EDITORIAL: No one will be able to save Trump from himself this time

When Loyalists Start to Back Away

Donald Trump’s inner circle has never been homogeneous. It was built in successive layers, blending longtime loyalists, last-minute opportunists, sincere ideologues, and pure careerists. This motley crew functioned for a long time because the president knew how to play off internal rivalries, alternating between spectacular promotions and humiliating firings. But this mechanism, which required a certain political finesse, is now showing its limits. Several key figures from the first year of his second term have left the administration, either through quiet resignations or abrupt dismissals. Their replacements, often less experienced, are struggling to assert their authority within federal agencies. The result is an increasingly fragmented presidential bureaucracy, where orders contradict one another, memos go missing, and decisions are made in a rush without any real consultation.

Some observers, including some of the president’s longtime supporters, are beginning to speak openly of institutional chaos. Comparisons to the final weeks of the Nixon administration in the summer of 1974 are resurfacing in several conservative editorials. Of course, the contexts are different. Trump is not facing a congressional investigation on the scale of Watergate, and his electoral base remains solid. But the sense of being boxed in is comparable. The president is increasingly relying on a small circle of ultra-loyal advisors, who no longer dare to present him with conflicting information. Morning briefings, once fueled by multidisciplinary analyses, now boil down to summaries of favorable media coverage. The disconnect between the president’s perception and the reality of the world is becoming staggering. And it is precisely in these moments of disconnect that the worst decisions are made, because they are based on a mental map that no longer exists.

Tech Billionaires Packing Their Bags

The spectacular alliance between Donald Trump and some of the richest men on the planet, forged during the 2024 presidential campaign, seemed indestructible. It is no longer so. Several major Silicon Valley figures who had publicly supported the president’s re-election are now distancing themselves, some discreetly, others publicly. There are many reasons for this. The trade wars launched against China, Europe, and Mexico are taking a heavy toll on the tech giants’ supply chains. Restrictive immigration policies are depriving their companies of essential talent. Repeated attacks on American universities are undermining the pool of scientific research on which their innovations depend. And above all, the prospect of a major military confrontation in the Middle East terrifies executives who have built their fortunes on globalization and the stability of financial markets.

This gradual defection of the economic elites has a considerable political impact. It deprives the president of part of his narrative legitimacy. Trump had presented himself as the man capable of reconciling the white working class and the captains of the tech industry, as the bridge between peripheral America and innovative America. This unlikely synthesis was his political masterpiece. Its collapse leaves the president facing a diminished coalition, based almost exclusively on identity-driven mobilization and cultural resentment. Such a coalition may win elections, but it is not enough to govern a country as complex as the United States, much less to manage a major international crisis. The president finds himself alone with his obsessions, and the forces that might have tempered him have deserted the battlefield.

I think back to those images from January 2025, when the CEOs of the world’s largest companies were jostling for front-row seats at the inauguration. How many of them still pick up the phone today? How many remain out of self-interest, how many out of fear, and how many out of conviction? History will show that the truly courageous are not those who shout the loudest, but those who leave when it would have been more profitable to stay.

Markets That Sense a Storm Before It Breaks

Financial markets possess a collective intuition that often surpasses the insight of political leaders. In recent weeks, several subtle signals have revealed growing nervousness. Risk premiums on sovereign bonds from oil-exporting countries are rising. Crude oil futures are showing unusual volatility. Hedge funds are quietly building up defensive positions. The dollar, despite presidential rhetoric portraying it as invincible, is showing signs of weakness against the euro and the yen. Asian central banks are diversifying their reserves by accelerating their gold purchases, reaching levels not seen since the 1970s. All these indicators tell the same story: economic actors are anticipating a major crisis and quietly preparing for it, while the U.S. administration continues to insist that everything is fine.

International trade is already suffering from the tariff decisions made since February 2025. U.S. agricultural exports to China have plummeted by more than forty percent. German automakers have announced plans to cut production. Taiwanese semiconductor companies are hesitant to confirm their promised investments in the United States. The global economic fabric, already weakened by pandemics, wars, and energy transitions, is becoming increasingly unable to withstand repeated shocks. A closure of the Strait of Hormuz, even a brief one, would plunge this system into a crisis whose scale would far exceed that of 2008. The most pessimistic economists are already speaking of a possible global depression, with a lasting collapse in trade, soaring unemployment in developed countries, and mass starvation in countries dependent on food imports.

Europe Paralyzed, Asia Anxious, the Global South Abandoned

The European Union is weathering its own political turbulence, amid the rise of extremism, the fragility of the Franco-German partnership, and uncertainties surrounding Ukraine. Brussels lacks both the cohesion and the military resources to directly oppose a U.S. decision. European capitals are stepping up diplomatic efforts, organizing emergency summits, and issuing cautious statements, but their ability to exert real influence on the White House has become marginal. Donald Trump openly scorns European institutions, which he views as parasitic bureaucracies. This stance, long tempered by the diplomatic advisors in his inner circle, is now expressed without restraint. Europeans are watching the crisis unfold with a sense of helplessness reminiscent of the 1930s, when the continent’s democracies stood paralyzed as dangers mounted.

Asia, and particularly China, is observing the situation with a mix of strategic caution and opportunistic calculation. Beijing imports a considerable portion of its energy through the Strait of Hormuz. A major crisis would directly affect its economy, already slowed by its own demographic and real estate challenges. But an American humiliation in the Middle East would bolster China’s international stature and accelerate the de-dollarization of Asian trade. Xi Jinping’s strategy is complex, characterized by overt restraint and discreet preparation. Russia, for its part, sees the crisis as a tremendous opportunity to restore its military prestige, which has been weakened by the operations in Ukraine. The Global South, meanwhile, watches all this with bitterness, aware that it will pay the heaviest price for a crisis of which it is neither the instigator nor the beneficiary.

There is a particular cruelty in seeing how the ego of a single man can drag entire continents into turmoil, the first victims of which will be, as always, the poorest. The Bangladeshi workers whose factories will close. The Ethiopian farmers whose food prices will skyrocket. The Pakistani families whose remittances from the Gulf will dry up. These lives carry no weight in presidential calculations, yet they will be the first to be shattered.

The Psychology of the Last Line of Defense

To understand why Donald Trump cannot save himself from this trajectory, we must examine his deep-seated political psychology. The president has built his entire public life on a single rule: never back down, never admit a mistake, never show the slightest weakness. This personal doctrine worked in the world of New York real estate, in reality TV, in the 2016 presidential campaign, in the management of his first term, in his navigation of legal proceedings, and in his return to the White House. It has forged a political figure of formidable consistency, capable of weathering shocks that would have broken any other leader. But this same doctrine becomes deadly when it collides with a geopolitical reality that demands flexibility, the ability to listen, and the capacity to adjust course.

The central problem is not the president’s intelligence. It lies in his personal value system, where tactical capitulation is tantamount to public humiliation, where admitting that sanctions have not produced the expected effect would amount to acknowledging a mistake, and where genuinely negotiating with Tehran would betray years of campaign promises. Every U.S. president has, at one time or another, had to adjust his policy stance in the face of conflicting realities. Trump is psychologically incapable of doing so. He prefers to double down, escalate threats, and increase pressure, in the hope that his adversary will give in before he does. This strategy may work against a vulnerable trading partner, a dependent ally, or a fragile political opponent. It is suicidal when faced with a theocratic regime that has placed resistance to America at the heart of its founding identity since 1979.

The Absence of Adults in the Room

During Donald Trump’s first term, several senior officials served as a buffer against the most dangerous decisions. Jim Mattis at the Pentagon, Rex Tillerson at the State Department, John Kelly at the White House, and even, to a certain extent, Vice President Mike Pence. These men, despite their limitations and compromises, had at times blocked, slowed down, or redirected particularly dangerous presidential impulses. The second term was deliberately structured to avoid this dynamic. All checks and balances were dismantled. Appointments were made based on criteria of absolute loyalty, systematically sidelining anyone who might have expressed reservations. The result is an administration where no one dares to contradict the leader, where internal checks and balances have been methodically eliminated.

This situation creates a phenomenon that political scientists call the “reverse information cascade.” Advisors, knowing that the president does not tolerate contradictory analyses, present their briefings with a favorable bias. Federal agencies filter information to align with the president’s preconceptions. Ambassadors and intelligence officers censor their own reports for fear of personal reprisals. At the top of the pyramid, the president receives a truncated, embellished view that conforms to his expectations. This pathological dynamic has already produced historic catastrophes. It is in the process of producing the next one. And the tragedy of the situation is that those who could still sound the alarm—out of patriotic duty or moral conscience—know that their efforts would be futile, perhaps even counterproductive. The system has closed in on itself.

A Fragmented and Demoralized Opposition

Faced with the excesses of Trump’s second term, the Democratic Party should have served as a “conservative watchdog” in the noble sense of the term—that is, defending institutions and constitutional checks and balances. But the Democratic opposition, drained by its defeat in November 2024 and torn apart by internal conflicts between progressives and centrists, is struggling to present a credible alternative. The party’s traditional heavyweights, weighed down by their age or their association with recent defeats, no longer have the legitimacy needed to unite the party. The new faces—younger and more diverse—still lack experience and national recognition. The result is a political cacophony in which every Democratic senator, representative, and governor pursues their own strategy without any real coordination.

This fragmentation directly benefits the presidential administration, which can escalate its transgressions without fear of a unified response. Democratic congressional committees—where they still exist following redistricting—struggle to push through an investigative agenda capable of mobilizing public opinion. Progressive media outlets, economically weakened by years of polarization and declining advertising revenue, no longer have the resources for in-depth investigations. Democratic civil society—unions, associations, and environmental movements—is undergoing a period of disorganization following massive funding cuts enacted by the Republican-controlled Congress. All of this creates a political landscape in which traditional checks and balances still exist in name but no longer function effectively. Presidential isolation is therefore not merely internal to the administration; it is also systemic and structural, linked to a broader collapse of democratic regulatory mechanisms.

The Risk of Soft Authoritarianism Becoming Entrenched

Several political analysts, including historians specializing in authoritarian transitions, have been warning for months about a phenomenon deeper than the president’s personality alone. The United States is sliding, slowly but surely, toward a form of institutional authoritarianism that does not call itself by that name. Not a classic dictatorship with a military coup or the suspension of the Constitution. Something more subtle and enduring: a systematic weakening of the independent press, a profound politicization of the federal administration, judicial appointments based on political loyalty, and the harassment of local countervailing powers through administrative and financial means.

This drift, comparable to what Hungary experienced under Viktor Orbán, Turkey under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, or India under Narendra Modi, is gradually transforming liberal democracies into hybrid regimes where elections continue to exist but where the conditions of political competition are systematically skewed. In this context, a major international crisis such as the one looming around the Strait of Hormuz becomes a powerful catalyst. A state of emergency allows for the suspension of rights, the censorship of the media, and the arrest of opponents in the name of national security. Donald Trump does not need to orchestrate a crisis to capitalize on it politically. All he needs to do is let the crisis he himself created unfold, then reap the authoritarian benefits of collective fear. This logic is one of the most disturbing aspects of the present moment, because it suggests that the president’s inability to save himself may not be a glitch, but rather a feature of the system he helped build.

For a long time, I believed that American democracy was indestructible, protected by its checks and balances, by its traditions, and by its immense civic vitality. I am less convinced of that today. Not because the institutions have disappeared, but because they continue to function formally while their substance evaporates. It is that substance that I miss the most when I look at Washington in the spring of 2026.

The Scenario of Uncontrolled Escalation

The most worrying scenario—and, unfortunately, the most likely one according to several European intelligence analysts—is that of uncontrolled escalation in the coming weeks. Tehran, economically cornered, could decide to test U.S. resolve by carrying out a limited but spectacular operation: an attack on a commercial vessel, the seizure of a Western oil tanker, or a visible military movement toward the strait. This calculated provocation would seek less to actually close the strait than to demonstrate Iran’s ability to do so, in the hope of securing diplomatic concessions. But this maneuver presupposes, on the American side, a president capable of a measured response. Yet Donald Trump operates on a mode of systematic escalation. An Iranian provocation would likely trigger a massive American retaliation, which in turn would push Tehran to take more radical action, and so on until an open confrontation ensues.

In this scenario, the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz would occur without either side having truly chosen it. It would result from an accumulation of automatic reactions and diplomatic and military chain reactions that no one really controls. This is how major geopolitical catastrophes generally occur—through incremental escalation rather than a clear decision. Historians of World War I have extensively documented this mechanism, in which reasonable leaders found themselves triggering a conflict that none of them wanted, simply because each believed the other would back down at the last moment. This logic could repeat itself in 2026, with potentially even more serious consequences, given economic globalization and nuclear proliferation.

The Scenario of a Last-Minute Negotiated Withdrawal

An alternative scenario—less likely but still possible—would be a last-minute de-escalation, driven by joint pressure from financial markets, European and Asian allies, and a few still-influential figures within the Republican Party. This scenario would require Donald Trump to agree, in one form or another, to initiate discreet negotiations with Tehran. Several potential mediators could facilitate this opening: the Sultan of Oman, who historically has direct channels with both capitals; the Emir of Qatar, who has already played this role during previous episodes of tension; or even Turkey, whose relations with the Trump administration have recently warmed. Such negotiations, if successful, would likely lead to a partial easing of U.S. sanctions in exchange for a freeze on Iran’s nuclear program and a guarantee of free passage through the strait.

But this scenario faces several structural obstacles. First, the presidential mindset, as already mentioned, makes it difficult to implicitly acknowledge any strategic error. Second, the political ecosystem surrounding Trump—composed of staunch anti-Iranian ideologues—would fiercely resist any de-escalation. Third, the regime in Tehran itself—divided between hawks and pragmatists—may not be able to offer sufficient guarantees to make the agreement politically palatable to Washington. Fourth, the U.S. electoral calendar, with midterm elections on the horizon, encourages a show of toughness rather than diplomatic flexibility. For all these reasons, the scenario of a negotiated exit—though the most desirable from the perspective of global stability—remains unlikely under current political conditions. There is hope, but it is slim.

A historic responsibility that extends beyond the president as an individual

History will judge the political era we are currently living through harshly. It will judge Donald Trump, of course, for his inability to gauge the consequences of his own decisions, for his chronic refusal to listen to expert advice, and for turning U.S. foreign policy into a personal spectacle. But it will also judge—and perhaps even more harshly—all those who could have reined in this downward spiral but chose not to. The Republican senators who confirmed all the controversial nominations. The federal judges who upheld the most questionable executive orders. The business leaders who wrote checks to ensure their own tax peace of mind. The media commentators who normalized the unacceptable in the name of journalistic objectivity. Above all, the voters who granted a second term to a man whose first term had already demonstrated how dangerous he was.

This collective responsibility does not absolve the president of his individual responsibility. But it puts the unfolding drama into perspective. Donald Trump did not fall from the sky. He is the product of a society that has lost faith in its traditional elites, of an economy that has abandoned entire regions, of an educational system that has failed to instill democratic values, and of a political culture that has replaced debate with spectacle. The Strait of Hormuz is merely the acute symptom of a chronic illness that has been eating away at Western democracies for decades. Treating this symptom will not be enough. One day, after this crisis, after the likely collapse, after the damage has been assessed, we will have to patiently rebuild the foundations of a democracy capable of producing reasonable leaders and effective checks and balances. This reconstruction will take time. It will require sacrifices. It will demand a collective clarity of thought that we are not yet certain we are capable of.

I end this text with a strange feeling, a mixture of restrained anger and deep weariness. I would have liked to write something else. I would have liked to describe a sudden awakening, a moment of realization, a return to reason. But I see nothing of the sort on the horizon. I see only a lone man in the Oval Office, surrounded by silent courtiers, convinced that he can still turn everything to his advantage. And I see, in the distance, the narrow waters of the Strait of Hormuz, beneath a sky that is slowly filling with clouds. No one will be able to save him from himself this time. And we will realize it too late.

Signed, Jacques Pj Provost, columnist