By JAY H. Ell
Donald Trump’s effectiveness as president for the remaining three years of his term is in growing doubt as his political control of Congress weakens, and he seems to be increasingly mentally challenged. This has resulted in speculation about who would control and reshape the Republican Party molded by him over the past decade.
Trump’s failure to deliver on his campaign promises — particularly about revitalising the economy and curbing inflation – as well as the ongoing Epstein revelations have made it more probable that the Democratic Party will at least retake the House of Representatives in the 2026 midterm elections. Given Republican losses in the interim, Speaker Mike Johnson has his work cut out to control the House of Representatives with his tiny majority, even before 2026.
The Trump administration will do all it can to mitigate the damage resulting from Congress’s resolution to release the notorious Epstein Files. The latter was accelerated by the revelations in emails sent to Congress by the Epstein estate. Indications are that Trump will continue to focus attention on any Democrats who are mentioned in the files, and deflect attention away from this issue by charging key Democrat legislators with sedition, sicking his masked thugs on to ‘illegals’, and bombing fishing boats.
I will now try to outline the state of play in these abnormal times, starting with the weakening — both mentally and politically — of the political powerhouse of the past decade, Donald J. Trump.
The teetering colossus
In the past few months, Trump the omnipotent or anointed one – who, as Steve Bannon maintains, was sent to earth ‘to be a divine instrument’ and has been given earthly powers by the Supreme Court unimagined by Constitutionalists — has sustained setbacks that have rocked his strongest adherents.
These include continued devastating electoral results that have mirrored his record low approval ratings, a humiliation when his desire to remove a late-night comedian was thwarted, outright defiance by federal prosecutors who have resigned or been fired in droves, resulting in the disaster of a prosecution against two of his nemeses, judicial dressings-down by the score, and of course, the Epstein Files.
The unkindest cuts of all were two rebuffs by Republican legislative bodies that had previously obeyed his every whim. The first was from the Senate, where the Republicans refused to pass the annual government budget, despite repeated exhortations by the president to drop the traditional need for a majority of 60 votes. This resulted in a record government shutdown which the Democrats utilised to focus on the fact that health care for up to 40 million Americans had effectively been suspended.
The most recent pillar in the Trump edifice to fall was the realisation that at least 70 Republican members of the House of Representatives were about to defy him and commit a ‘hostile act’ by voting for the release of the Epstein files. Trump, who operates in an alternative reality, decided to change course and instruct the House Republicans to back the bill to release the files. To everyone’s shock, the Senate adopted the resolution by ‘unanimous consent’.
All in all, a staggering collapse of support for Trump’s efforts to avoid exposure of his decades-long relationship with the notorious Epstein. He may still not allow these disclosures, thereby focusing even more attention on this scandal.
Who will take over Trump’s MAGA party?
This has to be the beginning of the end of Trump and his ‘Make American Great Again’ (MAGA) Republican Party, even though there must be some people who still subscribe to his cult. There are other contenders who could determine the direction of the Republican Party, and could make it even worse.
There are the unashamed neo-fascists led by Nic Fuentes, supported by the influential Tucker Carlson. These are the real antisemitic deal. While Carlson is a serious contender for 2028, it is his friend Fuentes who admires Hitler and Stalin and is a Holocaust denier. Taking them on is Ted Cruz who is also from the far right, but a traditional Christian Zionist. Like Vice-President J.D. Vance (the obvious favourite), Cruz appeals to the Christian Evangelicals and the late Charlie Kirk’s Christian ‘Turning Point’ youths.
Carlson and Fuentes will hope that the far-right base and those who oppose all foreign intervention — including in Israel — will be enough to give them control of the Republican Party. So far, Marjorie Taylor-Greene, who took Trump on and beat him on the release of The Epstein Files, has not declared where she stands in the battle for the party. The only potential candidate with traditional Republican values, Marco Rubio, is chanceless.
So much for what may happen to the Grand Old Party, as Trump’s MAGA version disintegrates. The immediate issue is the devastation that the Epstein estate has wreaked by dumping a ton of documents on the House Oversight Committee in response to a subpoena.
The Epstein Files
The recently release trove of 23,000 e-mails released by the estate of the convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein (who subequently committed suicide in prison) has provided a foretaste of what the FBI files may contain: Was Trump aware of the activities of his closest friend for over a decade, or even a participant – both of which he has denied?
And why is Trump so anxious to silence Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s convicted co-conspirator? I have long believed that the Epstein Files are Trump’s major vulnerability.
The Estate emails gave more than a hint at Trump’s involvement in Epstein’s unsavoury activities. Among others, in 2011, Epstein wrote to Maxwell as follows: ‘ … I want you to realize the dog that hasn’t barked yet is Trump … Virginia Roberts Giuffre spent several hours at my house with him. … he has never been mentioned …’
To which Maxwell replied: ‘I have been thinking about that. …’
At that time, Epstein had been released from prison and was subject to civil litigation.
Tantalising too is the fact that Epstein fed the Russians information about Trump prior to the latter’s infamous Helsinki meeting with Putin in July 2018, where the 45th US president favoured the Russian premier’s version of interference in the 2016 presidential election over that of his own intelligence agencies.
In an email sent to the then chairman of the European Council, the former Norwegian prime minister Thorjborn Jagland, Epstein wrote: ‘ … I think you might suggest to Putin that Lavrov [the Russian Foreign Affairs Minister] can get insight by talking to me …’
Among those implicated in the emails is the Democrat Larry Summers, a former member of Clinton’s cabinet, and Hilary and Bill Clinton were among Epstein’s contacts in many fields, including politics, economics, academia, entertainment and the arts. Many were not involved in his sex trafficking operations.
Epstein was arrested in 2019 on charges of pedophilia, and found dead in his cell. The official verdict was suicide, but the forensic pathologist employed by the Epstein family believed the evidence pointed towards homicide.
It was the Democrats who led the charge to release the files, and they too have been profoundly affected by the recent events.
The Democrats – with a little help from their friends
Traditionally, when the Republicans control the presidency, the House of Representatives and the Senate, the Democrats are lame ducks for at least two years. However, this time around, they have been assisted politically by the lunacy of Trump’s policies. Up until ‘The Files’ were voted on, Trump appeared to be in control.
Then came the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’, containing the tax and spending policies forming the Trump’s second-term agenda. It was eventually passed by Congress, and signed into law by Trump in July. It provided massive tax cuts for the wealthy; took a host of programmes away from lower-income groups; defunded planned parenthood, child care, food stamps and preschool education; and took away subsidies from public radio and television. Added to this, Trump’s crippling tariffs on imported goods pushed up prices, resulting in everything being less and less affordable.
Most devastatingly, the Bill – now the Act — doubled costs for about 20 million citizens under the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare), and took about 20 000 people off Medicaid. It was on this issue that the Democrats shut down the government, claiming that the Trump administration was seeking to introduce its grotesque tax cuts at the expense of citizen’s health care, among other things.
Trump’s authoritarian approach to immigration has shocked many people throughout the country, while his unbridled attempts to seek revenge against his enemies has drawn growing anger from the bench.
All this has helped the Democrats to win some important by-elections, increasing their vote by an average of 15 percent. A crucial by-election is scheduled in early December in red Tennessee, where Trump won in 2024 by 22 percent. The polls have terrified Republican planners, to the extent that Trump, Vance and Speaker Johnson are all going to speak. A desperate and misguided political move, because if the Democrats pull off a win it will be a vote of no confidence in the Presidency.
At the end of the day
The Epstein scandal hangs around Trump’s neck like an albatross, and it won’t go away. Invading Venezuela won’t help, nor will charging opposition members with sedition for quoting the Constitution.
Party support and policies will be rearranged. Although the Republican plank still has a strong cultural and religious bias, they haven’t delivered on it, or on affordability. One wonders what support this same-old same-old formula could have in the future, because that is where they appear to be headed – a modified autocratic MAGA.
As regards the Democrats, they need to agree on a common vision that can be modified for their three constituencies — Democratic socialists, middle of the road voters, and the many disenchanted former Republicans who are currently homeless.
In the meantime, it is hard to imagine how a mentally compromised Trump could see out three more years. His central financial policy – manipulating trade tariffs – is hopelessly unconstitutional and may be declared as such by the Supreme Court. His Cabinet is the most insipid, sycophantic group ever assembled in a democracy, and cannot be counted on to declare him unfit under the 25th Amendment.
In 2016, during Trump’s first presidency, a grass roots movement named Indivisible emerged to counter his policies and those of his administration, which has enjoyed a resurgence during his second. Seven million citizens turned up for its last protest, held in early October. It seems clear that it will continue to play a central role in mobilising protest, and influencing voting patterns. In short, it seems as if Trump’s second term has stung and finally awoken the elephant.
Jay H. Ell is a former South African student leader at the University of Cape Town in the turbulent 1960s who lives and works as a legal practitioner in the United States. He wrote a column under this psuedonym in a student newspaper.
FEATURED IMAGE: An anti-Trump protest in Washington D.C. (Ted Eytan, Creative Commons)