trump’s overall marks are falling, per this August 31 account:

Donald Trump’s approval ratings has taken another blow, a new poll shows. The US President’s ratings slipped to a record low in his second term, as per the Quinnipiac University poll.

The poll, released earlier this week, saw Trump take a three-point drop in his approval rating in just a month’s time. His decision to deploy the National Guard to Washington DC – in an effort to reduce crime – has also seen a 56-41 percent opposition.

Trump is now scoring badly on his once prime issue, immigration:

And on tariffs:

And it’s not getting better:

After this long set-up, let’s turn to the question of what happens as it becomes more and more difficult for Trump to deny his failures. John Helmer has more than once pointed out Russians officials view Trump as having a strong preference for the use of violence to get his way. Examples abound, such as ICE chief Tom Homans’ threats against blue cities, the aggressive show of the ICE raids, the way Trump is destroying US leadership in science to bend US universities to his will and Trump’s show of force in US cities via gratuitous and likely illegal deployments of the National Guard. Other evidence comes in Trump, after his pretense of being a peace president, now wanting to rename the Department of Defense the Department of War and praising going on the offense militarily (a development that Lt. Colonel Daniel Davis described with alarm) and strategically ineffective shows of brutality. This is savagery masquerading as potency:

Let us not forget that Trump also relishes his self-assigned role as arms merchant in chief.

Top investor Ray Dialo has spoken out against Trump’s authoritarianism in a fresh interview in the Financial Times. From US sliding towards 1930s-style autocracy, warns Ray Dalio:

Hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio has warned Donald Trump’s America is drifting into 1930s-style autocratic politics — and said other investors are too scared of the president to speak up….

The veteran investor also took aim at a rising impulse towards state control under Trump. Dalio resisted calling the president’s model authoritarian or socialist, but described the mechanics bluntly: “Governments increasingly take control of what is done by central banks and businesses.”

Asked about Trump’s Intel stake and export tariffs imposed on Nvidia and AMD, Dalio referred to his own concept of “the big cycle”, when during periods of great conflicts and risks countries’ leaders are more controlling of the markets and the economy.

“Classically, increased wealth and value gaps lead to increased populism of the right and populism of the left and irreconcilable differences between them that can’t be resolved through the democratic process. So democracies weaken and more autocratic leadership increases as a large percentage of the population wants government leaders to get control of the system to make things work well for them.”

Predictably, Dalio is worried about the liberties of capitalists as opposed to ordinary people. But on the other end of the food chain, consider that Trump, in his blizzard of initial executive orders, asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and DHS chief Kristi Noem to recommend whether Trump should invoke the Insurrection Act in response to the purported border crisis. They demurred because border crossings had dropped markedly from the Biden era to the early days of the Trump Administration. The deployment of the Insurrection Act would represent a huge threat to civil liberties. I personally know an activist who has helped organize anti-Trump protests who is securing citizenship in an EU state and plans an immediate exit from the US if the Insurrection Act were invoked. While this reaction may seem extreme, recall that Trump is fabricating a crime crisis in US cities to justify more Federal involvement in policing.

While yours truly is leery of armchair psychoanalysis, IM Doc, who has similar views, nevertheless said there was so much long-standing video evidence of Biden’s cognitive decline that it was evident he was suffering from dementia years before the 2024 election. Experts have found that 60% to 70% of communication is gossip, which is both information sharing/speculation and discussion of motives and behavior. So it’s not as if people to do routinely psychologize, even if they don’t go as far as resorting to references to clinical conditions.

It should not be controversial to depict Trump as an extreme narcissist. Some like to depict his even out-of-bounds conduct (even more flagrant lying and flip flops than in his past) as the result of mental deterioration. But it seems just as likely to be due to “acquired situational narcissism,” aka power going to someone’s head. Even though this is Trump’s second term, in his first he was considerably hamstrung by Russiagate and having many key staffers who were not just not loyal, but even actively working against him, like John Bolton. Having made a point of packing key positions with stooges, Trump has looks to be intoxicated his vastly increased room to maneuver.

But even so, Trump is not only self-sabotagingly fixated on dominating in encounters at the expense of the larger stakes, but his wilder and wilder behavior suggests on some level that he recognizes his trouble managing the contradictions to needed preserve a thin patina of success. With India alone, he’s tried been flailing to cover for the highly visible tariffs backfire. Recall Modi has not only refused to capitulate to the demand not to buy Russian oil, but is downgrading its once-key relationship with the US to strengthen ties with China. Trump has been trying to sell the howler that India offered a zero tariffs deal, when Modi isn’t even willing to take Trump’s repeated calls. Similarly, after his court setback on tariffs, Trump made the ludicrous claim that his tariffs had raised “trillions” in revenue. And he tried reasserting his manhood by threatening to impose 200% tariffs on pharma imports…a move that would make him hated across much of the US were he to go there.

But even before his reality TV days, Trump was obsessed with his image over his substance. See these extracts from a Barbara Walters interview when Trump was hawking a new book, Surviving at the Top (you can see the full segment here):

As you can infer, Trump had been through difficult negotiations to try to preserve his sinking empire, so one might imagine he was at a bravura low. You can see him here maintain that his purchase of the Plaza Hotel was a great deal and he would not have to sell it; in fact, he did, at a loss of $83 million in 1995.2 In the full segment, Trump maintained he would not dispose of the Trump Shuttle. He did, in 1992.

What I found striking is how, in the edited section above, Trump’s face gets hard when Walters suggests that the title of his book ought to be Failing at the Top. H was quick to attack Walters by depicting the press generally as dishonest. She hits that back over the net calmly and Trump tries changing tactics to discrediting her sources and other types of deflection. Perhaps I am reading overmuch into this, but it looked like Trump was having to contain considerable anger. And more important, that anger was his reflexive response when his position was challenged.

Today, it’s easy to see how often Trump defaults to anger. Just look at his Truth Social posts, not just his frequent use of all caps and demonization, but also his apparent need to lash out when he encounters opposition.

How do narcissists react to defeat? What happens, say, if there is a market crash and Trump policies are cited a major cause? Or as Russia keeps rolling through Ukraine, that even the conservative press depicts Trump as having lost the wor?

It’s not pretty. Psychology Today sets forth some of the typical responses of narcissists to failure. A gander through search results suggests that its list is representative (although I am leery of the phrase “malignant narcissist” as unhelpfully judgmental and therefore rhetorically at odds with an effort to make a clinical description of behavior). Some highlights:

When things begin to sour for the narcissist, here is what we can expect:

They will falsely claim that everything is fine and that there is nothing wrong. They will try to first misdirect us or claim there is nothing to the allegations or circumstances.

If evidence is presented, they will seek to have it invalidated or claim that it is false, fake, or a product of vague conspiracies, but most certainly not true.

Any evidence presented, and those that present it will be attacked aggressively and vindictively…The narcissist will engage supporters or enablers to simultaneously attack those who offer proof or evidence, even if it embarrassingly exposes their poodle-like behavior as that of spineless sycophants…

As they lash out with vindictiveness, the malignant narcissist will continue to talk about themselves in glowing terms…being revered rather than reviled…

As circumstances become dire, the narcissist will not take any responsibility—ever. Anything that has gone wrong is the responsibility of others…

In the process of casting blame, even the most loyal and stalwart will be discarded and denigrated…. Lies are and always will be the number one tool of the malignant narcissist. The only difference now is that in facing failure or public ridicule, the lies must increase in frequency and audacity to the point of incredulity….

And while lies will increase, so too will be the need to devalue others in order to further value themselves. They will attack everyone and anyone in the most vicious and vindictive ways…They will dip down into a bottomless cauldron of antipathy and like an arterial spurt, will spew this toxic brew far and wide with metronomic regularity.

The malignant narcissist, lacking guilt or a conscience, is only concerned with respect and not being publicly shamed. Any kind of public embarrassment will cause them further anger, further rage, further attacks, further unethical comportment, and unprecedented incivility.

If the narcissist is going to be brought down, they will also seek to bring everyone else around them down to vindictively make them suffer. How the narcissist vilifies, lashes out, or destroys others (spouse, friends, business partners, workmates, the general public) is up to the morbid creativity and depravity of the malignant narcissist, the viable tools they have available, and of course how dire or desperate the situation.

The tone above is unduly melodramatic although the intent may be to spur those in close proximity to an extreme narcissist to get the hell away as quickly as possible. However, a key point is that if a narcissist enters a spiral of failure, he will seek to pull those around him down into his whirlpool. And he’ll do so with great determination and “creativity”.

Now of course, the complicating fact with Trump’s emotional self-defenses is that he has been persecuted, first by Russiagate, then with lawfare, and then an assassination attempt. So his view of himself as unfairly pilloried is not made from whole cloth. But Trump has clearly decided on revenge as part of his response (see John Bolton) both for its own sake and to cow anyone who might try to cross him.

But the general point still holds. If Trump faces persistent and well-founded criticism for his actions, he’s likely to react with a ferocity that dwarfs anything we have seen from him so far.

______

1 Tariffs were not the sole reason for the unraveling:

See also Modi’s refusal to back Trump’s Nobel Prize push soured India-US ties: Report reveals explosive phone call Mint

2 The New York real estate market started to turn only as of about 1994, While I can’t prove it, Trump may have gotten his creditors to accept holding off on the Plaza sale, either to hit a minimum price or until the general distress had abated.

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