As we reported this morning, if one is a close enough consumer of the media and politics, one would have detected a distinct shift in the winds starting about two weeks ago, picking up steam over the Axios interview, and now being openly discussed in corners of the internet. The White House is backpedaling, the staff is less cocky, there is a heaviness, a dread, to them that one senses, the media is more aggressive, not buying the boilerplate and faux outrage, and Trump himself is scared.

Playboy Magazine White House correspondent Brian Karem says that Trump is losing the “strength and vigor” that propelled him through the 2016 season. Karem says it’s especially true having been “eviscerated” by Chris Wallace of Fox News and Jonathan Swan of Axios.

Of the interviews, Karem writes:

Trump literally does not appear to understand them. And his confusion now looks like exactly that: the confusion of a senior citizen who doesn’t quite have a grasp on what’s going on, not the bluster of a bully who is dominating the world around him.

Is Trump down because he got eviscerated, or was he so easily eviscerated because he’s way down? It doesn’t matter. The point is that we’ve all felt the same thing. Something is changing.

Since 2015, Trump has relished picking fights with reporters as one of his favorite pastimes in the job, but now according to Karem, Trump can “barely muster the get-up-and-go to turn the page on the briefing notes that he pretty obviously hasn’t looked at before lumbering to the podium.”

What happened?

Trump knows he’s losing, according to Karem. We might add that Trump also knows there is no “winning,” either. Even IF Trump manages to succeed and hangs on to the presidency, it will only be with a massive fight-felony to steal the election, and he will only win the right to lead a dying power out of its worst crisis in over 100 years – no fun at all. So Trump is in a situation where he has to risk it all, to win … not all that much.

And that’s depressing, especially when he compares it to the glory days of just over a year ago. Even if he “wins,” there will be no rallies, no bragging about beating Crooked Hillary (who he and Republicans hated), only “sleepy Joe,” whom no one hates, not even Trump, much as he tries.

Meanwhile, Trump’s desire to act as his own press secretary, his inability to understand facts or cobble together a coherent policy on any issue, and his penchant for surrounding himself with a combination of young, eager sycophants and incompetent aging sycophants has sapped him of his strength. How fitting that his final weeks as president have seen the emergence of Low Energy Trump.

If the job was still “fun,” Trump would find a way to make it work. He would summon the energy and health. But as we reported over a week ago – when we sensed the same thing – the job just isn’t fun anymore, robbed of the “good stuff,” that he craved, the rallies, the bragging rights, the … perfect peace and economy. All the good stuff. It’s gone.

He knows he’s losing and he’s losing, in part, because it wouldn’t be fun even if he wins. He never did this job out of any other principle.

****

Peace, y’all
Jason
[email protected] and on Twitter @MiciakZoom