Trump’s dominance shows signs of slipping amid Epstein saga and affordability woes
WASHINGTON – The Epstein saga was dragging him down.
President Donald Trump wanted to talk about the economy and what he was doing to lower prices for Americans after his party was walloped in off-year elections that were defined by higher prices. Instead, he was staring down a revolt from inside his party over the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Realizing that he was on the losing side of a looming House vote to compel the Justice Department to release the records it had been holding back, Trump switched sides and told Republican lawmakers to vote with Democrats.
“All I want is I want for people to recognize the great job that I’ve done on pricing, on affordability,” Trump said on Tuesday in the Oval Office, a few hours before a bill forcing the release of the Epstein files passed the House by an overwhelming 427-1 margin and then later won unanimous approval in the Senate. “We’ve done a great job, and I hate to see that deflect from the great job we’ve done.”
Trump’s political dominance over the Republican Party is showing signs of slipping as he faces a pair of challenges over the Epstein controversy and Americans’ concerns about affordability. Just as a rare defiance of Republicans prompted Trump to change his position on the Epstein files, anxieties about rising prices a year from the 2026 midterm elections led him to roll back tariffs on coffee, bananas, beef and other foods.
Other MAGA allies have questioned whether Trump is spending too much time hosting foreign leaders in the Oval Office than pushing his affordability message ahead of elections that typically are an uphill climb for the party holding the White House.
And there are already signs of a Republican Party preparing for a post-Trump world. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas is laying the groundwork for a potential 2028 Republican bid, according to a report form Axios, potentially setting the stage for a race against Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, for the Republican nomination.
Concerns before midterms
The 2025 elections served as a clear warning sign for Trump and the GOP ahead of the 2026 midterms about pocketbook concerns.
The president and his team have insisted that inflation is not a problem – even as the White House pulled back on some tariffs. They say outside forces and the Biden administration are responsible for higher prices and defended a trade-focused trip to Asia last month during the record-breaking government shutdown as necessary to solidify deals that will financially benefit Americans.
Inflation rose to 3% in September, the highest it’s been since January, though substantially lower than the 9.1% June 2022 peak amid the COVID-19 pandemic during Biden’s presidency. The biggest driver was the price of gasoline. Consumer confidence dropped to its lowest mark in three years and a decline of about 30% from this time a year ago, according to a monthly survey from the University of Michigan.
Trump’s approval rating dropped to 37% in a CNN poll conducted at the end of October amid the shutdown fight, which centered on rising healthcare costs and ended Nov. 12 after becoming the longest in U.S. history at 43 days. It was the lowest point of his second term.
A Reuters poll released on Tuesday also showed Trump at a low. In the survey, just 20% of Americans and 44% of Republicans approved of his handling of the Epstein files, while only 26% of Americans said Trump was doing a good job addressing the cost of living.
“The Epstein thing is something that obviously has broken through with a lot of voters, and I’ve worried from the beginning that this trade agenda is going to hurt Republicans, and I think it still will come midterms, because cost of living is not going down,” said Marc Short, Trump’s first-term White House legislative affairs director.
He added, “I think you’re also seeing weakness in the labor market now, and I think that’s a worry for Republicans heading into a midterm cycle.”
Connecting the two issues, Trump said on Sunday that House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, “because we have nothing to hide, and it’s time to move on” from the convicted sex offender and get back to his agenda.
Republican strategists say Trump was right to stop fighting the Epstein vote. He was going to lose and the more time he spends talking about anything other than the economy is unhelpful, they said.
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, suggested on Monday that approving the Epstein bill, and moving on from the controversy, will ultimately be good for Republicans and the country.
“That’s exactly what the president said, and I agree with the president,” he said. “Instead of talking about this Epstein file stuff, let’s get back to helping the American people.”
Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released more than 20,000 pages of documents obtained from the convicted sex offender’s estate last week, including one in which Epstein said that Trump “knew about the girls,” just as a petition hit the signature threshold to require the House to vote on the bill forcing the release of DOJ’s documents.
Trump denies wrongdoing and the White House says he broke with Epstein because the disgraced financier was a creep.
Despite the new details about Trump and Epstein’s relationship made apparent by the latest email dump, congressional Republicans have projected confidence in recent days about releasing more files.
“I have faith in the president,” Rep. Joe Wilson, R-South Carolina, told USA Today.
MAGA unrest
over Trump focus
MAGA allies of the president have also become increasingly worried Trump’s focus on foreign policy is missing the economic anxieties of voters one year away from the 2026 midterm elections.
“I would really like to see nonstop meetings at the WH on domestic policy not foreign policy and foreign country’s leaders,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, said in a Nov. 10 post on X as she called on Trump to get started on “a Republican plan to save America from Obamacare.”
Trump has welcomed dozens of foreign leaders to the White House since he returned to office – most recently Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who he’s honoring with a dinner on Tuesday.
During the shutdown, Trump also took overseas trips to Israel, where he celebrated a long-awaited peace deal between Israel and Hamas, and Asia, where he touted foreign investments in Malaysia and Japan and met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea.
Trump disavowed Greene on Truth Social Nov. 14 and swatted back at her critique of his foreign travel on Air Force One.
“Do you think I wanna go and be on an airplane for 20 hours?” Trump said of his Asia trip. “22 hours to be exact, travel and then get off and make a speech and get people to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in our country.”
Trump said earlier in the week that the congresswoman has “lost her way” while defending the attention he gives foreign affairs. “I have to view the presidency as a worldwide situation, not locally,” Trump said. “We could have a world that’s on fire where wars come to our shore very easily if you had a bad president.”
White House pivot to affordability
The White House has tried to take steps to show a president focused more on domestic issues.
Trump announced plans to send Americans $2,000 rebate checks from revenue generated by his new tariffs and floated new 50-year mortgages for homebuyers. He said the United States will boycott attending this month’s G20 in South Africa, blaming the country’s treatment of white farmers. And the White House said Trump plans to ramp up his domestic travel, with a focus on the economy, ahead of the 2026 midterms.
His administration announced new trade deals with Latin American countries on Nov. 13 that it cast as a way to bring down the price of coffee, bananas and other goods. It exempted those foods and a broad list of others from tariffs the following day.
Trump has been on the defense about affordability concerns being a liability for him following the off-year elections, which saw Democrats tap into economic anxieties to sweep gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey by double-digit margins and win other races across the country.
He emphasized the lower prices during his presidency compared to costs during his predecessor, former President Joe Biden.
“I don’t want to hear about the affordability,” Trump said just after the election, as he was questioned by reporters.
By the following week, he’d changed his tune.