Midterms in the USA | From imposter to traitor

Poor Orange, she can't really help it. Photo: unsplash/charlesdeluvio US President Donald Trump sees himself as the greatest every day - but just as often he is betrayed and sold out. The 80-year-old recently complained about not having received the Nobel Peace Prize again. The prize was “forever discredited by a handful of radical ideologists (…).” He told the prize committee in Oslo: A disgrace for Norway and those people “who made such a shameful and embarrassing decision.” Trump, as he sings and laughs: pompous, tearful and seeking revenge.

This is also how he appeared in the election campaign, which will culminate next Tuesday in the so-called midterms, the mid-term election between two presidential races. The entire 435-member House of Representatives and 35 senators from the 100-member Senate are up for re-election. But not the president. It won't be about him again until 2028. Even then, however, without Trump, since presidents are not allowed to run again after two terms of service since a constitutional amendment from 1951.

But even though Trump is not on the ballot, the midterms will deliver a verdict on him. A look at him also shows something new: On the one hand, the negative balance of his presidency is becoming more solidified, and at the same time, the man-catcher is now also losing appeal to hard MAGA (Make America Great Again) supporters. Donald Trump is on the threshold from being adored to being laughed at.

The choice comes down to cost of living. When he took office for the second time almost two years ago, Trump promised two things: to lower consumer prices and not to involve the United States in "unnecessary foreign wars." Today, 95 percent see their country in an “affordability crisis,” i.e. the difficulty of making ends meet. A majority of citizens under 45 believe that their chance of sharing in the “American Dream” is smaller than that of their parents. They also see the unbridled advance of AI as a central reason for their worries about the future.

When looking for the reasons, many end up with the president: his manically imposed, often collected and linked to reimbursement obligations punitive tariffs against proven trading partners, his crusade against renewable energies, and especially the Iran war he started with consequences that are still difficult to control and the associated erosion of power in the USA are blamed on him.

Trump, as he sings and laughs: pompous, tearful and seeking revenge.

At the end of August, national debt exceeded $40 trillion. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the Treasury Department now has to service $3 billion in interest payments every day. The debt interest burden is therefore the third largest expenditure item in the US budget after healthcare and pension insurance - even ahead of the Pentagon, whose military budget the President wants to increase from 1 to 1.5 trillion dollars.

The cost increases do not follow a natural disaster. They go back to decisions that Trump made, often incompetently but always autocratically. The long-term costs exacerbate the “affordability crisis” of citizens and the crisis of the superpower USA. This is already evident in the Iran war. While at the beginning of the century Washington boasted that it could wage two regional wars at the same time, the Iran conflict exposes American overextension of power. Yes, a key finding for 2026 is that the two superpowers of the Cold War, the USA and the Soviet Union (Russia), are failing to defeat them militarily in their wars against Iran and Ukraine. Great powers reach their limits, especially when their leaders are gamblers like Trump and neo-imperialists like Putin.

The midterms will be shaped by Trump's treasonous disregard for campaign promises. Many voters resent his escapades: his internal approach to transforming the USA into a dictatorship and expanding presidential power. The immigration police raids on people who keep the economy running. His persecution of political opponents, the intimidation of large cultural institutions, the corrupt self-enrichment by himself and his family. To the outside world, his hunger for Greenland. His obsession with incorporating decent neighbors like Canada. His lustful sabotage of the transatlantic alliance and his general desire to destroy the UN order. His war against Iran, the attack on Venezuela and the renewed blockade of Cuba - all of these are violations of the law and cost factors, beyond the shocking conditions in these countries.

The plot with President Putin to the detriment of Ukraine is a particularly serious case of Trumpian villainy. And proof of how much he has become Putin's puppet, while strategically he can't hold a candle to the warmonger in Moscow.

Essentially, Trump has switched sides. The USA is buying Russian diesel again, and the White House has accepted the Russia sanctions passed by Congress. It throttled Starlink and Starshield, putting Ukraine's defense capability in acute danger. US historian Phillips O'Brien says Trump now feels free to be what he always wanted to be, "Putin's best friend." This only leads to the conclusion: The USA is ruled by a "useful idiot" from Moscow - a high traitor who rewards the aggressor and drives the victim of aggression into capitulation and dictating peace.

This is also one of the more recent Trump findings: Pathological terms are increasing. This in turn is reminiscent of the study “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump”, published by psychiatry professor Dr. Bandy X. Lee of Yale University. It was published in 2017 (a year later in German) during Trump's first presidency and contained observational analyzes from 27 psychiatrists and psychologists.

One of them, clinical psychologist Michael J. Tansey, wrote: “If Trump does indeed suffer from a delusional disorder, then from a clinical perspective they are delusions of a paranoid and megalomaniacal nature. This helps us answer the question of why, during the 2016 presidential campaign and later, he repeatedly and openly expressed his admiration for Kim Jong-un of North Korea, Bashar Al-Assad of Syria, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, and especially Vladimir Putin. There is a remarkable amount of evidence that Donald Trump's wet dreams have to do with absolutist power and tyranny. The unchallenged dictator embodies his dream of demanding veneration, even adoration, and on the other hand, with a mere nod of the head, eliminating all who, in his view, are enemies.

The philosopher Peter Sloterdijk has an addition to this. In his latest book, “The Prince and His Heirs,” which will be published several times in 2026, he examines the question of who the “strong men” of today take as their role models. For Sloterdijk, the simplest information comes from “the reference to the existence of political figures such as Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. The mere fact of their temporarily synchronous presence on the world stage represents a scandal for all those who were convinced that modern societies were learning systems that would eventually outgrow the imperialist defiance.

Sloterdijk is equally concerned with his finding that "wild celebrity" is now the stuff "from which the candidates for the upper pool of the power axis are made - this is not shown more clearly in any figure of the immediate present than in Donald Trump." One would never say about him that “he is growing beyond anything – it is more likely that he is falling out of character. According to his abilities and inclinations, he is not a politician, more of a dealer, and most of all a clown who plays the dictator. Above all, he remained an adolescent who discovered late that the state can be a toy with some potential for amusement. But even if the state is being played badly by it, one should be careful not to draw conclusions from the size of the toy that the player is gigantic."

The latter is likely to become more visible from election Tuesday, especially if the lesson for the president is clear. He could raise allegations of election fraud again and generally make them even more baseless. He could experience withdrawal movements from the MAGA camp that don't stop at the White House. It seems almost certain: the time when Donald Trump, demanding applause, enjoyed himself at the expense of friends and foes is coming to an end with the midterms.

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