The sharks can smell blood in the water. After a decade in eerie command of the Republican party, with primary voters in his cult-like thrall and down-ballot elected officials feeling they have no choice – and often no inclination – to diverge from him, Donald Trump suddenly seems not quite in control of his own political machine.

Fractures have emerged in the Maga coalition; Trump’s approval is sinking; the Democrats, long anemic and risk-averse in the opposition, showed signs of life in elections last month; and the cumulative effect of a series of long-running scandals, most particularly the Epstein affair, seem to have alienated core components of the Trump faithful. Trump has faced some rebukes from a once largely compliant federal judiciary: his personal attorney, Alina Habba, was recently declared ineligible to serve in the US attorney role Trump had appointed her to, and his signature tariffs seem likely to be struck down by a conservative supreme court majority.

Trump himself, meanwhile, is unfocused, losing his signature humor and charisma, and showing his age. In recent photos he looks pale, exhausted; he seems to have struggled to keep his eyes open in front of cameras. Trump seems more interested in the construction of his oversized ballroom than in the work of policy. His advisers – the scheming group of frauds, racists, opportunists and swindlers who surround........

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