Alan Zendell, January 24, 2026

Three days into Season 2, Episode 2 of the Trump reality horror show, there are clear signs that Trump is beginning to lose his hold on power and on what’s left of his ability to function rationally. His power was the result of a massive intimidation campaign dating back to Season 1. To people who have lately been asking when this madness will end, the answer is: when Trump’s ability to scare people ends.

We already see signs of that happening. Dyed-in-the-wool Trumper, Kentucky’s Thomas Massie drew the line at demanding to know the extent of Trump’s involvement with Jeffrey Epstein. The Congress forced a vote on modifying the War Powers Act to force Trump to get congressional approval before attacking any other countries. The effort failed, but by only a single vote in the Senate, and by a tie vote in the House, because a majority was required to pass it. Talk about clinging to power by his fingernails!

Trump’s greatest weapons are lies and chaos, but reality is beginning to take hold. Except for initial polling results at the beginning of a president’s term, the only times since World War 2 that a president’s popularity rating was lower than Trump’s is now was when the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan went south during George W. Bush’s second term, and just before Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace.

I can’t wait to see Trump’s approval ratings following his performance in Davos, where every major foreign leader saw what Trump has become. He lashed out at our European allies, and attacked Canada’s Prime Minister, Mark Carney, directly on the world stage, following that up with a threat to impose 100% tariffs on all Canadian imports, which would violate the North American Trade agreement Trump forced on Canada and Mexico in Season 1. He posted that China would devour Canada if America wasn’t there to protect them on his Truth Social platform, to which Carney calmly replied: “Canada doesn’t live because of the United States. Canada thrives because we are Canadian.”

New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote a fascinating piece on January 23^rd, “The Coming Trump Crackup.” He argued that extreme narcissists tend to get worse when they age “as their remaining inhibitions fall away. … [and] the effect is grandiosity, entitlement, lack of empathy and ferocious overreaction to perceived slights.” We’ve all seen this happening throughout 2025, and we’ve also seen clear signs that Trump’s physical and mental health are rapidly declining.

Trump, who mocked Joe Biden for struggling to walk up and down the stairs to Air Force One, now clings to the handrail himself and takes great care with each step, and the Trump who left Davos looked like a tired old man who could barely stay on his feet. You might laugh about him repeatedly confusing Greenland with Iceland during his opening speech at Davos but given the potential consequences of trying to take Greenland from Denmark, only someone on the verging of losing it completely could have been so unaware.

Of greater importance is that literally everyone at the Davos conference saw and heard all that live and in person. They heard what happens when a desperate man feels power slipping and begins lashing out in every direction, and most foreign leaders realized they were dealing with a seriously insane man. Our allies shuddered, but our principal adversaries rubbed their hands with glee. Trump is not viewed as a serious threat in terms of being a world leader, but like an out-of-control angry child with nuclear weapons.

Contrary to Trump’s bragging that because of him the United States has never been more respected, we are now seen by most of the world as a nation at serious risk of collapsing as a major force in world politics and economics. More important, our entire Congress saw all that, and most of them reached the same conclusions. In the final analysis, the greed and self-interest the caused almost every Republican in Congress to bow to Trump’s will is what will undo him in 2026.

Trump’s hold on Congress has been the threat of turning his rabid MAGA base against them in primary elections. But that’s history now. As of today, fifteen Republican House seats are considered toss-ups in November. Current polling shows that Democrats have an overall advantage in the generic ballot of between four and thirteen percent, and twenty-seven House Republicans have said they will not seek re-election. Even through all the Trump chaos, these facts imply a growing wave of resistance to MAGA among voters which means many of the craven Republicans who bent the knee to Trump now fear the voters more than they fear the President.

When you pull your head out of the sand and see a wave coming, it’s not a tsunami; it’s the surge of relief you’ll feel when Trump no longer intimidates Congress. The issue now is how more damage he can do to America before Season 2, Episode 2 ends.