When Trump Gets Bored At Home - 1/19/26
Donald Trump may be running out of aircraft carriers.
In order to prepare for the removal of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, he ordered the U.S.S. Gerald Ford to leave the Middle East for Latin America last October. But that left an insufficient American military presence in the Persian Gulf once protests roiled Iran earlier this month, so now the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln is on its way from the South China Sea to the Middle East. The only other American carrier in Asia, the U.S.S. George Washington, will be docked in Japan for repairs for the next several months, leaving that critical part of the world precariously vulnerable.
All this naval shuttling is being done under the direction of a once-avowed isolationist, who ran for president decrying the “endless wars” in which his predecessors had engaged and promising to focus his attentions on the country’s domestic challenges. Trump has reinforced his military adventurism with a protectionist trade agenda and a confrontational diplomatic brashness, all of which has combined to present a far more assertive international presence than many of his supporters had been expecting when they cast their ballots for him just over a year ago.
His recent conduct and language regarding Venezuela and Iran, his mystifying fixation on Greenland, rising tensions in the Pacific, and ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza have created the impression of a president who is much more interested in foreign affairs, and Americans seem unimpressed by what they see. Recent public opinion polling shows voters giving Trump low marks for his handling of foreign policy and offering clear warnings that they would prefer to see him focusing on domestic issues, most notably the economy and inflation.
Trump has made a flurry of announcements regarding consumer processes over the last two weeks, but these efforts have been overshadowed by his dramatic actions and declarations on the world stage and undermined by his continuing propensity for referring to the Democrats’ emphasis on affordability as a “hoax.” The same voters who elected him because they felt that Joe Biden neither understood nor knew how to address their economic discomfort are underwhelmed by Trump’s seeming disinterest in their plight and what they see as his growing fondness for the type of global assertiveness he once disparaged.
It’s been well-chronicled that as second-term presidents begin to think about how they will be judged by history, they have historically gravitated toward international affairs at the expense of domestic policy. Chief executives can engage on the global stage with little regard for Congress: diplomatic and military matters rarely require legislative action (although Trump will learn soon whether that holds for tariffs and trade policy too). There are none of the endless negotiations with committee chairs and their staffs that slow down and often derail progress on domestic issues. Simply put, foreign policy is more fun.
Going overseas is also good for the presidential ego. Given the economic and defense superiority that the US has enjoyed for most of the last century, presidents know that they will be treated like visiting royalty when they visit other countries—even if their visits take place in carefully controlled settings. It’s no coincidence that Trump’s international travel in both of his terms was to Saudi Arabia, where that country’s leaders were smart enough to make Trump feel like a fellow monarch.
But by his own admission, Trump has an immense amount at stake in this year’s midterm elections. He recently told House Republicans that he knew he would be impeached for the third time if they were not able to defy history and maintain their tiny majority. And the voters who will decide which party controls Congress for Trump’s final two years in office are much more concerned about housing and grocery prices than about the status of Greenland. At some point this year, Trump will be forced to make a hard pivot from the world stage back to the American economy. He will need to admit that affordability is a legitimate issue in the minds of voters and make a sustained case that his prescribed remedies will make things better.
This is not much different than the challenge that Joe Biden faced two years ago. Trump brings skills and energy to the table that Biden lacked, while also carrying a potentially back-breaking amount of baggage. Avoiding the same outcome as his predecessor will be his most important political task of the year as he thinks about how history will remember him.