During his second presidency, Donald Trump has maintained a firm grip not only on the Republican Party but also on business leaders who are reluctant to criticize him publicly, and many GOP figures remain afraid to cross him. Yet according to conservative Washington Post columnist Max Boot, Trump's "normally deft marketing touch has deserted him during his second term" — and his "strategy" of bullying others is now "backfiring badly."

In an opinion column published in the Washington Post, Boot — a Never Trump conservative, military historian and Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow who spent decades in the Republican Party before publicly breaking with it over Trump — credits the president's abilities as a salesman while arguing that those skills have now failed him.

"Whatever else you may say about him," Boot writes, "President Donald Trump is a consummate salesman. As former House speaker Newt Gingrich once noted to me, the former real estate tycoon did a brilliant job with his campaign slogan: It wasn't 'Trump for President'; it was 'Make America Great Again.' Despite his outsize ego, he kept the focus on the country, not on his own ambition."

Nineteen months into his second presidency, Boot argues, Trump is floundering both in the United States and abroad. The assessment arrives with the midterm elections — the first nationwide electoral test of a president's party — less than three months away, a point at which approval ratings typically draw heightened attention. Boot leans on two long-running barometers: the CNN Poll of Polls, which aggregates recent national surveys into a single measure of presidential approval, and the Pew Research Center's global polling, which has tracked international confidence in U.S. presidents for more than two decades.

"In the CNN Poll of Polls, 36 percent approved of his job performance, while 63 percent disapproved," the columnist observes. "That's far below the historical average for presidents. He is even more unpopular abroad — and international disapproval of the president has translated into disapproval of the country he leads. A Pew Research Center poll of 36 countries, conducted earlier this summer, found that 76 percent of respondents had 'no confidence' in Trump and 57 percent had an unfavorable opinion of the United States. In most of the countries Pew surveyed, people had a more positive impression of China than of the U.S."

Boot attributes the collapse of Trump's support to multiple factors. "There are many factors that explain the collapse of Trump's support — he has, after all, pursued unnecessary and unsuccessful policies, ranging from trade wars to his actual war with Iran, that have exacerbated voters' concerns about 'affordability,'" he writes. "What makes it all worse is that Trump makes almost no attempt to win over either domestic or foreign audiences to his views. Instead of cajoling or convincing, he tries to coerce and compel others to do what he wants."

In Boot's assessment, bullying longtime U.S. allies is making Trump weaker politically — not stronger.

"Earlier this year," Boot explains, "he refused to rule out military action to annex Greenland — a threat that European countries took seriously enough to dispatch their forces to defend Danish sovereignty. Last month, Trump threatened to impose tariffs on Canada to punish it for wildfires that were blowing smoke into the U.S. One day later, the Trump administration imposed 50 percent tariffs on many Canadian goods, claiming that they were unrelated to the wildfires. Then last week, Trump threatened to 'bomb the s–– out of' Oman if it gets 'in the way' of his administration's talks with Iran."

Boot continues: "I can't remember any previous president making such a blunt public threat against an ally, but for Trump, it's become routine ... Trump's conduct abroad is mirrored at home, where he has never made any effort to win support beyond his MAGA base. Instead of trying to win over skeptics and critics, he targets them for retribution, whether by cutting funds to 'woke' universities, launching prosecutions of political opponents or dispatching immigration agents and National Guard troops to Democratic cities."

According to Boot, the president's "coercive tactics" are "failing miserably."

"Judges have blocked many of his executive edicts and dismissed several of his politically motivated prosecutions," Boot writes. "Trump's opponents aren't intimidated; they're energized ... Trump's ability to intimidate has dramatically eroded because the whole world has seen how empty many of his threats are ... Instead of trying to bludgeon the entire world into submission, maybe he should try persuasion instead."