After just nine months into his second term, President Donald Trump is already losing his grip on power.
The Oct. 18 “No Kings” demonstrations against the Trump administration brought out roughly seven million Americans into the streets, with approximately 2,700 total protests in all 50 states and many other cities around the world joining in solidarity. That’s roughly two million more people than the June 14 day of action, which coincided with Trump’s 79th birthday and his rain-soaked, sparsely attended military parade.
Trump didn’t publicly speak on the protests afterward, but he did respond to them in two other notable ways. On the evening of No Kings, Trump posted two AI-generated videos to his Truth Social platform in succession. One showed Trump flying a fighter jet with “KING TRUMP” written on it, flying over a crowd of people and dumping feces. The other showed Trump in a royal cloak, putting a crown on his head, and holding up a sword interspersed with footage of Congressional Democratic leaders kneeling at a demonstration during the 2020 George Floyd uprising. The video was set to the song “Hail to the King” by Avenged Sevenfold.
While one interpretation of these videos could simply be Trump making light of protesters denouncing him as a king, he dropped one hint that suggests the “No Kings” framing of the massive protests weigh heavily on his mind. During an interview with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo taped on the same day as the protests, he addressed the label directly in a similar manner to former President Richard Nixon’s famous “I’m not a crook” moment.
“They’re referring to me as a king. I’m not a king,” Trump insisted.
Trump would like to be a king, though, and he’s made that point several times. In a February post to the White House’s official X account, Trump is seen on a mock-up TIME magazine cover wearing a crown with the text “long live the king” accompanying the image, which was a direct quote from one of Trump’s Truth Social posts. White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich posted an AI-generated image of the president wearing a regal cloak and crown alongside Trump’s “long live the king” quote. Those posts—especially when taken in context with Trump’s comment in August that “a lot of people are saying ‘maybe we like a dictator’”—suggest that the president sees himself as a king, and would like us to see him that way as well.
The main difference between Trump and an actual monarch is that while kings typically enjoy unfettered power and control over their subjects, Trump’s is rapidly slipping away. And there are numerous signs showing that as bad as things are for him now, it’s only going to get worse.
Cracks are starting to show in the Trump administration’s foundation
Trump was largely elected on voters’ perception of him as the better candidate on economic issues. But on that issue, the president is deeply underwater. A CNBC poll conducted between Oct. 8-12 found that Trump had just 42 percent approval on his handling of the economy, with 55 percent disapproving. This is on top of an Associated Press-NORC poll finding Trump with a 61 percent disapproval rating, which is the highest of his second term so far.
The ongoing government shutdown—which is now entering its third week as of this writing—has resulted in the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) not releasing a September 2025 jobs report in the first week of October. But independent estimates show nothing positive for Trump to brag about. An early October study from payroll services provider ADP found that the private sector lost 32,000 jobs in September, despite economists projecting 50,000 additional private sector jobs. And given the impact of the multi-week shutdown on public sector jobs, estimates for October set to come out in early November may be even more dismal.
But aside from Trump having to contend with a faltering economy and millions of people protesting him, his own administration also appears to be coming apart at the seams. This can be seen in the multiple staffing shakeups and growing dearth of Senate-confirmed appointees to key government posts:
- In September, Trump abruptly withdrew the nomination of EJ Antoni to lead the BLS after he abruptly fired former BLS commissioner Erika McEntarfer (who he accused of purposefully putting out jobs reports aimed at making him look bad). Antoni’s nomination was pulled after a report tied him to a social media account that made crude remarks about LGBTQ+ people, Vice President Kamala Harris, and trafficked in conspiracy theories.
- Also in September, the White House withdrew the nomination of Brian Quintenz to lead the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Cryptocurrency investors Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss (who were also major Trump donors in 2024) had leaned on Quintenz to scuttle a CFTC investigation into their business if he was confirmed. When he refused, they pressured Trump to cancel Quintenz’s appointment.
- Karen Brazell, who Trump nominated to oversee $174 billion in benefit payouts at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), also withdrew her own nomination for “personal reasons.” Brazell backing out of the confirmation process came amid greater scrutiny over her role advising VA Secretary Doug Collins on controversial mass layoffs and contract cancellations.
- According to the US Senate, Trump has also withdrawn the nominations of Jeremy Ellis to be inspector general at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Mark Brnovich to be ambassador to Serbia, and Jeffrey Kaufman for the Farm Credit Administration Board, among others.
Other significant staff shakeups include Taylor Budowich—the aforementioned White House deputy chief of staff for communications—suddenly exiting the White House to return to the private sector. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s chief of staff, Chad Mizelle, also announced he was resigning from his post in October. Mizelle’s departure comes as Bondi is facing mounting criticism over the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) prosecution of Trump’s political enemies like former FBI Director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), and former National Security Advisor John Bolton. The Wall Street Journal confirmed that a Trump Truth Social post addressed to “Pam” calling for his opponents to be indicted was meant to be a private message.
However significant Trump’s problems are with staffing key agencies and his own administration, these issues all pale in comparison to the ever-present threat of unreleased documents pertaining to convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, which appears to show no sign of subsiding.
Whatever is in the Epstein Files must be really, really bad
In late September, Adelita Grijalva—the daughter of the late Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Arizona)—won a special election to fill his seat. While campaigning, she promised to be the 218th and final signature on the bipartisan discharge petition that would compel the DOJ to release all remaining Epstein-related documents (which includes language calling for redactions of victims’ identifying information). As of this writing, she has still not been sworn in.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) has maintained that he’s only delaying Grijalva’s swearing-in ceremony until the end of the government shutdown. However, Johnson has previously swore in Reps. Randy Fine (R-Florida) and Jimmy Patronis (R-Florida) in pro forma sessions (in which the House is only in session for a few moments and does no official work) less than 24 hours after they won their respective special elections in April.
Moreover, Johnson has continuously kept the House closed since September 19, even though the Senate has kept their calendar. The soonest lawmakers could resume work in Washington is October 27, which would be nearly on par with the extra-long August recess Johnson called in late July. That recess was declared just days after Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) announced the Epstein files discharge petition.
The weeks-long pause in conducting official House business has even irked other Republicans. Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-California) told CNN that he didn’t think there was “any justification” to keep the House out of session, and added that other Republican members have made similar remarks to the speaker.
To be clear, it’s highly unlikely that even if Grijalva was sworn in and signed the discharge petition that it would become law, as it still needs to be voted on in both the House and Senate. It wouldn’t even make it to Trump’s desk until it got 60 signatures in the Senate, due to filibuster rules. But what it would do is put every single Republican on the record as to whether they truly support making all of the Epstein files public. And because the Epstein files are such a hot-button issue with the Republican base, voting against disclosure could potentially cost some members their jobs either through a primary challenge or the general election.
It’s also likely that if the discharge petition came up for an official vote, Trump and his go-betweens would be leaning particularly hard on Republican members of Congress, given what we already know about some of Epstein’s associates. Prince Andrew abruptly renouncing his title as the Duke of York could be an ominous indicator that he greatly fears what the Epstein files could reveal—and Trump could be sharing those feelings, given that Epstein frequently bragged about how he was Trump’s “closest friend” for roughly a decade.
In her posthumous memoir, Epstein victim Virginia Giuffre—who died by suicide earlier this year – wrote about how Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell forced her to “service” Andrew when she was just 17 years old. She met Maxwell when she was a spa attendant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, and Giuffre recalled how she was eventually coerced into becoming one of Epstein’s victims after he told her: “We know where your brother goes to school. You must never tell a soul what goes on in this house … And I own the Palm Beach police department, so they won’t do anything about it.”
“Back at the house, Maxwell and Epstein said goodnight and headed upstairs, signalling it was time that I take care of the prince. In the years since, I’ve thought a lot about how he behaved,” Giuffre wrote. “He was friendly enough, but still entitled—as if he believed having sex with me was his birthright.”
While Bondi told Trump earlier this year that he was mentioned in the Epstein files, the context in which his name comes up remains speculative. However, Trump biographer Michael Wolff (who authored the bestselling books “Fire and Fury” and “All or Nothing”) in October recalled seeing “about a dozen Polaroid snapshots” of Trump and Epstein surrounded by topless young women that Epstein kept in a safe. Wolff said Epstein brought the photos out while visiting the infamous pedophile’s home at his invitation, as he wanted Wolff to write a book about him:
“Like a deck of cards, he displayed them on the table. And there were specifically three that I remember … The three that I remember are two in which topless young women—and I don’t know the ages of these women, but they are young—are sitting in Trump’s lap. And this is outside Jeffrey Epstein’s house in Palm Beach, around the swimming pool … In the third picture, there is—so he’s wearing light pants, or tannish pants—there’s a stain on the front of his trousers, and the girls, 4 or 5 as I remember, are pointing at the stain and laughing.”
The Epstein files will likely remain a pervasive issue for Trump, and he’s rapidly running out of avenues to distract Americans from them. The last nine months have been objectively dark and many of those months have seemed utterly hopeless. But all of this should serve as evidence that Trump’s grip on power is quickly slipping through his fingers, and he knows it. In roughly a year’s time, Americans may be about to vote to strip him of his Congressional majorities, give Democrats subpoena power, and make his life that much harder.
COMMENTS