Trump Down, Not Out

Between Trump’s visit to Beijing and the stalled peace talks, the world’s attention has shifted away from the Middle East for the moment. Whether full-scale war will resume, one side will blink first or the current impasse will drag on indefinitely is anybody’s guess. After all, Trump pulled a bait and switch to get the ceasefire in the first place, declaring Iran’s peace plan “workable,” only to reject it once everyone got to the table. He can threaten to wipe out an entire civilization in the morning and agree to pause the fighting to discuss terms favorable to that civilization later the same day. The ceasefire let U.S. forces get out of a tight spot. They had no answer to Iran’s drones or the IRGC’s control of traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. Since then, the U.S. military has begun rebuilding its defenses and enforcing a blockade of Iranian ports, while Israel keeps bombing South Lebanon. Clearly, Trump is licking his wounds, but he has not yet thrown in the towel on the war.

If anything, Trump is taking even bigger hits on the home front. The very costly and indecisive war in Iran has triggered economic shock waves across the country. While the stock market is roaring after early war jitters, inflation has caught fire too. In particular, energy costs are climbing rapidly. The alarm bells are ringing loudly in Republican quarters: Trump’s polling numbers are plumbing new depths, the economic picture is darkening and the midterms are fast approaching.

At this point, many working-class Trump voters are second-guessing their support. He promised to end inflation and “forever wars,” but now he is fanning the flames of both. Between rising gas prices and the $1.5 trillion military budget request to replenish the country’s spent missile stockpile, workers are seeing red. He can blame four years of Sleepy Joe for U.S. decline all he wants, but Trump still has a lot of explaining to do. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson are not going to let people forget that. The cracks in MAGA are deepening by the day, and the growing likelihood of a blue rout in November could further shake things up.

Absent some unforeseen development, Congress will almost certainly flip in November. In that event, Trump will have a somewhat less free hand than he does now. But that distinct possibility is not an argument for Democratic Party “lesser evilism.” Workers have no more reason to flock to the polls to punch the Democratic ticket this time around than in 2024 or any previous election. Even without a Congressional majority, Trump would retain the full powers of the imperial presidency. Very little of the damage done by his second administration has depended on Capitol Hill. Working people should aspire to finish Trump off while he is down, not build up a toothless opposition that leaves the job undone.

For the last 16 months, the Democrats have sometimes thundered against Trump, but they have done nothing serious to try to knock him down to size. This is not going to change with Democratic control of Congress. In the case of Iran, the Democrats no less than the Republicans want to bring the regime to heel and put the country fully under the U.S. boot. They criticize the war, but mainly on the grounds that Trump lacks clear aims and they were not consulted beforehand. Everybody knows the war powers resolution was never going anywhere, and it still won’t be after November—a two-thirds majority is required in both chambers of Congress to override a presidential veto.

People are actively talking about Trump’s apparent self-destruction. But he is not yesterday’s polished statesman concerned about his credibility. It must not be forgotten that he is an entirely different breed of politician: a reactionary brute who resorts to raw force to ensure submission to the U.S. ruling class. His methods are in sync with the current needs of the country’s elite, who will do nearly anything to shore up their position, even if it means taking everybody else down while trying.

To this end, Trump’s offensive might tack from one front to another, or set aside one weapon that misfires in order to pick up another. He might even be throttling it back, for now. But it would be a grave error to view any of this as an enduring defeat. Iran declared victory in the 12-day war in 2025, only for Trump to wreak substantially greater havoc in the country and kill many of its leaders less than a year later. The U.S. empire must be met with blows that will prevent it from just picking up where it left off a little bit down the road.

Delivering such blows will be possible only if the working class is set in motion. Leftists cite the workers’ antiwar sentiment as a major pressure on Trump. In doing so, though, they disappear the fact that actual antiwar protest has been minuscule outside of No Kings rallies. In breathless terms, Left Voice expresses a view shared more widely on the left: “Massive repudiation against the war has taken to the streets through the No Kings demonstrations that explicitly were called under the slogans of ‘No War, No Kings, No ICE’.” Such a take has two fatal flaws. First, the entire purpose of No Kings is to channel repudiation of war into votes for the Democrats. That’s why union bureaucrats have gone to the trouble of organizing contingents at these demos. Second, the “no war” theme, and liberal pacifism more generally, does not represent a real challenge to Trump or the U.S. empire’s standing. Some left populists, like Sanders, denounce the war in strong moral terms to rope discontent back into the Democratic fold.

The left, though, must aim higher than simply cheering antiwar sentiment and building a liberal antiwar movement. Working-class opposition to the war should not only be encouraged, but also directed toward anti-imperialist struggle. To do so, it is necessary to be clear that we have a side with Iran in the war. The objective must not be just to get the U.S. war machine to temporarily pause, but to disrupt its operation so it has no choice other than to stop. Workers have a vested interest in breaking the war machine. The devastation of Iran has created chaos and driven down living standards at home. Pacifist wishes are not going to stop this infernal machine, only real force can do that. Workers mobilizing against the war would further their self-defense and give them a leg up in their other struggles against the attacks of Trump and the Democrats alike.

The U.S. working class must not be lulled into thinking that it would be wise to sit back and wait for Trump to self-destruct or the Democrats to step up to the plate. In their own fashion, this is the game the Democrats are playing. When Trump succeeds, like in Venezuela, so does the U.S. ruling class as a whole; and when he does not, the Democrats pledge to do things differently to achieve the same goals. But the working class does not have the luxury of biding its time. The more this country spirals downward, the deeper the hole workers find themselves in. But if they mobilize with an eye toward contributing to the setbacks and defeats of the U.S. empire, they will in the process be climbing out of that hole on their own initiative and improving their ability to counter the imperialist beast.