President Donald Trump is confronting a defining political weakness that "cuts across" partisan divides, and he has run out of time to meaningfully turn the situation around before the midterm elections, according to his one-time biographer Michael Wolff.

Wolff, a longtime reporter and author best known for his extensive coverage of Trump's political career, including several books on the president's chaotic first term — among them 2018's "Fire and Fury" — laid out his assessment in a recent episode of his Daily Beast podcast, "Inside Trump's Head", arguing that Trump has manufactured his own political problems as the midterms draw near.

Those midterms, arriving this November at the halfway point of his term, will put all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and roughly one-third of the Senate on the ballot, making them the first nationwide electoral test since Trump returned to office. In most midterm elections since World War II, the party holding the White House has lost seats in Congress.

"Donald Trump... has screwed himself, which he does over and over and over again," Wolff told co-host Joanna Coles.

"I know people talk about his comeback and his winning the second administration, as if this was the biggest political comeback, which certainly was a big comeback, and unexpected in some quarters," Coles responded. "Trump is self-destructing with his own policies."

Wolff described Trump's first year back in office as a period defined by speed rather than deliberation, one that caught opponents off guard through a rapid burst of unilateral action.

"He came into office with this... whole first year of catching everyone off guard because of him charging ahead, and [saying] 'I can do what I want because I am the president,'" Wolff continued. "'I will do what I want, no one will stop me, and I'm going to do it as fast as I possibly can.' Which he did. But the problem with all that is that that means nothing is particularly thought out. Do this, do this, do this. And [that] means that a year and a half later, you're reaping the benefit, or reaping the opposite of the benefit, of not having thought out the cause and effect here. You do this, it's going to have that effect. And that is all now biting him in the a—— as we approach the midterms in seven weeks."

With fewer than seven weeks remaining until the midterms, Wolff argued that the economic conditions battering most Americans remain the biggest problem facing Trump and the GOP, especially because voters trusted his 2024 campaign promise to "end" those problems swiftly. The political damage could prove especially severe, he added, since high prices are an issue that stings every voter, no matter their political persuasion.

"There's no ideology attached to that, no partisanship," Wolff said. "It's just things are... way more expensive than people believe they ought to be... and when that happens you look for someone to blame; there's one logical person to blame... and that's the president of the United States... It is not just Donald Trump [taking the blame], but... the buck stops here because he is the president."

"This is of his own making," he added. "The war is of his own making; tariffs are of his own making. They are the kinds of things that contribute to raising prices."