An Alternet commentary published on Sept. 24, 2026 argues that President Donald Trump's defining problem is not only that he governs in ways critics describe as tyrannical, criminal or corrupt, but that he is "bad at being president" in the most basic sense: he does not change course when public opinion turns against him.

The job of a president, the author writes, is to reflect the will of the majority of Americans as faithfully as possible — and to pivot quickly when running afoul of public opinion. Trump, in the author's view, does not do that, and neither does anyone around him.

The column highlights the administration's plan — reported by The Washington Post — to push 760,000 people off Affordable Care Act coverage in the run-up to November's congressional elections, citing fraud as the justification. "Sure, fraud. That was their reason for doing it," the author writes, adding that the claim is "a lie," according to health-care analyst Charles Gaba, whose ACA Signups analysis challenged the rationale. Even if the fraud claim were true, the author asks, why act now — and why risk pushing the administration's own voters off their health insurance?

According to a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis, more than 75 percent of ACA enrollees live in states Trump won in 2024. Citing poll analyst G. Elliott Morris, the author notes that no president has polled worse heading into a midterm — not even George W. Bush in 2006 — and that GOP voters are starting to believe Trump does not care. The White House's actions, the author argues, prove less that Trump is a good president than that his critics are right.

The column quotes Brian Beutler, writing at Off Message:

"Trump is the imperfect figurehead of a corrupt cabal of plutocrats and ideological fanatics, who have used his political movement to foment something like a revolution, short of igniting civil war: Collapse the democratic order globally, replace it with great power spheres, and subservient, corrupt courtier states. Collapse the democratic order domestically, replace it with a rightwing autocracy."

Trump might avoid that outcome, the author argues, if he were good at being president. Instead, the column asks what Trump is actually good at and answers with one word: "Scamming." The author writes that Trump told the American people during the last election he would bring down the cost of living and restore the country's greatness, asking voters to ignore that he is "a cheat and a liar," "a criminal and a traitor," that he was convicted on 34 counts of felony fraud, and that he was determined by a judge to be a rapist. In the author's framing, Trump asked a majority of voters to trade democracy and the rule of law for an IOU — and, "to the shock and horror of the civilized world," a majority accepted.

The author interprets the anger now showing up in public polling, especially among Trump's own voters, as the rage of people who realize they will never get what they were promised — and that what they sacrificed may never come back. In the author's view, it is now mainstream to see Trump's IOU as worthless, and even what the column calls his attempted bribe of $5,000 per U.S. adult if his party wins "was met with crickets." Voters, the author writes, can respond in two ways: stay home on Election Day or vote Democratic — either way producing historic GOP losses.

Rather than mitigating those losses, the column says, Trump takes people's health care away and brutalizes immigrants even more, pointing to a Washington Post report that a man shot while being detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was hospitalized with partial paralysis, according to his lawyer. Above all, the author writes, Trump lies about the true cost of war. "It's a very inexpensive price to pay for what we've done," the president said of the price of gas, according to the Associated Press. The author calls his surrogates worse: "Everybody is obsessing with the price of gas," Sebastian Gorka said, in remarks captured on video. "This is much bigger than the price of gas. Think about what would happen to the price of gasoline if [Iran's] missiles were nuclear tipped."

In 2024, the author concludes, Trump gave the American people a choice between the Constitution of the United States and greed — and a majority chose greed. Two years later, the column argues, he is acting as if there will be no consequences for that decision. "No one alive has seen a president choose to walk into the teeth of American selfishness," the author writes. "No one alive has seen a president pretend it won't be deadly."

Ask Me Anything: September 24, 2026

The column also includes an Ask Me Anything segment answering reader questions about the political outlook.

Impeachment odds. Reader John Richardson asked about the chances of impeachment and conviction if Democrats win the House and Senate in November. The author responds that the chances of indictment by the House are "extremely high," while conviction by the Senate is less likely — though there "could be an even chance" if Democrats take the upper chamber with 53 senators. Impeachment itself requires a majority vote in the House, while conviction and removal require a two-thirds Senate vote, making the makeup of both chambers central to the outcome. Those odds, the author adds, would likely increase in the weeks and months after a new Congress is seated, as Washington's focus shifts from a lame-duck Trump toward the 2028 race. "The man who has never been ignored is about to get the shock of his life," the author writes, predicting that whatever Trump does in response "will be no good very bad," with the degree of badness probably correlating with Congress's will to remove him.

The author stresses that Trump will remain president and in charge of the war regardless of the midterm outcome, and that the war will keep driving up the cost of gas, diesel and everything else. "There is no limit to how high prices could go," the author writes, given that the war is unfolding "while monopolies are already fixing prices with AI," citing Yale Insights research on AI monopolists. As a hypothetical, the author suggests that diesel averaging $9 a year from now could make today's $6 look fondly remembered. The new Congress could revoke Trump's war powers, the author notes, but it is unclear whether he would obey a Congress he has never obeyed before — and the crisis could become so damaging that even some Republican senators might want to remove him.

Looking toward 2028, the author calls it an open question whether Trump wants to help his party or sabotage it, suggesting "the smart money might be on sabotage" — which could give Senate Republicans an incentive to remove him in order to give JD Vance the best possible start in 2028. The author counters that Vance is "prettyable, even in the GOP," so Republicans might prefer to gut it out until the end of the term. "All this may be moot if Trump dies by natural causes," the author writes. "At the rate he's going, no one should be surprised if that happens."

What a House majority can do. Reader Leona Beauchamp asked what Democrats can realistically achieve with only a House majority, voicing concern that they will "blow their chance to shut down the grift." The author responds that the House could send an impeachment indictment to the Senate and hope for removal, but otherwise cannot force Trump to stop doing anything, "no matter how criminal or disgusting," because Congress is not the government's "active" branch.

Trump, however, is not the only potential impeachment target, the author argues. The column holds Robert F. Kennedy Jr. responsible for deaths and suffering among people who believed what the author calls his lies about vaccines, noting that preventable diseases such as measles, mumps and whooping cough are "roaring back." Kennedy, the author adds, is disliked even by Senate Republicans who would otherwise defend Trump. Pete Hegseth is also identified as a target: a failure as "secretary of war" who would "rather speechify on TV about phony 'holy wars'" than prosecute a real one, and who is deeply disliked, if not despised.

The broader point, the author writes, is that while public focus rests on making Trump pay for his transgressions, the administration is "a criminal enterprise in all but name" — a characterization the author says the public does not yet share, and one that Republican control of Congress allows the party to defend, deflect attention from and sandbag efforts to expose. "Everything changes once the Democrats are in charge," the author writes. As an example, the column argues there is "no legitimate reason for Trump's stock trading" and no way to defend it in terms of presidential immunity. If Democrats did nothing else, the author suggests, they could spend the next two years investigating that conduct, releasing "drip after drip of scandalous news," further discrediting Trump and "salting the earth" for any Republican who wants to succeed him. "To me, that would benefit the common good more than impeaching him," the author concludes.