Donald Trump is almost halfway through his second term as president, meaning that his decade long dominance of the Republican party (and politics in general) is almost at an end. And seeing as how his tariff policies and the Iran war have proven so unpopular that his approval ratings hover well under forty percent, it would be logical to assume that he, as an unpopular, soon to be lame duck president, would back away from party politics, especially given how his unpopularity could hurt the GOP in the upcoming midterms.
But logic has never driven Trump, and so he decided to have a Republican mid term convention a few days ago in Dallas, Texas, something the party has never done before. But there' s never been a president as obsessively narcissistic as Trump before, who called the gathering "Trumpalooza" (yick!) and used it to brag about his alleged accomplishments. At one point he announced that "You know what? Just everybody loves me, and I love everybody.” Which, as many pundits have pointed out in the last ten years, sounds much more like something a cult leader would say than a political leader.
Somewhat amusing, many congressional members of the GOP running in November found excuses not to attend the rally and be seen with him, and even the stadium the convention was held in wasn't full, despite what Trump and Fox News had to say about it. And the TV ratings for it were nothing special, especially since it was up against an opening game for the NFL. None of that mattered to Trump, who basked in the adulation, bragged and lied about how great the economy and the war are going, and claimed that the Democrats are all Communists.
And, since the TV trained Trump loves a big reveal, he announced that if the GOP hold both branches of congress, he will send a five thousand dollar check to every adult in the country. Even many members of his own party blanched at this idea, given that conservatives once used to rail about big government handouts, and the trillion dollar plus cost of the checks would be excessive, especially given how the national debt just hit forty trillion dollars for the first time ever. Even more absurd, this isn't the first time in his second term that he's made such a promise, as he earlier promised three thousand dollar checks for Americans to come from the money his tariffs have raised, which, of course, never materialized. In other words, even if the polls are wrong and the GOP does hang on to the House and the Senate, don't expect those checks to arrive.
Since Trump first took over the Republican party ten years ago, he has used it more as a way to line his own pockets and pump up his ego with ballrooms and arches than as a way to help the average American. (Although he's certainly helped up his wealthy donors). His low approval ratings, the lowest ever for him, may show that for the first time his base of blue collar white conservatives may finally be on to his scam, no matter how much he appears to hate the same people that they hate. If only they had never listened to them in the first place.
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