Trump literally phoned in a rally today, which Mike Johnson shared on social media. This piece by Jonathan Lemire is the first I’ve seen that really delves into the second term bubble:
[I]t has been many months since Trump hosted a full-on campaign-style rally. He has opted instead to travel abroad, golf at his private clubs, and dine with wealthy friends, business leaders, and major donors. Beyond the rallies, Trump has dramatically scaled back speeches, public events, and domestic travel compared with the first year of his initial term. And that lack of regular voter contact has contributed to a growing fear among Republicans and White House allies: that Trump is too isolated, and has become out of touch with what the public wants from its president.
Every president, of course, deals with being in a bubble, distanced by the demands on his time and the extraordinary security concerns that come with the office. But in his return to the presidency this year, Trump has seldom ventured across the country to anywhere other than his own clubs. He also inhabits something of a news silo, watching far-right cable channels such as One America News Network and Newsmax along with Fox News. Even his social-media consumption has become narrower: Instead of being on the app formerly known as Twitter, where he’d occasionally encounter contrary views, he now posts solely on Truth Social, which he owns and where he is surrounded by sycophants. And his own White House staff, this time largely populated by true believers and yes-men (and a few yes-women), only adds to the echo chamber.
Everyone around Trump, and everything he is seeing on TV and on his phone, is telling him that he’s right. But poll after poll suggests that Americans believe Trump is now getting it wrong and has lost focus on what got him elected.
“People voted for him to lower prices, to bring manufacturing back, to stand up to those taking advantage of them,” a close Trump ally told me on the condition of anonymity so as not to antagonize the president. “They didn’t vote for him to build a damn gilded ballroom. He’s not hearing them.”
He’s not hearing them, perhaps, because he’s not seeing them. I looked at Trump’s travel schedule from the fall of 2017, the first year of his initial term, to compare it with this fall’s, and I was surprised by the drop-off. Back then, he traveled into the country more than a dozen times from September to November to talk with energy workers in North Dakota, rally support in Alabama for a Senate candidate, and explain his agenda directly to his supporters. During that same stretch this year, he barely traveled at all. This fall, he’s ventured beyond the Washington, D.C., metro area; his New Jersey golf club; and Florida, the home of Mar-a-Lago, only five times. Four of those domestic trips were to New York, including three to hang out with rich friends in luxury boxes at sporting events. The other was to attend United Nations meetings, but he stayed only one night, compared with five in 2017. The fifth trip was to Arizona, to attend Charlie Kirk’s memorial service.
Even the one realm where Trump expanded his travel took him away from Americans; this fall, he made three international trips, as opposed to just one eight autumns ago. Some of his most loyal MAGA supporters, such as Laura Loomer and Steven Bannon, urged him to curb the globe-trotting and instead focus on issues at home. Marjorie Taylor Greene said she “would like to see Air Force One parked and staying at home” (she later renounced her support of Trump and announced her resignation from Congress). Trump’s lack of travel across the United States, some allies fear, has knocked his political antenna askew.
In his first term he took a whole “victory tour” of rallies around the country where they had voted for him. It was weird, to say the least. But he always seemed to get sustenance from these events and did calibrate his policies based upon the responses he would get there. He has not done a real “Trump rally” since he was elected this time. You get the sense that even at his smaller, controlled events he’s flagging in energy.
And it’s clear that he’s not well informed by anything much less his base. He famously hates to be briefed and often these days when the media asks questions it’s clear he doesn’t know what they’re talking about. Sometimes he even punts the question to one of his henchmen. I think Lemire is right — he just hears from rich people who have his ear and the trusted circle of sycophantic aides he has around him.
On the other hand, what does he care? He’s 79 years old and he’s living his best life redecorating the White House, pushing the world around, getting revenge on his enemies and making money hand over fist. It’s not like he cares about the country, or even his own family, beyond his primitive belief that what’s good for Donald Trump is good for the USA. He’s just a very powerful, stubborn old man building what he thinks is a legacy and will instead be a monument to failure and destruction.
But he won’t be around long enough to know it. Nixon was 61 when he resigned and he had to live through another 20 years of ignominious infamy. The way Trump’s mind’s going he’ll be in total Lalaland long before he shuffles off his mortal coil anyway.