Donald Trump’s MAGA Machine Is Struggling to Keep Its Swagger

Photo Illustration by Victoria Sunday/The Daily Beast/Getty Images The energy in Washington, D.C. has shifted as the midterms approach, with the swagger Republicans brought to Donald Trump’s White House in 2025 nowhere to be found.

On The Daily Beast Podcast , political reporter Sarah Ewall-Wice explained why there is “a growing sense of desperation... coming out of this White House.” That trait is reflected in Trump’s executive order this week changing the name of Lake Ontario to “Lake America,” she said.

“I talked about Republicans and the swagger they had coming into Trump’s White House in early 2025.

There is no swagger right now,” Ewall-Wice told host Joanna Coles.

“There’s an active attempt to try and promote ideas that are not sticking.

And so it feels like there’s about to be a monumental shift in Washington.” “Making over Washington, D.C,, renaming lakes, and just a plethora of other things that smell of desperation [are] coming out of this White House as a distraction,” she continued.

Trump, 80, “is focusing on something like this when everyone’s like, well, there are so many issues that actually impact us and are making our lives harder that he’s also doing,” Ewall-Wice said, as Coles mentioned one estimate that 77 farmers were going out of business in the U.S. daily.

“The president puts the focus on these useless things that he’s focused on and promoting, and the White House pushes out this kind of bizarre social media campaign to tout him renaming the lake,” Ewall-Wice continued.

One such attempt, it turned out, didn’t send the message the White House intended when the context became known.

“So he’s been using a lot of these distractions that are completely pointless, useless, and a complete waste of the office of the president of the United States.

And that’s what I hear from people out across the country who are just trying to get by, where they hear so much about some of the nonsense that’s coming from Donald Trump,” she continued.

“And they’re like, well, that’s not helping me, and that’s frustrating.

And it just goes to show that the president is focused on how he appears and what he’s looking at.

It’s not about making things better for us.