Trump struggles to regain his MAGA mojo amid anemic polls and NFT digital card debacle
Donald Trump is fending off new questions about his political strength after a miserable week of poor polls and his controversial release of digital trading cards.
The former president finds himself entering the end of the year on a low note as his 2024 comeback presidential campaign shows little sign of traction and he appears to have lost at least some of his once-infamous political touch.
He also faces the possibility on Monday that the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by Trump loyalists will recommend criminal charges against him for inciting the riot.
Trump, who announced the launch of his campaign last month, had already failed to respond forcefully to widespread criticism of his role in the underwhelming Republican performance in the midterm elections.
He was hit last week by a one-two punch with poor poll results.
Both polls say Trump has fallen far behind Republican rival Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the battle for Republican primary voters in the race that is likely to take off later next year. One showed him losing badly to President Joe Biden in a hypothetical rematch.
But the worst blow of the week was a self-inflicted surprise.
Trump on Wednesday told supporters to expect a “BIG ANNOUNCEMENT!” the next day. “America needs a superhero!” he added.
Speculation ran rampant that he might be planning to announce a big move to jump-start his splashy White House campaign, or perhaps even a sensational race for representative to the House in the new Congress.
Instead, Trump announced the release of a set of $99-a-pop digital trading cards featuring cartoon images of himself in various heroic poses.
The trump cards are known as non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, which are stored on internet platforms and have unique identifiers that supposedly prevent them from being copied, counterfeited or stolen.
The fake head drew immediate derision from Democrats and liberals, who called them “poke-worthy” and worse.
President Biden, not usually known as an effective social media troll, boasted that he had some “BIG ANNOUNCEMENTS” of his own by the end of the year, including lowering gas prices, keeping the economy growing and enacting protections for same-sex marriage.
Perhaps more worrying for Trump was the horrified reaction of his own usually loyal MAGA followers. They were also clearly expecting the kind of political bombast that has become a crucial part of Trump’s playbook.
“Whoever advised him on that, I would fire them immediately,” Michael Flynn, the one-time national security adviser, said on a right-wing video show.
Right-wing flamethrower Steve Bannon also mocked the launch, suggesting it would undermine the MAGA message that Americans are under existential attack by Biden’s policies.
“I love the people down there (at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort), but we’re at war,” Bannon said on his podcast. “They should be fired.”
Others questioned Trump’s embrace of NFTs, although enthusiasm for cryptoassets has cooled significantly, especially after the collapse of FTX.com.
The financial questions about NFT’s eased slightly on Friday as reports claimed that the first 45,000 cards were quickly sold out and prices rose rapidly on the secondary markets.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., suggested that Trump’s failing public image reflects a belated realization that he is a better huckster than political leader.
“The American people have been wised up to him,” the powerful Senate majority leader told CNN. “It took a while. But they are on him.”
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