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ANALYSIS: Trump Is Losing Control—and the World Watches as the Ceiling Cracks

Jacques Pj Provost

2026-06-20 17:07:59

Pierre Haski says what others only whisper

In Le Nouvel Obs, Pierre Haski—a columnist not known for jumping to conclusions—writes four words that are worth a hundred-page analysis: “Trump has lost his touch.” He observes that “the well-oiled machine has jammed.” That “a sense is taking hold that the president is not unbeatable.” That feeling is the most dangerous of all. Not because it directly weakens Trump—a man like him thrives on head-on attacks—but because the sense of invincibility was his main fuel. The only asset he ever truly had: the certainty, among both his supporters and his opponents, that he always ends up winning.

That certainty is cracking. We don’t hear it cracking—cracks in concrete are silent—but we can see them if we look closely. Political scientist Larry Sabato, also interviewed by L’Express, maps out the timeline with the precision of a surgeon: “If the current situation persists until September, the Republican candidates will pay a heavy price in the November midterm elections. ” November 2026. Seven months from now. In politics, that’s tomorrow. And in seven months, if the war continues to drag on, if tariffs continue to strangle American families, if the dollar continues to waver—the Republicans will foot the bill for what Trump has squandered through recklessness.

There is something strange about watching the greatest military power in history struggle against a regime it has sanctioned, isolated, and threatened for forty years. Iran is still standing. Not because it is strong—but because we, collectively, have misunderstood what it means to stand tall when you have nothing left to lose.

The Price of the Midterms, or How a War Becomes a Ballot Box

U.S. midterm elections are never really about foreign policy. Americans vote on gas prices, on medical bills, on whether they feel their lives are better or worse than they were four years ago. And yet, long wars have a way of seeping into kitchens and garages. They come in through the price of gas. They come in through the children deployed overseas. They come in through the television showing coffins. In seven months, if Iran is neither defeated nor brought to the negotiating table—if the conflict remains suspended in that uncomfortable space between an impossible victory and an unmentionable defeat—every Republican candidate will carry this conflict like a millstone around their neck.

Trump knows this. His team knows this. Perhaps that is why the president’s statements are becoming increasingly contradictory—a threat one day, an opening the next, an ultimatum that never quite materializes. This is not strategy. It is panic disguised as unpredictability. Panic wears the same disguise as tactics—but it smells different when you get close enough.

Bolloré, or the Hand That Silences Culture

Olivier Nora, Grasset, and Two Hundred Authors Who Are Walking Out

In France, while the international press dissects Trump, another hand is closing—more discreet, more patient, but just as determined. Vincent Bolloré, a 73-year-old billionaire from Brittany, has ousted Olivier Nora from the leadership of Grasset Publishing. Olivier Nora, the publisher who had brought out some of the most important works of contemporary French literature. Ousted. Without ceremony. With the cold efficiency of changing a lock.

The response was immediate, massive, and unprecedented in the world of French publishing. More than 200 authors slammed the door on Grasset and reclaimed the rights to their works. Two hundred voices. Two hundred books. Two hundred contracts. Two hundred acts of resistance in a field that rarely stands united like this. Le Nouvel Obs dedicates its front page to the phenomenon: “Vincent Bolloré, the hijacking of culture.” Not “influence.” Not “impact.” Hijacking. The word for theft. The word for seizure by force.

There is a difference between owning media outlets and controlling narratives. Bolloré has long understood that this difference is illusory. When you control the publishing house, you control what will be read ten years from now. When you control the broadcast channel, you control what will be believed tonight. He has both. And the 2027 presidential election is coming.

Canal+, CNews, Europe 1, Grasset—a map of his hold

Le Nouvel Obs takes stock with the precision of an assessment after a fire: Canal+ in 2015. I-Télé—now CNews—in 2016. Europe 1 in 2021. Plon in 2021. Paris Match in 2022. Le Journal du Dimanche in 2023. And now Grasset. Fayard. Prisma Presse. This is not a collection. It is not asset diversification. It is an infrastructure. An infrastructure capable of producing information, disseminating it, turning it into books and magazines, and repeating it until it resembles reality.

For Le Nouvel Obs, Bolloré is not “an enlightened patron”—he is “a predator, determined to shape public opinion with a political agenda in mind.” And that agenda has a target date: 2027. The French presidential election. Which takes place in twelve months. Twelve months during which every CNews broadcast, every Paris Match editorial, every book published by Grasset—or rejected by Grasset—will help shape the landscape of what the French believe to be true. That’s why two hundred authors walked out. They sensed something. The same thing that Soviet graduates sensed when they kept two notebooks—one official, one real.

France Torn Apart, as Seen from the Outside

Four Irreconcilable Frances — The Swiss Assessment

While France examines its own wounds, the European press is watching France. And what it sees is not reassuring. The Swiss daily Le Temps dissects the French landscape with the precision of an outside observer’s scalpel: a France torn into “four irreconcilable and well-defined parts.” The social-democratic city centers. The conservative provincial middle class. The remote or neglected regions, leaning toward the far right. And the suburbs, on the far left. Four Frances. Four realities. Four vocabularies that no longer understand one another.

This diagnosis is nothing new to those who live in France. But there is something striking about it when it comes from Geneva—that city which observes the workings of others with the precision of a watchmaker. And yet, this fractured France will have to choose a president in twelve months. A president chosen from among candidates who speak to one of these four Frances—rarely to all four at once. A president legitimized by one fraction of the country, contested by the other three. The Fifth Republic has this perverse ability to transform division into government. Until the moment when it can no longer do so.

I read these descriptions from the outside and wonder what Europe sees that we don’t want to see. Four Frances that view one another as strangers. Perhaps the problem isn’t the candidate. Perhaps the problem is France telling itself that it is still one.

Mélenchon through Swedish eyes, the American left through American eyes

Sweden is watching France, too. And the daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter doesn’t mince words when it comes to Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of La France Insoumise. The paper describes him as “an unflappable old reactionary who glorifies his own era and acts as if he still knows everything, better than anyone else.” This portrait—harsh, perhaps excessive, but not entirely inaccurate—says something about how the French left is perceived beyond its borders. Not as a force for change. But as a pose. A figure frozen in the 1970s who believes that conviction alone is enough to replace modernity.

In the United States, The Nation observes, for its part, that progressive voters “seem to yearn for a campaign that combines calls for fundamental reforms with a denunciation of the status quo.” But a joint candidacy seems unlikely. The left has this universal talent—from right to left, from Paris to Washington—of splitting apart at the very moment when unity would be decisive. Meanwhile, Bolloré is building. Trump is rebuilding his positions. And those who oppose him are debating their vocabulary.

What all of this really means, deep down

The Invisible Thread Between Trump, Bolloré, and the Democratic Divide

There is a thread—tenuous, invisible, yet as strong as steel cable—connecting Trump, who is losing his grip on the Middle East; Bolloré, who is tightening his hold on French culture; and the four irreconcilable Frances described by the Swiss press. This thread is called: the collapse of trust in institutions. When institutions no longer provide protection—neither against war, nor against media concentration, nor against social fragmentation—citizens look for shortcuts. Strongmen. Simple narratives. Named enemies.

Trump is a symptom. Bolloré is a symptom. Mélenchon is a symptom. The disease is the void that has opened up between democracies and the people who live in them. This void is being exploited by those who know how to capitalize on anger better than anyone else. And while analysts debate whether Trump is gaining or losing ground—while authors slam the door on Grasset—while the French look at one another without recognizing themselves—this void continues to grow. Silently. Methodically. Like a crack in a dam.

What strikes me, in all of this, is the simultaneity. Trump wavering. Bolloré advancing. French culture being subjected to standardization. This is no coincidence. It’s the same movement, dressed differently depending on the region. Everywhere, someone is trying to decide what others will be allowed to believe. Democracy is, precisely, the opposite gamble.

The hand that wavers, and the hand that tightens

So there are two hands at play in this political week. The wavering hand: Trump’s, who believed that force alone was enough to bend Iran to his will, and who is discovering that certain realities do not bend. And the hand that tightens: that of Bolloré, who has never believed in brute force—he believes in patience, in accumulation, in the slow transformation of what people consider normal. These two hands are not opposed to one another. They are working, each in its own way, toward the same goal: the reduction of the space in which democracies can still breathe freely.

And yet—that “and yet” that must be upheld at all costs—two hundred authors have slammed the door. Columnists are saying aloud what diplomats whisper. American voters are beginning to remember that “unbeatable” is not a permanent state. The cracks are there on both sides. You just have to know where to look for them.

Paul Seixas, 19, and the only good news of the week

A prodigy on two wheels in a world that needs him

Amid a landscape weighed down by wars and cultural battles, Le Parisien Dimanche features a smiling, youthful face on its cover. Paul Seixas, 19, has just won the Flèche Wallonne. On Sunday, he’ll face off against Tadej Pogacar at Liège–Bastogne–Liège—the oldest race in the world of cycling, a 264-kilometer route through the Belgian hills, a course that has shattered established champions and revealed unknown talents. This 19-year-old, with burning legs and a cool head, is perhaps the best metaphor this week could offer.

The newspaper refers to “situational intelligence”—that ability to read a race in real time, to know when to attack and when to conserve energy, when to follow and when to take the lead. Perhaps that, at its core, is the rarest skill in this political moment: situational intelligence. Knowing when reality has changed. Knowing when holding a position costs more than it’s worth. Knowing that some battles aren’t won by force but by reading the situation. Trump doesn’t have it. Bolloré, on the other hand, does—but in the service of a vision that is open to debate.

Paul Seixas will probably lose to Pogacar today. Pogacar is the best cyclist in the world. But Seixas will still be there next year, and the year after that. And one day, he’ll win. There’s something about that certainty—the certainty that youth compensates for a lack of experience with an abundance of future—that I think is worth remembering this week.

What cycling sometimes expresses better than politics

There’s an honesty in cycling that politics can’t afford. You arrive. You set off. You climb. You suffer—thighs burning, lungs bursting, the road stretching endlessly. And you see where you end up. No spin. No crisis management. No tweet explaining why losing was actually a strategic victory. The standings are the standings. The time is the time. The Côte de la Redoute doesn’t lie about who can climb it.

And yet, even in cycling, even in the raw honesty of the stopwatch, what endures isn’t always the strongest rider of the moment. It’s the one who best understands when to conserve energy and when to give it their all. Situational intelligence. The ability to anticipate what’s coming. This is true for a 19-year-old in the Belgian Ardennes. It’s true for democracies trying to figure out whether what they’re going through is a crisis or a transformation. The difference between the two often comes down to what we do in the next seven months.

The Mechanics That Seize Up — Anatomy of a Wobble

When Unpredictability Ceases to Be a Strength

Trump’s strategy has always been based on a simple principle: being unpredictable is cheaper than being consistent. If no one knows what you’re going to do, no one can truly prepare to counter it. This unpredictability worked for years—in business, in American politics, and in the early international negotiations of his first term. It worked because his opponents feared the worst.

But there comes a point when unpredictability backfires on the one who employs it. That moment arrives when allies no longer know who to count on. When the markets can no longer predict what will happen three months down the line. When adversaries realize that behind the unpredictability, there is no plan—just reactivity disguised as strategy. Iran has grasped something that many have been slow to admit: to withstand the unpredictable, one need only be unyielding. The mountain does not move when the wind changes direction.

I remember writing, eighteen months ago, that Trump was the best negotiator of his generation. I stand by that assessment of his approach. But that approach assumes the other side wants a deal. Iran doesn’t want a deal. It wants to survive. These two stances aren’t negotiable—they clash until one gives in. And the one that gives in isn’t always the one you’d expect.

Republicans: Between Loyalty and Electoral Calculations

Within the Republican Party, the calculus is shifting. In a party disciplined by fear of Trump, the question that is never asked aloud is beginning to be whispered in the halls of Congress: How far should we follow a president who is losing his grip? Not out of moral conviction—moral convictions are rare in politics, and the current Republican Party is no temple of them. But out of a calculation of electoral survival. November 2026 is seven months away. Candidates for the midterm elections are starting to look at their local polls. And in those local polls, something has changed.

The combined impact of war, tariffs, and inflation that isn’t coming down as promised—Americans are feeling the effects of this in their mailboxes. Not as geopolitical theory. But as bills. As prices at the gas pump. As interest rates that keep homes out of reach. Foreign policy, as Henry Kissinger said, always comes home in the end. It comes in through the back door, silently, in the form of a household budget that no longer balances.

What the French press isn't reporting yet

The silence in which the next chapter is unfolding

There is something the French press, in its review of this week’s weekly magazines, has not yet clearly articulated. It shows the pieces. It has not yet painted the complete picture. Trump is faltering. Bolloré is advancing. A fractured France. A divided left. A right that waits. And in this space of waiting, in this silence between the end of one equilibrium and the beginning of another—something is being decided. Something that isn’t yet visible in the polls, isn’t yet audible in the debates, but is taking shape.

That something is the question of who will control the narrative of 2027. Bolloré understood before anyone else that elections are fought in people’s minds, that minds are shaped by the media, and that the media are controlled by ownership. It’s a simple equation. Brutally simple. And two hundred authors slamming the door on a publishing house don’t reverse that equation—they reveal its existence.

Freedom of the press is not an abstract value. It is the name we give to the ability to call things as they are—Bolloré as a predator, Trump as erratic, the cracks as real. When that ability shrinks, it’s not the press that suffers first. It’s reality. Because unnamed reality carries on regardless—but no one sees it coming.

And yet, resistance exists

And yet. And yet two hundred authors have said no. And yet American columnists are writing that Trump is losing his grip—in American newspapers, read by Americans, who will vote in seven months. And yet a political scientist named Larry Sabato is saying publicly that if this continues, the price will be steep—which is an academic way of saying that America can correct course through the ballot box.

Democracy is slow. It’s clumsy. It’s noisy and often disappointing. It produces Trumps and Bollorés because it also allows for their emergence. But it also produces columnists who call them out, authors who slam doors, voters who change their minds, and 19-year-old cyclists who beat established champions on hills that don’t lie. This isn’t optimism. It’s a factual observation. Democracies correct themselves. Slowly. Painfully. But they do correct themselves.

The Last Picture of the Week

A cup of tea cooling in the Oval Office

Picture this scene. The Oval Office, Tuesday morning, 9:47 a.m. Donald Trump, 79, is signing something. Or pretending to sign—the distinction is sometimes hard to tell. On his desk, a cup of coffee is getting cold. How long has it been since he looked at the polls without batting an eye? How long has it been since Iran gave in? These questions aren’t asked aloud in this room. Yet they exist, suspended in the air-conditioned air, between the American flags and the portrait of Andrew Jackson.

In Paris, at the same moment, at a major publishing house in the 6th arrondissement, boxes are being packed. Author contracts are piling up on desks. Books that won’t be published here will be published elsewhere. Cultural resistance always looks like this at the beginning: boxes and slamming doors. No barricades. No speeches. Just people deciding that their names, their voices, and their work will not be the tools of an agenda they did not choose.

Perhaps that’s the real question this week. Not “Is Trump losing his grip?”—he’ll either lose it or regain it, and in ten years we’ll know whether November 2026 was a turning point or just a lull. The real question is: Will we spot the cracks in time? Will we name them before they become chasms? Iran is holding firm. Bolloré is moving forward. Two hundred authors are resisting. And as for me, I’m writing. That’s all we can do, on some days.

What the Cracks Portend

A crack in concrete is never urgent the day it appears. It’s too fine, too silent. We walk right past it without noticing. It’s only when it has widened—when moisture has begun to seep in, when frost has pried it open, when the entire structure has begun to shift millimeter by millimeter—that we realize we should have taken action long before.

This week, the French press has reported on several cracks. In relations with the United States. In France’s cultural independence. In the cohesion of democracies in the face of those who undermine them from within. None of these cracks is yet a chasm. They can still be mended. But concrete doesn’t repair itself. And time, for its part, continues to take its toll.

Conclusion

Trump may be losing his grip. Bolloré may be tightening his. French democracy may be preparing for an election under increasingly asymmetrical conditions. And in the Belgian Ardennes, a 19-year-old is cycling toward something that doesn’t yet resemble what it will become.

What unites all these images is the uncertainty of the next seven months. November 2026 in the United States. 2027 in France. In between, a war in the Middle East with no obvious end in sight, a French culture that people are trying to gradually standardize, and citizens who don’t yet quite know what to make of all this information.

The well-oiled machine has jammed. The question isn’t whether it can start up again. The question is who will be at the wheel when it does—and in which direction.

The cup of coffee in the Oval Office is cold now. Someone must have taken it away.

No one said what time.

Signed, Maxime Marquette, columnist