Prediction: We are past "peak Trump."

President Trump is getting sloppy.

Trump is forgetting that scorn for unworthy and entitled elites is what got him elected.

Trump rode an escalator down from the heights of privilege and wealth to a connection with working people who felt that America's elites weren't protecting their jobs and culture. I will do that for you, Trump said.

Trump political career started by nurturing public rebellion against entitled and unworthy elites. These included cultural snobs on the left who lorded it over the "deplorables." It included the entitled billionaires and corporate big-shots who needed government subsidies to survive. It included politicians of both parties, which Trump said he had been buying and selling for decades. Trump said he was so rich he was incorruptible, so he could drain the swamp of them.

Trump has been on a winning streak. His victories over media companies, law firms, universities, public health authority, Congress, public employees, progressive "wokeness," and even assassins do not consume his political capital. They add to it. He showed these centers of elite power to be weak and unworthy. 

We are at a moment. It is presumptuous to call a market top so soon after the events that I think mark it, but in the months ahead I think we will conclude that the Charlie Kirk event was the peak for Trump. Trump seemed formidable; not yet foolish. 

The Jimmy Kimmel matter gave us a hint of the downslope. Trump was too frank and obvious about exercising power. Ted Cruz's limited defection isn't itself the crack, but it suggests the real, underlying problem. Trump was enjoying this too much. He was acting like a big shot. Too entitled. 

There is a delicate place where formidable becomes foolish. Some of it depends on whether there is a crack in the presenter's demeanor, and whether he shows a sign of desperation or weakness. Maybe he slurs his speech. Maybe he is repetitive. Maybe he says the wrong thing. Sometimes it is an audience that starts the rustling of discontent. Some people are genial and gullible. Military leaders in tight discipline are not.

The Quantico, Virginia, speeches by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Trump, made them look worse than merely foolish. They looked dangerous. Hegseth was ignorant but confident, a blowhard. Trump was all about Trump. There was no hint of respect for duty, sacrifice, and honor, the symbols of which are worn proudly on the chests of his audience. Trump was me, me, me, me. There was no hiding the reality from the stone-faced audience. Their leader is a selfish jerk, and bonkers, too. No one in that audience would tolerate or promote a subordinate like Trump. They would promptly drum them out of the service.

Trump peaked. Trump looked selfish and dishonest and undisciplined. He acted like an unworthy and entitled elite. That is what Trump was supposed to replace. Not become.

Arthur Miller's character Charlie, in Death of a Salesman, describes the predicament of Trump, this era's greatest salesman, when the spell that keeps the winning streak together starts to break: 

“He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back--that's an earthquake. And then you get a couple of spots on your hat, and you're finished.”

Trump is far from finished. But people are starting to see him in a different way. At the peak market for Trump, he had what he thought was absolute power.

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