特朗普接连失利，怒火升至沸点

Trump’s frustration hits a boiling point with loss after loss

2026-09-16T18:39:41.699Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/16/politics/trump-losses-kennedy-center

Donald Trump is boiling with frustration after a spate of political blows weakened his presumption of dominance in Washington and abroad.

It’s been one of those tough weeks that presidents sometimes suffer, when multiple priorities seem to unravel all at once.

The Supreme Court’s decision to block Trump’s plan to restrict mail-in voting ahead of the midterms left him fuming at his first-term appointees on the top bench, whom he slammed as “a shell” of their former selves.

A lower court again frustrated Trump’s bid to renovate the Kennedy Center. The drama over the arts citadel, which Trump now plans to shut down, is most damaging because it’s an unflattering character reveal. Everyone knows this is really about him trying to muscle his own name onto the living memorial to an assassinated president.

The president’s authority took another dent Tuesday when the GOP-led House voted to require him to end his war with Iran, as three more Republicans swelled the list of party heretics to seven.

Trump’s big midterm offer of a $5,000 check for every American if Republicans win in November, meanwhile, looks dead in the water after Capitol Hill GOPers distanced themselves from the idea. And Speaker Mike Johnson, a close Trump ally, chose to send House lawmakers home Wednesday — a day earlier than planned — to avoid a potentially embarrassing vote on whether to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Wednesday brought another implied rebuke to Trump when the Federal Reserve, under Trump’s handpicked new Chair Kevin Warsh, raised interest rates for the first time since July 2023 in a sign of central bank independence. Trump has spent months demanding large cuts to the cost of borrowing, ignoring the specter of rising inflation that his trade and war policies exacerbated.

Trump’s vision of unchallenged US power abroad is also being undermined.

In a stunning development, Canada, a third of the mighty North American trading bloc, was just offered associate membership in another group, the European Union, as it seeks new friends following Trump’s sovereignty threats and tariff attacks.

And Trump’s waffling over when the Iran war will end can’t cover up a worsening situation. Tehran-backed Houthi rebels just seized land in and around the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, potentially giving them leverage over another critical oil exporting route while the US is still struggling to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

The president’s cascade of misfortunes this week collectively point to more than the typical political dings for second-term presidents.

Each arises from a big, risky Trump bet and an apparently over-optimistic assessment of his own personal and political power.

He bitterly rebuked Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett for appearing to be part of the majority that blocked his bid to sow chaos over postal ballots ahead of the midterms. “These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. His critique is revealing because it shows a belief that his appointees would adjudicate the law in a way that repaid a personal debt to the president.

Democrats gripe about a Supreme Court that has often shared Trump’s vision of expansive executive authority. But at times, these three justices have also reined in Trump’s power. These are turbulent times, but it shouldn’t be surprising when Supreme Court justices uphold the Constitution, which gives control of elections to the states. Their lifetime tenure also means they’ll be forging their own legacies long after Trump leaves office.

Trump’s reaction to the Fed’s rate hike will be closely watched. The president picked Warsh with high expectations after spending months hounding his predecessor Jerome Powell for multiple rate cuts.

Trump has perhaps done more than any other president to erode the constraints on executive power imposed by the Constitution and custom. He has found particular success, for instance, in his evisceration of parts of the federal government by acting with shock and awe to outpace initial court action.

But the Kennedy Center farce, the mail-in voting decision and Fed independence are important indicators. They show that even faced with a relentless president, some institutions of government are standing firm.

Trump has dominated the Republican Party for a decade. But his inability to maintain unanimous support over a constitutionally questionable war; his failure to browbeat the Senate into passing his voter registration bill; and lawmakers’ coolness to his $5,000 giveaway idea suggest cracks are emerging in his power base.

Canada’s overtures to the EU represent an extraordinary geopolitical shock. The second Trump administration made US hegemony over the Western Hemisphere an article of faith. But the country’s closet geographical and cultural ally is seeking a highly symbolic break with its “America First” neighbor, a sign it now feels more politically and morally aligned with Europe.

It’s unclear what associate membership of the EU means and how it would alter Canada’s huge trade relationship with the US if the current tariff war ends. But it’s clear Trump’s “51st state” threats led Ottawa to conclude it cannot depend on Washington even when Trump leaves office. A weaker North American trade relationship and fractured alliance system will ultimately weaken Washington’s ability to project unified Western power.

Equally, the Iran conflict is chipping away at the administration’s conceit that the US is so powerful it can do exactly as it wants.

The president can’t say whether the war will end before or after the midterms. Iran’s armed forces might be crushed and its economy in free fall. But Tehran’s revolutionary regime is as entrenched as ever nearly eight months into a war in which it defied a superpower.

So how will Trump’s week of big reversals alter his political position, play into the midterms and set the tone for whatever new balance of Washington power emerges from election season?

One obvious takeaway is that political gravity may be reasserting itself. The Iran war defections show that Trump is not immune from the ritual of endangered lawmakers seeking distance from an unpopular president.

“Where we agree with the president, we’re going to fight with him. Where we disagree with the president on things like beef, on tariffs, on the current state of how operations are working in Iran, we’re going to call him out and have a conversation on that,” Iowa Rep. Zach Nunn, who voted for an end to the war Tuesday, told CNN’s Manu Raju.

This is a bad midterm omen. Nunn is obviously reacting to voter sentiment in a solid Trump state. His plight suggests the Republican foundation is weakening.

Trump’s susceptibility to ordinary political forces is significant because the vibe last year was that he was all but unstoppable; that he had obliterated every guardrail and could compel elite law firms, corporate executives and university presidents to genuflect.

This is not to say that Trump is an exhausted force. He’s long defied pundits predicting his political demise. He engineered the greatest comeback in American history less than two years ago.

And if Democrats win back the House or the Senate in the midterms, Trump could paradoxically find new political definition. Any Democratic overreach during a promised blizzard of probes into the White House or an ideological dive left would offer an opening to a political street fighter who is most effective with a foil.

But a week in which power has tangibly ebbed from a president with an approval rating in the 30s can’t be ignored.

Once an aura of invincibility fades, political authority can erode quickly.

This headline has been updated.