The Trump blitzkrieg is running into resistance

While not yet a lame duck, the US President is encountering signs of pushback.

- Jonathan Eyal Global Affairs Correspondent

All US presidents ultimately end as “lame ducks”. This usually happens in the last year or two of their second term, when they can neither be reelected nor accomplish much.

Then, it’s no longer fashionable to be seen consorting with the sitting president; the only people still keen to come to the White House are either those asking for pardons from criminal convictions or those old donors who have yet to get some presidential medal.

Distancing oneself from a presidency about to expire is an essential tactic in American politics.

Mr Donald Trump should not be in this lame duck predicament. He still has more than three years left to his presidency. His Republicans also control both houses of the US Congress. And there’s still that grand ballroom to be built as an annexe to the White House. So, to repeat that old American saying, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet” from the current Trump presidency.

And yet, in a clutch of recent electoral contests, US voters have rebuffed Mr Trump in such decisive numbers that political observers are wondering if the sun is about to set on his presidency, that we may have just witnessed “peak Trump”.

In the states of New Jersey and Virginia, Democratic governors won by thumping majorities. More gallingly still from Mr Trump’s perspective is the election of Mr Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old political novice espousing a radical left agenda, as mayor of New York, the country’s largest city. In each ballot, turnout was sharply up; Mr Mamdani’s win was bigger than that of any previous New York mayor since the heady days of “Flower Power” during the 1960s.

Add to this the fact that Mr Trump’s personal popularity ratings have slumped, and that the US Supreme Court may end up declaring illegal his key tariff policy, and a good case can be made that the President is already a lame duck.