https://www.lewrockwell.com/2025/12/eric-peters/tainting-the-brand/

By Eric Peters

December 27, 2025

Donald Trump was just-barely-elected (a Reagan-esque landslide 2024 was not; Trump achieved a narrow plurality that won him the Electoral College vote that makes a narrow victory seem like a much more impressive popular mandate) because just enough people decided he could not possibly be worse than Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.

Many of those Trump voters are beginning to think they may have been wrong about that.

Trump’s first few months were encouraging. He appeared to be going after the federal bureaucracy, root and branch. Then all of that just sort of evaporated. The Department of Government Efficiency? It has gone the way of Trump’s assurances that he would end the war in Ukraine – or at least, end U.S. support for the regime in Keeeeeeeeeeeeeev that refuses to end it. The war not only continues, it is getting more serious precisely because the regime in Keeeeeeeeeeeeeeeev is being led to believe it can continue to expect U.S. support.

That is to say, U.S. taxpayers being forced to support it.

Bad enough. But – to be fair – that war is not Trump’s fault. At least insofar as him starting it. The war being waged against Venezuela, on the other hand, is entirely Trump’s work. It is doubtful many of the people who voted for Trump because they thought they were voting for no new wars thought they were voting for this. Tom Woods once quipped that it seems no matter who you vote for, John McCain always gets elected. He was slightly wrong about that. Trump is doing a fine job of channeling George W. Bush – even to the extent of his squinty-eyed lectures about “weapons of mass destruction.”

Also like The Chimp, Trump insists the economy is doing great – and it is, for the millionaire investor class. For the Deplorable class that hoped for better times, not so much. An objective measure of the truth about the situation is the rising cost of precious metals. “Rising cost” hardly covers it. An ounce of silver that could be purchased for about $23 just three or so years ago is now selling for nearly $70 and one ounce of gold approaches $5,000. This is a metric of the collapse of the buying power of the dollar and since most Americans get paid in dollars rather than silver and gold, they are increasingly the poorer for it.

The things that are existential for most Americans – such as rents and mortgages, food and medical treatment – cost more dollars than ever and most people haven’t got the more dollars needed to keep up with that.

These are serious matters. There are also the other matters that are unserious but nonetheless consequential – for the Trump brand. These include his gratuitous utterances such as his recent cruel and oafish derision of murdered Hollywood director Rob Reiner and his wife. His obnoxious re-naming of the John F. Kennedy Center in Washington after himself. His apparent intention to name Dulles International Airport after himself. His demo’ing of the East Wing of the White House to erect a monstrous (supposed) ball room in honor of himself. The Triumphal Arch. The Golden Battleships – named after himself, again.

It’s almost as if he’s trying to ruin the brand. More finely, trying to generate contempt for the nationalist-populist movement that just-barely managed to keep Harris-Walz out of office – and he’s doing a beautiful job of that.

Probably a third-to-half of the bloc that voted for Trump regrets having voted for Trump and that by itself is a portent of things to come. How about the people on the razor’s edge who decide most elections in this country; i.e., the so-called “swing” and “independent” voters? How many of them are not just disillusioned but disgusted?

The recent state-level elections in Virginia and New Jersey as well as the mayoral election in New York City are a metric of this disillusion and disgust. It is not merely that anti-Trump Democrats (the term soft-pedals the reality that “Democrats” are authoritarian socialists and that’s being hopeful about them) won these elections but that they won them by devastating majorities. No razor-thin wins, these.

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