Donald Trump is worried that Republicans aren’t as afraid of him as they used to be. Despite his self-billing as a dealmaker, the president has only ever had one tool to control his party: fear. GOP politicians have been afraid of career damage and literal physical harm if they crossed him. Trump is not above reminding elected officials that he has unhinged followers who are known to be violent. But as his approval ratings fall and the 2026 midterm elections inch closer, it seems Republicans are slightly less worried about the president’s wrath.
The first indicator was the House vote on Nov. 18 to release the Epstein files against Trump’s expressed wishes. But the biggest sign that the president’s grip on power is weakening came last week, when a majority of Republicans in the Indiana statehouse struck down a gerrymandering bill Trump had demanded.
As I argued in the latest Standing Room Only newsletter, this context helps explain why Trump responded to the death of beloved director Rob Reiner and his wife Michele with an ugliness that’s shocking — even for this president. Although the Los Angeles Police Department had arrested the couple’s son for the apparent homicide, Trump insinuated on Truth Social that it was one of his own followers who killed the Reiners out of revenge for their anti-Trump activism. He doubled down when asked about it by reporters in the Oval Office on Monday. The message was hard to miss: If you oppose Trump, he wishes you dead.
So far, his escalation doesn’t seem to be intimidating Republicans. Indiana Republicans were subject to an onslaught of death threats and abuse that including text messages sent to the friends of the grandson of one state senator. Most voted against Trump’s gerrymandering bill anyway. While Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., pretended not to have heard Trump’s response to Reiner’s death, as Salon’s Sophia Tesfaye documented, most right-wing media, including Fox News, actually criticized Trump for his behavior.
These are promising signs, but it’s not worth holding your breath waiting for GOP politicians to openly turn on a president who demands absolute loyalty. Instead of public rebellion, most Republicans seem to be engaged in a form of quiet quitting. They won’t go out of their way to resist Trump, but they are losing enthusiasm for defending him. They’re struggling to hide their frustration or their scheming for a post-Trump world. Overall, the posture is one of lying low, waiting for the old man to be gone so they can begin the project of rebuilding the GOP and their own careers in a post-Trump era.
Trump’s own hand-picked officials are losing patience and increasingly venting in spaces they hope, rightly or wrongly, where it won’t get back to their mercurial boss
Trump has three years of his term remaining. But his poor health, mysterious hand bruises, public fatigue, rambling performances, apparent cognitive issues and unusual medical tests like an MRI are clearly stoking speculation that the president is in rapid decline. It’s not just Democrats who are wondering about the prospect of what might happen. Trump’s own hand-picked officials are losing patience and increasingly venting in spaces they hope, rightly or wrongly, where it won’t get back to their mercurial boss, especially as reports suggest he’s isolated and consuming very little media outside of flattering propaganda.
The latest person to let down her guard was Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff who is credited with masterminding Trump’s 2024 win, and who has a reputation for discretion. On Tuesday, Vanity Fair published a profile of Wiles by Chris Whipple, who interviewed her 11 times over the course of 11 months. Wiles admitted to the journalist that Trump “has an alcoholic’s personality” and lamented that the famously immature president keeps demanding political prosecutions of his opponents, even after she tried to limit him to a three-month diet of vengeance. (In remarks Tuesday afternoon, Trump defended Wiles and agreed with her assessment of his personality.) The profile follows an exposé from the Bulwark’s Andrew Egger, who documented how Republican National Committee chair Joe Gruters has been making the rounds on conservative radio, telling listeners “We are facing almost certain defeat” in the upcoming midterm elections and it will be “an absolute disaster.”
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Since the publication of both articles, Wiles and Gruters have gone on the offensive, trying to convince Trump that they never said the stuff they clearly said. Wiles attacked the Vanity Fair profile as a “disingenuously framed hit piece” and claimed there was some “context” missing around her revelations. People who actually read the two-part article — which she knows won’t include either Trump or his sycophants — know this isn’t true. Her comments about the president’s lack of impulse control are given plenty of context and make perfect sense, especially in light of his lies about Reiner’s death. Meanwhile, the RNC Research X account has gone ham on Egger, repeatedly tweeting curse words and calling him names like “scumbag” and worse while falsely accusing him of making up the story. (Egger has the interview recording.)
The dilemma of Wiles and Gruters is a microcosm of the larger paradox facing the GOP. On one hand, Republicans want to plan for a post-Trump future, especially since they don’t know if that will start three years or three days from now. That means trying to signal to political insiders that they aren’t down with Trump’s delusions — that they are instead sane people who are acceptable to hire for plum positions when the old man is gone. This accounts for the interviews in which they position themselves as sane people, unlike their boss.
On the other hand, Trump is still around. Even in his increasingly addled state, sometimes news that his people are talking smack gets back to him — especially since there are other power players in the White House who might enjoy showing such stories to Trump, if it means gaining favor while taking their competitors down a notch.
But it also resembles the way family members of an abusive narcissist tip-toe around him, trying to avoid drawing his ire while waiting for him to either leave or die.
This situation is causing a kind of paralysis throughout the party. Despite Mike Johnson’s continuous proclamations of busyness, the House has barely been functioning. Johnson has shut it down for long periods and has not really held many votes. The main result of rendering Congress into a do-nothing body has been to shift even more power to Trump. This is partially an ideological project, based in the far-right’s vision of a “unitary executive” with dictator levels of power. But it also resembles the way family members of an abusive narcissist tip-toe around him, trying to avoid drawing his ire while waiting for him to either leave or die.
Republican officials have been scared of crossing Trump in no small part because, while he’s wildly unpopular with people who’ve actually met him, the MAGA base has shown a fierce loyalty that he leverages to intimidate the rest of the party into submission. One thing that’s changing, though, is a small but profound shift in how the base themselves are thinking about the president. A recent NBC News poll shows that the number of Republican voters who identify as “MAGA” has declined from 57% in April to only 50% now. It’s notoriously difficult to leave MAGA; most Trump followers have invested so much ego into defending themselves for a decade now. That fact alone makes this polling shift significant, and if the exodus becomes big enough to make it easier for others to exit, it could start to compound.
Certainly, the response of ordinary MAGA loyalists to Trump’s comments about Reiner showed they are losing enthusiasm for defending him with blind loyalty. On Truth Social, even as Republican voters continued to insist they worship the ground Trump walks on, they started to experiment with muted critical language like “ashamed,” “tacky,” “unbecoming” and “distasteful.” Posters on Reddit’s pro-Trump conservative forum expressed exhaustion, openly longing for his presidency to be over. “I’m so sick of crap like this and can’t wait until someone else is in office that knows how not to be a d–k about literally everything,” wrote one person in a typical sentiment.
No one, either in official GOP leadership or in the party’s rank-and-file, is ready to accept responsibility for their role in catapulting Trump back into the White House, and no one should lose sleep hoping they will. The egos that drive people to the far-right don’t allow for that level of self-reflection and change. With that in mind, quiet quitting is the best we can hope for. This is what happened during George W. Bush’s second term: His supporters stopped defending him and dealt with their shame by going silent, and hoping that no one would notice. It’s not satisfying, but it will do.
The loudmouthed Trump worship is one of the tools that MAGA has used to keep its people in line by scaring Republican voters out of expressing doubts. Without that constant bullying, maybe a few will allow themselves to think forbidden thoughts or to ask questions. Trumpism can’t survive even a little scrutiny, so just a little shift could make a big difference.
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