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Hello from London,
Will there be serious fallout for Donald Trump and the
Republicans from the latest fuss over Jeffrey Epstein? As we have
written
(read the article here)
Mr Trump and several of his allies spent years fostering
conspiracy theories, so it has been delicious to see him squirm over
this one. It is striking, too, how the president has bungled his
repeated efforts to get people, including his most fervent supporters,
to change the subject. (Even his sudden talk of sacking Jerome Powell at
the Fed couldn’t do the trick.) For a man so skilled in setting the
terms of public discussion, this was a telling failure.
You could argue that this is a moment a dam breaks. Once MAGA
supporters have dared to confront Mr Trump, because they are coming to
doubt he speaks for the little guy after all, they won’t trust him on
other subjects. They are wobbling already over America’s involvement in
bombing Iran, plus Mr Trump’s failure to order an end to the war in
Ukraine. Polling data are undoubtedly bad and getting worse for Mr
Trump: our tracker has his net approval at minus 14 points (it’s
fascinating to study the twists and turns
of this term compared with his first one, and with Joe Biden’s
term). As that tracker updates in the coming days, I expect his net
approval to slide further. Steve Bannon, a former adviser to Mr Trump
and never one to shy away from a bold claim, has suggested the Epstein
furore could cost the Republicans 40 House seats at the midterms next
year.
It will be intriguing to see how Trump loyalists—such as Charlie Kirk, whom
we profiled this weekend—try
to navigate this in the coming weeks. But my hunch is that this July
story will fade. Other stuff matters vastly more to most voters,
including the MAGA base.
Our approval tracker
shows that the most startling loss of support for Mr Trump in
the first 180-or-so days of his presidency is on his handling of the
economy. At the inauguration, voters on average liked his stance on
everything from inflation and prices to taxes and jobs. These are the
issues that you can guarantee will really motivate people at those
midterms. Now, on the economy, voters massively dislike his performance.
On inflation, for example, his approval is almost minus 30 points. And
this is before the real impact of tariffs has started to hit.
Rumours have swirled of late that the top dog in the world’s
other superpower, China, has also been facing some difficulties. As Xi
Jinping packs his bucket and spade for the Chinese leadership’s annual
jaunt to the seaside,
our new piece
examines whether his power really is under threat.
Which is the richest country of all in 2025? Mr Trump
repeatedly tells Americans theirs is the greatest. We’ve just re-run our
annual assessment of the world’s economies, noting how simple
comparisons of GDP per person, even when adjusted for spending power,
fail to capture what really makes someone feel rich. Crucially, we also
compare the hours the average person works to earn a given income. I
won’t give away the answer of which country comes top of the rich
pile—I’ll merely note that my wife married beneath her.
Read our ranking of the richest (and poorest) countries.
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