President Donald Trump is starting to feel the pressure of the midterms creeping up on him—and it’s spiraling him into a rage, according to his longtime biographer.
Author Michael Wolff said the president’s aides have been encouraging him to course-correct ahead of the crucial November polls and get back to the issues that matter most to voters. Instead, Trump has chosen to double down and rant about myriad issues that are more personal to him, from the Federal Reserve to his White House ballroom.
“Well, no, he’s not panicked. He gets angry. I mean, Trump doesn’t really panic,” Wolff told his Inside Trump’s Head co-host Joanna Coles when asked whether the president’s bizarre Truth Social posts are a sign of panic.
“It’s not panic in that sense that, ‘Oh, I’ve got a problem here and I’ve got to do something. I’ve got to solve the problem.’ Rather, it’s a different kind of response. It’s blaming someone. It’s rage. It’s anger. So it’s anger rather than panic. And he’s starting to feel that, I think,” he continued.
Trump, 79, has been hard at work touting his administration’s policies, participating in a DoorDash delivery stunt, and giving an economic pep talk to voters in Las Vegas last week as his war with Iran raged on.
But polling numbers are showing flashing red lights for the president and the Republican Party at large.
A Fox News poll conducted in late March found that Trump’s approval rating on taxes is 28 points underwater, a far cry from the same period in his first term, when Trump was above water by two points when it came to taxes.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday also found that only 24 percent of Americans believe that Trump’s war with Iran has been worth the high cost, reflecting growing public discontent with the conflict.
Democrats have also been smashing records and raising massive sums of money as they gear up for the midterms, with ActBlue announcing it raised $568 million from January through March, the strongest first quarter fundraising in its 22-year history.
“There are the people around him in the White House, and these are political professionals who are seeing this and saying, ‘We’re in some danger here. We could lose our jobs or people we work with could lose their jobs.’ I mean, this is a political problem,” Wolff said.
“And those are the people who are... as diplomatically as possible, saying to Trump—‘These are our issues, and we have to start to address them.’ And that’s what politicians do," he continued. “That’s called course correcting.”
“The problem with that is that Trump doesn’t do that. Course correcting is the absolute opposite of what he does. Trump is strictly a double-down guy. And it’s kind of part of his political charm in its way: ’I don’t pander, I don’t give a s--t. I just do what I’m going to do.’ And for various points, that has been impressive, even charming, to lots of people. But at various other points, it’s calamitous. And I think we’re at one of those points,” he said.
Instead, Wolff said, Trump has focused on ranting about a variety of issues, including his $400 million ballroom.
The Trump biographer also revealed that the president has revived one of his most controversial talking points: taking over Greenland.
“He’s even back—in these conversations that I’ve had over the last couple of days—to talking about, wait for it: Greenland. Again, again, again,” he said.
“You think he would get that and at least have a new idea about how we’re gonna go and get Greenland, but it’s not. It’s as though he’s right back at the beginning of this discussion: What a good idea it would be if we had Greenland and why can’t we have it?” he added.
“So, you know, everybody around him, I think their response is frustration. But I think they have to convert that into patience... Because you can’t say, ‘Hey, we’re really heading for disaster here.’ They are heading for disaster. No one can say that.”
The White House did not immediately respond to the Daily Beast’s request for comment. In the past, when reached for comment about Wolff’s podcast commentary, White House Communications Director Steven Cheung has given the same boilerplate response:
“Michael Wolff is a lying sack of s--t and has been proven to be a fraud. He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.”
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