President Donald Trump's second-term conduct — which critics characterize as brazenly corrupt — is alienating a growing number of high-profile former supporters, and a former White House official told MS NOW that two distinct factors are preventing Trump from shrugging off the criticism as he once did. Together, they are becoming a "lethal combination for him."

During Saturday's broadcast of MS NOW's Deadline: White House, host Nicole Wallace played a clip of famed podcaster Joe Rogan expressing disgust at the ways Trump has enriched himself and his family and, in his view, scammed followers out of money through his cryptocurrency ventures. The remarks marked another sharp departure for Rogan, whose Joe Rogan Experience ranks among the most-listened-to podcasts in the world and whose audience skews heavily toward young men — a demographic widely viewed as a key part of Trump's 2024 coalition. Rogan voiced support for Trump in the lead-up to that election.

Wallace also welcomed Ben Rhodes, a former Obama administration national security adviser, to discuss the phenomenon. Rhodes laid out what he viewed as the two main reasons voters can no longer stomach Trump's corruption the way they did during his first term.

"I think part of what's going on here, Nicole, is, number one, the scale and nature of this corruption is much simpler of a story to tell than some of the more bank-shot corruption of the first term," Rhodes explained. "You know, Saudis paying a lot of money to stay in Trump hotel rooms or something like that. The scale [this time] is billions of dollars, and it's pretty clear when you juice, like, a meme coin, and then it collapses in value, and you walk away with a lot of money and all the people that you convinced to invest in it walk away losing a lot of money. Well, that's an easy story to tell. So that's the first thing: the scale of it and how clear it is."

Meme coins — cryptocurrencies whose value rests largely on internet attention and community sentiment rather than utility — are known for extreme volatility, capable of surging on hype and collapsing just as quickly. Trump's own crypto ventures have included the $TRUMP meme coin, launched days before his January 2025 inauguration, which initially soared in value before falling sharply and drawing conflict-of-interest criticism from ethics watchdogs.

Rhodes identified the economy as the second factor. "I think the second thing that's really important here is that the economy is not good, that prices are still up," he said. "If the economy was going gangbusters for people and oil wasn't through the roof, and the price of groceries wasn't through the roof, maybe, maybe some of these people would be kind of less focused on this. But the reality is, it's that context. It's those two things together. Most people cannot afford things, and Donald Trump is getting fabulously wealthy in the process. Like, that is a lethal political combination, and that's something that, frankly, some Democrats like Jon Ossoff are making the case. But you almost don't have to. Even a Joe Rogan is doing his own research and coming to the same conclusion."

Wallace, for her part, voiced continued shock at how much disdain Trump appeared to have for his own voters, given how much he takes advantage of them. Rhodes concurred, calling the trend one of the "dark truths" of Trump's political career.

"The people that they need to take advantage of are the people that most believe in them," he explained. "Whoever thinks that they're going to benefit by getting close to Trump, you know, always ends up losing in the end."

This article originally appeared on Alternet.