In the early 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy seemed to wield unchecked power. McCarthy was antisemitic, persecuted people he alleged were homosexual, and defended Nazi soldiers who had massacred American prisoners at Malmedy. His political practice was defined by false accusations and Congressional investigation of his political enemies, mostly advocates of left-of-center ideas.
In 1954, his authority was shattered by facts from the mouths of Army counsel Joseph N. Welch and Senator Stuart Symington. They followed the lead of Senator Margaret Chase Smith from Maine, who, after she arrived in 1950, immediately denounced McCarthy’s debasement of the Senate into “a forum of hate and character assassination”. His ignominious downfall forever tainted McCarthy’s name.
McCarthy’s hatchet-man, Roy Cohn fell, too. Despite Donald Trump’s attempt to revive his reputation, Cohn’s could not be worse: Kai Bird and Susan Goldmark personify him as the “American Scoundrel”. McCarthy’s many enthusiastic supporters in both parties, however, including a young Richard Nixon in California, mostly escaped consequences by letting him fall.
Nixon seemed to have left that unpleasant past behind when he became President. But he retained the fantasy ideology about threats from within and a personality defined by vindictiveness. His heartless henchmen, Bob Haldeman and John Erlichman, oversaw the “Enemies List”, in which political opponents mixed with national figures from media and culture. Nixon used his considerable powers to target them for personal political purposes. His use of the petty criminality of the Plumbers to ensure his reelection in 1972 led to his plunge from the White House to pariah.
Haldeman and Erlichman went to jail and then disappeared into private lives of business success. But they too were forever tainted. When Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream put Erlichman in a TV ad in 1987, customers threatened to stop buying their product and the ad was dropped. Public opinion polls over the past 20 years consistently ranked Nixon worst among modern Presidents.
Years into his reign of corruption, lawlessness, greed, and inhumanity, Donald Trump still sits on his golden throne of seemingly unchecked power. His amazing capacity for turning colossal failures into fake news, which then became presidential policy, has created belief in too many Americans. But I see his comeuppance on the horizon. After ruling like a king in 2025, Trump’s power has cracked in 2026. Pointers to his fall from grace are piling up.
Trump has been fighting his conviction for assaulting Jean Carroll since 2023, but the Supreme Court rejected his appeals. Nearly twice as many Americans believe Carroll over Trump. The history of DOGE, which becomes fuller by the day, will be a central element of Trump’s eventual reckoning. Elon Musk’s claims of billions in savings turned out to be false. The government had to pay billions to employees for not working. Musk’s leadership of DOGE led to a collapse in the value of his company Tesla.
The never-ending war against Iran keeps pushing costs of fuel and daily necessities higher without achieving any of Trump’s asserted goals. Incompetence in major policies, such as relations with Canada, and petty issues, like the Reflecting Pool repairs, keep revealing the costs of Trump’s obsessions to America’s standing in the world.
The real details of Trump’s last 21 months in office are entering public consciousness in the first flurry of revelations. Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan used inside sources to explain the workings of his corrupt, incompetent, vindictive, and anti-democratic administration. Carol Leonnig and Aaron C. Davis described the vanquishing of the federal legal administration as Injustice. The careful NY Times columnist Thomas B. Edsall wrote, “President Trump’s corruption is unequaled by any previous resident of the White House.”
The federal descent into violent repression is over for now. ICE and its administrative leaders have pulled back in the face of determined popular resistance. The level of leadership just behind Trump has been decimated. The shared disgrace of Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, and DHS more generally add to the mounting swell of failure and ignominy that is descending on Trump.
Trumps’ comeuppance is foreshadowed in his surging American unpopularity. The flood of pre-midterm polls may threaten our sanity and credulity, but they tell a clear story about how far Trump has fallen in the popular estimation. Republicans will be electoral losers, but by how much? No matter how many seats the Democrats gain, comeuppance will only come when political reality intrudes sufficiently on popular ideological dogma to energize enough Americans to express disgust at Trump’s administration.
As we approach the midterms, resistance to Trump is spreading through American society. Even formerly silent and loyal Republican politicians are speaking up, trying to salvage their threatened careers. Newsweek posted a “list” of Republican lawmakers who have expressed opposition to Trump policies, although it is notable for the half-hearted nature of that opposition.
Trump fears his future. His exhortation to the crowd in Dallas was an unprecedented presidential display of narcissism, dishonesty, and desperation: “I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States, that loves us so much he can’t even breathe . . . I don’t care if I’m registered or not. I’m going to try and cheat like hell, like they do”.
A very different Congress will exert power next year. Federal violence will be harder to organize. The moment for Trump’s next assault on our still mostly free system is soon. Whether he attempts another use of administration for violent unpopular ends may depend on our society’s readiness to stand up against his threats.
After he no longer wields official power, after his henchpeople decide to talk about what they know, after Trump is history, he will live in the dust bin. Neither Natalie Harp nor ALL-CAPS RANTS on Truth Social nor snipers on a tower taller than the Arc de Triomphe can save him now. MAGA is shrinking. Trump slinks into infamy. The facts sank McCarthy and Nixon. Facts will sink Trump. The technical incompetence, endless lies, weird obsessions, and personal corruption will add up to conclusions to be taught in public schools: Donald J. Trump will be ranked among the worst Presidents in 250 years.
History is not kind to bad men. Comeuppance is coming. The only uncertainty is when.
Steve Hochstadt
Boston
