| Nov 30, 2025, 8:56 AM (1 day ago) | |||
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BOMBSHELL: Trump Is FINISHED (This Time We Really Mean It)This time it's for real, right?
I keep seeing the same phrase. "The beginning of the end." The Daily Beast used it last week. Then Newsweek. Then NPR. Then a Substack I follow. All of them about Trump. All of them confident that this time, finally, the coalition is cracking. So I started researching. And what I found was a decade of failed predictions, exposed pundits, and supposed turning points that never turned. CNN alone used the phrase "the walls are closing in" in headlines at least 45 times between 2017 and 2019. I stopped counting "beginning of the end" after I hit triple digits. This piece catalogs at least 18 distinct events that were each framed as the moment Trump's political career would finally end: the McCain attack, the Access Hollywood tape, election night 2016, the Comey firing, Charlottesville, Helsinki, the Anonymous op-ed, Fire and Fury, Avenatti, the first impeachment, the COVID tapes, the "suckers and losers" story, inciting the January 6 insurrection, the second impeachment, the DeSantis challenge, four separate criminal indictments, 34 felony convictions, being arrested and having his mugshot taken, the E. Jean Carroll verdict, and the 14th Amendment disqualification effort, and the list goes on. The outlets repeatedly making these incorrect predictions were not fringe blogs. They were the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Atlantic, FiveThirtyEight, CNN, MSNBC, NBC News, the New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, CNBC, NPR, Newsweek, and others. The people making these predictions were not anonymous social media accounts. They were James Fallows, Nate Silver, Harry Enten, Paul Krugman, David Brooks, Ross Douthat, Dana Milbank, Chris Cillizza, Chuck Todd, Michael Wolff, Allan Lichtman, Ann Selzer, and at least two dozen more. "This Will Be The End Of Trump's Campaign," Says Increasingly Nervous Man For Seventh Time This Year. That was The Onion's headline on December 8, 2015. The Washington Post's Karen Tumulty asks whether "Trump's grip on the Republican Party is slipping" and frames recent events as "a turning point for Trump's second term." Newsweek declares Trump "besieged by an army of issues that could threaten his MAGA support," with academics calling it "a possible inflection point." MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace claims "cracks in the MAGA coalition are getting bigger and bigger by the day." NPR asserts Trump "has dominated the Republican Party for a decade... That's starting to change." The American Prospect asks "Is Trump a Lame Duck Yet?" The New Republic announces a "Shock Poll: Core Part of Trump's Base is Abandoning Him." Michael Wolff writes at The Daily Beast: "This Is The Beginning of the End for Donald Trump." The framing is identical. The language is identical. The confidence is identical. Before you let that satisfying narrative settle into your bones, you need to reckon with something. The people telling you this have been telling you this continuously for ten years. They have been wrong every time. They have faced no professional consequences for being wrong. And they are telling you the same thing today, in the same publications, with the same certainty. Why does this keep happening, and what function does it serve? Here are three possibilities. The first is incompetence. Pundits genuinely believed their predictions and were simply wrong, repeatedly, for a decade, about the central political story of our time. They applied frameworks that worked for previous politicians to someone who operated by different rules, and they never updated their models despite continuous failure. This explanation is unflattering but forgiving. It assumes good faith and bad judgment. The second is complicity. Major media outlets benefit from Trump's continued relevance. He drives engagement, subscriptions, and ratings in ways that normal politicians cannot. Predicting his demise generates clicks from an audience desperate to believe accountability is coming. Reporting his resilience generates clicks from an audience desperate to understand why it isn't. Either way, the Trump story is good for business, and definitive resolution would end the most profitable narrative in modern political media. This explanation is darker. It suggests the prediction failures aren't bugs but features. The third is something you might call a pressure release valve. People read "Trump is finally finished," feel a moment of catharsis, and feel like things are going to work out on their own. Except he has gained more power than ever, while furthering his agenda and consolidating Republican power that the media conveniently ignores. The media gets engagement, the audience gets emotional relief, and things exclusively get worse. The prediction cycle doesn't inform people. It pacifies them. It offers the feeling of accountability without requiring anyone to do anything to make accountability happen. This explanation is the darkest of all, because it would mean the media is aiding and facilitating our demise. Maybe it's all three. Maybe it's something else entirely. But the pattern demands explanation, because the pattern is not ambiguous. What follows is a non-comprehensive but extensive documentation observing a decade of wrong predictions. The scale is the point. The Existentialist Republic is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. The media's dismissiveness began immediately. On June 17, 2015, the day after Trump's announcement, the New York Daily News ran the headline "CLOWN RUNS FOR PREZ." That same day, Mike Barnicle asked on MSNBC's Morning Joe: "Can we stipulate for the purposes of this conversation that Donald Trump will never be president of the United States?" Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post wrote on June 17, 2015: "Trump has every right to run. This is a democracy after all. But what he should not get is covered as though this is an even-close-to-serious attempt to either win the Republican nomination or influence the conversation in GOP circles in any significant way. It's not." James Fallows of The Atlantic declared on July 13, 2015: "Donald Trump will not be the 45th president of the United States. Nor the 46th, nor any other number you might name. The chance of his winning nomination and election is exactly zero." On July 17, 2015, Huffington Post announced it would cover Trump's campaign in its Entertainment section rather than Politics, declaring: "Trump's campaign is a sideshow. We won't take the bait. If you are interested in what The Donald has to say, you'll find it next to our stories on the Kardashians." Editorial Director Danny Shea doubled down in August 2015, stating they were "more committed to the decision than ever" because Trump was "nothing more than a sideshow and not a legitimate presidential contender." On July 18, 2015, Trump said of John McCain: "He's not a war hero. He's a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured, OK?" CNN reported the remark "was covered as the end of a campaign that never really got started." Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight published on August 11, 2015: "Our emphatic prediction is simply that Trump will not win the nomination. It's not even clear that he's trying to do so." The site gave Trump a 2 percent chance of winning the nomination. Staff writer Harry Enten wrote that Trump had "a better chance of cameoing in another 'Home Alone' movie with Macaulay Culkin—or playing in the NBA Finals—than winning the Republican nomination." Silver later published a mea culpa on May 18, 2016 titled "How I Acted Like A Pundit And Screwed Up On Donald Trump," admitting: "We didn't just get unlucky: We made a big mistake... Unlike virtually every other forecast we publish at FiveThirtyEight, our early estimates of Trump's chances weren't based on a statistical model." Dana Milbank of the Washington Post wrote on October 2, 2015: "The day Trump clinches the nomination, I will eat the page on which this column is printed in Sunday's Post." When Trump clinched, Milbank literally ate his column on camera, prepared by a chef. David Brooks published a New York Times column titled "No, Donald Trump Won't Win." Ross Douthat tweeted that "the entire commentariat is going to feel a little silly when Marco Rubio wins every Republican primary." Rubio dropped out after losing his home state to Trump. Megyn Kelly observed in September 2015: "We've seen a lot of headlines that this is the end for Trump, or the beginning of the end for Trump. And it hasn't been the end for Trump." Trump won the Republican nomination with a record 14 million primary votes. On October 7, 2016, the Washington Post released a recording from September 2005 in which Trump told Access Hollywood host Billy Bush: "I moved on her like a bitch... I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab 'em by the pussy." By October 11, nearly a third of Senate Republicans said they would not vote for Trump. RNC Chairman Reince Priebus reportedly believed Trump should resign or would lose in a landslide. Representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah declared on October 7: "I'm out. I can no longer in good conscience endorse this person for president. It is some of the most abhorrent and offensive comments that you can possibly imagine." He said he couldn't look his 15-year-old daughter in the eye while supporting Trump. Nineteen days later, Chaffetz announced he was voting for Trump because "HRC is that bad." Studies found the tape's impact was "short-lived," with polls rebounding by mid-October. Paul Krugman of the New York Times wrote on election night 2016: "It really does now look like President Donald J. Trump, and markets are plunging. When might we expect them to recover? A first-pass answer is never." The Dow Jones hit an all-time high within nine hours of this prediction and continued setting records throughout Trump's first term. The phrase "the walls are closing in" became a media staple. Grabien Media compiled a supercut documenting CNN using the phrase in headlines at least 45 times between 2017 and mid-2019, with similar frequency across MSNBC and major newspapers. The compilation featured MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski, Ari Melber, and Nicolle Wallace; CNN's Dana Bash and Erin Burnett; Michael Avenatti; and Rep. Ted Lieu. The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University analyzed the coverage: "'Walls closing in...' was a constructed narrative, and was running ahead of the truth. Some of the mainstream media were using it to predict someone's indictment while a grand jury investigation was ongoing." Conan O'Brien acknowledged the pattern with a joke about Trump's latest scandal and analysts predicting "this could be the beginning of the end for Donald Trump." He then corrected himself: "Oh wait, I'm sorry. This joke is from a monologue I did last year." In May 2017, Trump fired FBI Director James Comey and told NBC's Lester Holt: "I was going to fire regardless of recommendation... I said to myself, I said, 'You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story.'" Legal scholars called it potential evidence of obstruction of justice. Special Counsel Robert Mueller was appointed. Morning Joe declared on May 12, 2017: "This is the Beginning of the End" for Trump. The New Yorker asked the same day: "Is the Comey Memo the Beginning of the End for Trump?" The Mueller Report declined to make an obstruction determination. Attorney General Barr concluded no charges were warranted. In July 2017, John McCain returned to the Senate floor, recently diagnosed with brain cancer, and voted thumbs down on the Republican attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Media called it a "devastating setback" and "death blow" to Trump's agenda. Outlets reported Trump watched "six months of his presidency evaporate into nothingness." Following the August 12, 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville and Trump's statement blaming violence "on many sides," then his August 15 press conference declaring there were "very fine people, on both sides," Jimmy Kimmel said Trump "needs to go." Stephen Colbert wondered on air if Trump would still be president by Friday. NPR's assessment one year later: "In the 12 months since that Charlottesville rally, not a lot has changed for Trump... Outside of some harsh statements, most Republicans in Congress also continued to enthusiastically back Trump." In March 2018, Trump signed an omnibus spending bill that did not include border wall funding. Breitbart commenters wrote "DUMP TRUMP!" and "All done with the Trump train!" Conservative media ran critical coverage suggesting Trump had betrayed his core promise. In June 2018, audio leaked of children crying at border detention facilities during the family separation policy. CNBC reported "Trump risks political damage." The leaked audio was called "a real turning point." At the July 16, 2018 Helsinki summit, standing beside Vladimir Putin, Trump said of Russian election interference: "I don't see any reason why it would be" Russia, appearing to side with Putin over U.S. intelligence agencies. Former CIA Director John Brennan called it "nothing short of treasonous." Even Newt Gingrich called it "the most serious mistake of his presidency." The Wall Street Journal editorial board called it "a personal and national embarrassment." Senator Bob Corker declared "the dam is breaking." On September 5, 2018, the New York Times published "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration" by an anonymous senior official. The piece disclosed "early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment." David Frum of The Atlantic predicted Trump would "grow more defiant, more reckless, more anti-constitutional, and more dangerous." The author was later revealed as Miles Taylor, a DHS official. In January 2018, author Michael Wolff said of his book Fire and Fury: "The story that I've told seems to present this presidency in such a way that it says that he can't do this job... That's the background to the perception and the understanding that will finally end this, that will end this presidency." Media treated Stormy Daniels' lawyer Michael Avenatti as the man who would finally bring Trump down. CNN and MSNBC featured him over 100 times in a single year. Multiple outlets ran profiles speculating about his presidential ambitions. Avenatti was convicted of attempting to extort Nike, defrauding clients, and stealing from Stormy Daniels herself. He is currently in federal prison. In January 2019, Trump's base supposedly abandoned him over the government shutdown and lack of border wall funding. Ann Coulter called him "the biggest wimp ever to serve as President," said he was "dead, dead, dead," called him "lazy and incompetent," and labeled him "a lunatic." Breitbart and Drudge ran "NO WALL" banners. Erick Erickson wrote that Trump "looks weaker now than at any time in his presidency." On September 25, 2019, Republican consultant Mike Murphy declared on MSNBC: "One Republican senator told me if it was a secret vote, 30 Republican senators would vote to impeach Trump." Senator Lamar Alexander acknowledged in his decisive statement against witnesses that the House managers had proved Trump "withheld United States aid, at least in part, to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens" with "a mountain of overwhelming evidence." He called it "inappropriate." He still voted to acquit. When the actual Senate vote came on February 5, 2020, exactly one Republican, Mitt Romney, voted to convict on one article. The final tally: 52-48 for acquittal. In October 2019, Trump announced withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, abandoning Kurdish allies. White evangelicals supposedly "turned on Trump" over the decision. The World, a Christian news outlet, suggested the move could "pave a road to impeachment." Tony Schwartz, Trump's ghostwriter for The Art of the Deal, predicted Trump would resign by the end of summer 2017. Schwartz made similar predictions throughout the presidency. All were wrong. Michael Moore said in June 2018 his documentary Fahrenheit 11/9 would "Bring Trump Down." It did not. Oxford Economics predicted Trump would receive 35% of the popular vote in November 2020, calling it "the worst performance for an incumbent in a century." Trump received 46.8% of the popular vote and 74 million total votes, more than any previous presidential candidate except Biden in the same election. In September 2020, Bob Woodward released recordings in which Trump admitted he knew COVID was deadly and airborne while publicly downplaying it. The Atlantic reported Trump had called fallen soldiers "losers" and "suckers." Both stories were framed as potentially campaign-ending revelations. In October 2020, NBC News ran the headline "Senior voters are abandoning Trump." Polls predicted Florida would flip to Biden based on senior defection. Trump won Florida by 3 points. The January 6, 2021 Capitol attack generated the most severe predictions of Trump's political death, and the Republican condemnations were supposed to make them come true. Kevin McCarthy said on the House floor: "The President bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by mob rioters." Audio later revealed he privately told colleagues he'd "had it with this guy" and recommended Trump resign. Two weeks later, McCarthy flew to Mar-a-Lago for a smiling photo-op. Lindsey Graham declared on the Senate floor the night of January 6: "All I can say is count me out. Enough is enough." By February 19, he was at Mar-a-Lago playing golf with Trump. Mitch McConnell said Trump was "practically and morally responsible" for January 6, calling it "a disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty." On March 6, 2024, McConnell formally endorsed Trump for president. The second impeachment produced 10 Republican votes to impeach, more than any president had faced from his own party. By 2024: four lost primaries, four retired rather than face voters, two survived. The Republicans who maintained opposition were defeated or marginalized. The Republicans who fell back in line kept their careers. Following the 2022 midterms, media crowned Ron DeSantis as the Trump-slayer. The Wall Street Journal editorial board published "Trump Is the Republican Party's Biggest Loser." Polls showed DeSantis leading by double digits, in some cases by 23 points. The New York Post ran a front page calling Trump "Trumpty Dumpty." CNBC reported GOP megadonors were turning on Trump. Stephen Schwarzman said it was "time for the Republican Party to turn to a new generation of leaders." The Koch network indicated they wanted a different nominee. DeSantis dropped out in January 2024 after losing Iowa by 30 points. He immediately endorsed Trump. At the July convention, he urged voters: "Let's make the 45th President of the United States the 47th President." Four criminal indictments in 2023 generated a new round of predictions about Republican abandonment. Manhattan on March 30. Federal classified documents on June 8. January 6 federal on August 1. Georgia RICO on August 14. CNN noted after the June indictment: "The roar of outrage from Republican leaders to that indictment restored Trump's grip on the party." On June 28, 2022, Cassidy Hutchinson testified before the January 6 committee. Mick Mulvaney said: "This is explosive stuff... That is a very, very bad day for Trump." In May 2023, a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation in the E. Jean Carroll case. The judge later clarified the verdict meant Trump committed rape under the common definition of the word. Combined with the first verdict, total judgments reached $88.3 million. The 14th Amendment disqualification effort reached its peak when Colorado and Maine actually removed Trump from their primary ballots. The Supreme Court reversed the removals 9-0. Nikki Haley called Trump "unhinged" and said nominating him would be "like suicide for our country." On July 16, 2024, she spoke at the Republican National Convention offering her "strong endorsement." The only major candidate who refused to endorse: Chris Christie. Allan Lichtman, the historian who claimed to have predicted every election since 1984, predicted a Harris victory. He was wrong. Ann Selzer, called the "gold standard" of Iowa polling, released a final poll showing Harris leading Trump by 3 points in Iowa. Trump won Iowa by 13 points, a 16-point miss. Donald Trump won the 2024 election with 312 electoral votes. He won the popular vote by over 2 million. He won all seven swing states. He became the first Republican to win the popular vote since 2004. Here is what major outlets are saying right now, in November 2025: Michael Wolff at The Daily Beast: "This Is The Beginning of the End for Donald Trump." Norman Eisen on Substack: "The Beginning of the End of Trump." The Washington Blade: "Beginning of the end for Trump." The framing is identical. The language is identical. The confidence is identical. Now consider what the data actually shows. Trump's approval rating has declined to second-term lows. Gallup has him at 36%, just 2 points above his all-time low of 34% after January 6, 2021. The Silver Bulletin aggregate shows 41.1%. Reuters/Ipsos has 38%. AP-NORC has 36%. These are genuine warning signs. Independent approval at 25% represents Trump's worst showing among this group in either term, surpassing the previous low of 29% in August 2017. This is significant. Republican base approval has declined from 91-94% at inauguration to 79-88% in late November, depending on the pollster. Gallup recorded a 7-point decline in Republican approval in just the last month. This is measurable erosion. Tariffs are demonstrably unpopular. Across all pollsters, 61-64% disapprove of Trump's tariff policies, with 70-71% believing they will raise inflation. Even 25-30% of Republicans express disapproval. These are real data points. I am not dismissing them. But context matters. Trump's first-term average was 41%. He spent much of 2017-2021 in the mid-to-high 30s during periods of controversy. He is the only president since 1953 to never reach 50% approval in Gallup polling. His current numbers, while low, fall within his established floor-to-ceiling range. The 84% Republican approval that media outlets frame as "eroding" exceeds what Obama (79%) or Bush (79%) had at equivalent points in their second terms. CNN data analyst Harry Enten notes Trump's GOP support "remains like a rock" and is "higher than any other 21st century prez had within their own party at this point in term 2." Pollster Brent Buchanan of Cygnal told Newsweek his monthly surveys show "zero movement" in core Republican views of Trump, adding "I don't think there's anything that could get between how the base feels about Trump." When Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene broke from Trump over the Epstein files, she resigned rather than face a primary. That tells you something about Trump's hold on Republican voters. What would actual collapse look like? Republican approval below 70%. Primary challengers gaining traction. Elected Republicans voting against Trump priorities rather than expressing "concern." Fox News and talk radio turning against him. None of these indicators are present. The documented record reveals a consistent pattern spanning ten years and two election cycles. Every category of prediction followed the same trajectory. Analysts who predicted specific outcomes with high confidence were repeatedly proven wrong. The media predictions share a common feature: treating each controversy as categorically different from previous ones that had failed to damage Trump, then being surprised when the pattern repeated. The people telling you Trump is finished have been telling you that since 2015. They have never been right. Jennifer Rubin left the Washington Post in January 2025. Chuck Todd left NBC News the same month. Paul Krugman retired from the New York Times in December 2024. Ross Douthat, David Brooks, and Dana Milbank remain at their publications. Harry Enten now works at CNN. None of these departures were consequences for being wrong. The prediction failures didn't end careers or damage reputations. The people who left did so on their own terms. The walls never closed in. So I'll put the question to you directly: Is this incompetence? Is it complicity? Is it an industry profiting off hopium while we wait for someone else to save us? Whatever your answer, here's what I know for certain. If you've spent the last decade consuming media predictions about Trump's imminent demise, you haven't been receiving information. You've been receiving a product. The product makes you feel like accountability is coming. The product gives you permission to feel ok, even as things get worse. The product lets you believe that someone, somewhere, is handling this. No one is handling this. No one is coming to save us. The people who told you the walls were closing in are still making the same predictions, in the same confident tones. They will collect their paychecks whether they're right or wrong. They face no consequences for failure because failure is not a bug in their business model. We're the only ones who face consequences. And we're the only ones who can change anything. If you dig through The Existentialist Republic Substack you can find all the resources you need to be an effective activist. We also have an intro book to some of these ideas, if you want to support our publication and have an organized resource, you can find it by clicking on the text below. |
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