Trump causes perfect storm of problems as tide turns in Iran war: analysis

The perfect storm of problems for Donald Trump has come to a head, with an analyst saying the president's shortcomings are a source of serious concern.

Paul Waldman believes that, had the administration charted success on other issues, namely the cost-of-living crisis, then there would be a slightly more positive outlook on the war with Iran. But because Trump and his team failed to consolidate their efforts on the economy, rhetoric around the strikes on Iran has shifted negatively, and fast.

Speaking to Greg Sargent of The New Republic, Waldman claimed there is little to no chance that Trump will sway the public into backing the Iran war.

He said, "If he was showing himself to be competent in other areas—if the economy was going great and all kinds of other things were working out really well—I think that there would be a lot of Americans who would give him the benefit of the doubt, who might say, I’m not too sure about this, but he seems to know what he’s doing, so for now I won’t object.

"But when so many other things are going so poorly, and immediately you see all these ill effects—especially gas prices, which are unavoidable, you see them on every corner—at that point, nobody is ready to give them the benefit of the doubt.The people who are die-hard Trump supporters are with him.

"But the rest of the public is basically saying, I need a really good attempt at persuasion, I really need a really good argument to know why this is something that I should be supportive of.

"And he certainly hasn’t given them that, and they don’t have any reason to give him the benefit of the doubt. It’s hard to see that the support he has now for this war—about 40 percent—is going to get any higher. If anything, it’s probably going to go down as time goes on."

Podcast host Sargent suggested the low polling numbers had even cost Trump some of his dedicated MAGA voters.

He said, "It’s really kind of down at 38, 37 in some polls, and that’s sort of his floor number, that hard, molten core of MAGA—that 37, 38 percent. And that’s what he’s got right now. And this is just getting started."