Conservative columnist Nick Catoggio says President Donald Trump has dragged the Republican Party, once known for its policy focus, to an unprecedented low—with no clear end to the decline in sight.

“Americans have stopped taking the president seriously about pretty much everything,” Catoggio told The Dispatch. He was discussing a poll published Thursday that found trust in information from the federal government had declined since 2024 across issues including the economy, health care, elections and politics.

Catoggio said the share of Americans expressing “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of confidence in federal information was already “dismally small” when Trump returned to office last year, and has since collapsed. Only 18 percent of respondents now say they have significant faith in what the government tells them about inflation and the cost of living. According to Catoggio, that is the “largest share that expressed such confidence across any of the issues tested.”

“The bill has come due for 20 months of insultingly empty happy talk about tariffs as the key to prosperity and the war being over ‘soon,’” Catoggio said. “Trump is an unserious leader, and everyone whose livelihood and/or emotional well-being doesn’t depend on arguing otherwise now recognizes it.”

Catoggio also argued that Trump has undermined confidence in the White House and the political parties by purportedly trying “to play Santa with taxpayer money.” Trump has promised a “$5,000 bribe” if U.S. voters choose to keep the House and Senate under Republican control in November.

No one beyond “right-wing media types is taking” the promise seriously, Catoggio said, and those supporters do so only “out of obligation.”

He said financial markets were likewise showing little confidence in Trump. The Dow and S\u0026P 500 opened “down this morning despite the head of state dangling a $1.3 trillion cash stimulus for the economy on national television.”

Bondholders are also “blasé about the market,” Catoggio said, treating many of Trump’s claims as an “empty campaign promise” while responding to the country’s mounting national debt.

Catoggio said this could help explain why Trump is already laying the groundwork for major Republican losses in November, including by scrambling some of his endorsements.

“Trump was warned that endorsing the lavishly corrupt [senatorial candidate Ken] Paxton over incumbent John Cornyn would put Texas in play and potentially cost the GOP the Senate,” Catoggio said. He added that Trump had also been warned Paxton was a lazy campaigner and poor fundraiser whom the president would eventually have to financially support with substantial spending from his own super PAC.

“All of that has come to pass,” Catoggio said. If Paxton loses what he described as an easy Senate seat in Texas, Trump will face severe criticism for backing him over Cornyn. Catoggio argued that Trump’s new line in speeches may be a preemptive attempt to distance himself from a defeat: “Alas, not even I could drag this slovenly gargoyle over the finish line.”

Source: Alternet.