Is United States President Donald Trump lurching toward decline and fall? Will he and his MAGA movement reprise Lyndon B. Johnson’s story, when the quagmire of the Vietnam War took the Democratic president out of the 1968 election and gave Republican Richard Nixon the opening he needed to defeat the Democrats?

Trump’s war on Iran is already hurting him politically. More than half of Americans disapprove of the decision to join Israel and attack Iran.

And Iran is not the only problem for Trump and MAGA. The loss of 92,000 jobs in February offers little good news. Neither does a Supreme Court ruling that weakened the tariff strategy at the core of Trump’s economic plan. There’s also the lingering risk posed by ongoing media and public attention to the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Amid all these storm clouds, Trump’s extreme and bizarre behaviour shows no signs of abating. His provocative boorishness continues: as with the “Good, I’m glad he’s dead” posting about the death of former FBI director Robert Mueller and the baseball cap he wore at the “dignified transfer” of the remains of U.S. soldiers who have died in the conflict.

Other disturbing and ultimately weightier behaviour has included Trump’s bulldozing of the American Constitution as readily as the East Wing of the White House by ignoring congressional powers, weaponizing the Department of Justice and fostering kleptocracy for friends and family via cryptocurrency ventures.

Without discounting the toll of the extreme and bizarre, however, the potential impact of a traditional force hiding in plain sight may prove more powerful. Will Trump’s 2024 voters shift loyalties because the purportedly amazing “deal maker” has forgotten that buyers have cancellation........

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