Trump’s approval rating has sunk to 33 percent in the latest Reuters/Ipsos measure, a new low. But the more telling number is July’s executive order count: two, compared with fifteen the same month a year ago. The Sharpie strategy that defined Trump 2.0 is running dry.
When the Executive Branch Runs Out of Executable Power
The Supreme Court has already blocked Trump’s attempt to unilaterally end birthright citizenship, the signature legal provocation of his second term. The Save America Act, requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration, is stuck in the Senate with Democrats arguing it could disenfranchise more than 21 million citizens. The Canada trade deal announced this week still has no finalized fine print — a familiar Trump 2.0 pattern where announcements outrun substance.
The Iran war continues with no credible exit ramp, and the USS Abraham Lincoln is only now heading home after a deployment stretching nearly nine months, with reports of ration shortfalls and collapsing morale. Meanwhile the national debt crossed $40 trillion for the first time. Against that backdrop, the President’s legislative push this week was a year-round daylight saving bill, announced in all-caps on Truth Social.
The Symbolism Problem
Stalled presidencies advertise themselves in symbols, and Trump’s are piling up. The Reflecting Pool’s new paint job is flaking. A federal appeals court halted above-ground construction of his planned $400 million White House ballroom. The President has taken to boasting about a new South Lawn helipad and restored Thomas Jefferson columns, telling reporters “I am very good at flagpoles.”
This is the language of a presidency that has lost control of its plot lines. The reality-TV framing that once made Trump compelling — each day a new episode, each episode a win — now reads as reruns. Even the AI-generated images he posts on Truth Social, casting himself as Elvis or alongside Patton and MacArthur, have been overtaken by critics winning the meme war with jokes about Qatari catering trucks.
What Happens Next
Post-Labor Day, Trump will attempt a relaunch. The question is whether a relaunch is possible when the core mechanisms of second-term power — executive action, legislative leverage, public patience — have all degraded simultaneously. Approval ratings have declined not just since the Iran war began but since the April 2025 Liberation Day tariffs, suggesting the erosion is structural rather than cyclical.
The deeper risk for Trump is that he appears unaware of the decline. Surrounded by aides who reinforce rather than correct, he recently claimed to have made the Strait of Hormuz a US territory. Voters who once rewarded his fictions are now tiring of them. A President who can no longer bend reality to his will is a President running out of presidency.
— Jordan Blake, editorial desk, AXO News