Donald Trump has more than seven months under his belt in his second term as president. For six of those months, the President’s supporters regularly threw around the term “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” Anyone with a criticism or uncharitable comment about the President was dismissed as a victim of TDS.
August ended without anyone accusing me of TDS. What gives? I worry—and write-about–Trump more than ever. My theory is that while Trump critics have not changed, the President and his policies—mostly things that he talked about during his campaign that are now the heart of the Trump legacy—are no longer surprises. We once wondered what Trump would do next. Now we know—or think we do.
The second-term Trump, a decade later than when the flamboyant TV personality rode the golden escalator down to the lobby of Trump Tower in 2015 to announce he was running for president, is much different than the first-term edition. The 2015 Trump engaged in a publicity stunt and believed running for president would boost his brand, even if he lost. Some say he never even expected to win, and I agree. That Trump had a few campaign themes—mostly based on hate—but otherwise had no vision for an administration. He hadn’t even figured out how to use the powers of the Presidency to make billions for himself and his family.
Since 2015, Trump has ceased to be the publicity hound who demanded a cameo in Home Alone 2 as a condition of allowing a scene to be filmed in the Plaza Hotel lobby. That was the pre- “I am your retribution Trump” who had not sent a mob to the Capitol to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election to the presidency. That Trump had not been found guilty on 34 felony counts for business fraud or defamation and was called a rapist by a judge in the E. Jean Carroll case. And so on.
Fast forward to 2025. Trump implausibly won the presidency despite his impeachments, convictions, indictments, and a track record of creating chaos and cuddling up to Vladimir Putin. The public bought into Trump’s message of hate. Democrats, America haters that they are, were out to wreck America, Trump said. Their weapons were DEI, environmental regulations, medical research, foreign aid, and immigration policies. One Trumper told me in 2022, after assuring me that he was not a racist, that Joe Biden would not be happy until everyone who worked for the federal government was Black.
Many of us tired of Trump before voting against him in 2024. There were 75,017,613 of us. There was no Trump landslide in the election. No Trump mandate to remake the federal government. And certainly nothing to justify suspending basic civil rights and launching an assault on democracy.
Criticism of Trump 2.0 largely took the form of condemning the Heritage Foundation owner’s manual, labeled Project 2025, created in the belief that if Trump won the presidency, he needed a set of ideas (other than just retribution, racism, and self-enrichment) to guide his second term. Trump of course, denied that was the case. He even claimed, plausibly, that he hadn’t read Project 2025, but then selected Russell Vought, a principal author of Project 2025, to head the Office of Management and Budget. Vought is the man behind 350,000 federal workers being fired or forced out of their jobs.
Trumpers today imply that “Trump-hating” is based on his sleezy personality, his lying, his cheating at golf, his greed, and his penchant for name-calling. “What about his policies?” they ask. I answer that Trump’s second-term policies are worse than the President’s smell. Whatever caused the stench that former Representative Adam Kinzinger detected when he met Trump cannot be worse than the odor coming from tariffs that are already driving up prices and immigration policies that will create a labor shortage that will surely boost inflation. Or from the miasma of Alligator Alcatraz and the denial of due process to ICE-arrested deportees.
Trump Fatigue is about weariness of both Trump and his handiwork—the mess he is creating that will take generations to clean up.
One of the signs of Trump Fatigue in August included reports last week that the increasingly exhausted-looking Trump had died. They pointed to the absence of public scheduled events for several days, a nasty bruise on Trump’s hand, and those swollen ankles. Some also pointed to the deterioration in Trump’s golf game. He let himself get videoed cheating several times—in one case, whiffing (swinging and missing the ball altogether). Winners of dozens of golf championships, such as Trump, usually are not whiffers.
I have also read recently—in news sources that Karoline Leavitt would condemn as fake news—that Trump shows signs of senility and insanity by posting dozens of rants at 2 a.m.on his social media site. Yes, the President of the United States studied Seth Meyers’ ratings and is outraged that his contract was renewed.
I could write about the gold in the Oval Office, the UFC cage match scheduled to be held on the White House lawn on July 4, 2026, and plans for another massive military parade, this one featuring the Navy, to be held on Trump’s 80th birthday. But it’s not necessary.
All these things, and more, are outrageous, but are now expected. If Trump were to announce tomorrow that he was “eliminating” the Department of State and painting the White House green (his favorite color), I would shrug my shoulders. I have Trump Fatigue. And people are not talking about TDS anymore because commenting on Trump, the motley cast of misfits he has assembled as an administration, and his destructive policies are starting to raise questions for more of us, including hard-core Trumpers.
Trump Derangement Syndrome, I think, is dead, but maybe that’s just my TDS. I deny that but fess up to suffering from Trump Fatigue. And if you remain a Trump supporter, watch out, it’s contagious.
J.E. Dean writes on politics, government but, too frequently, on President Trump. A former counsel on Capitol Hill and public affairs consultant, Dean also writes for Dean’s Issues & Insights on Substack. He suffers from Trump Fatigue, but hopes the 2026 mid-term elections will provide some relief.
Jim Bachman says
We are beyod the absurd phase and now at the stage of military commanders accepting and carrying out likely illegal orders. I never thought I’d see that.