Trump’s winning streak gives wings to his conservative revolution

In one of Donald Trump’s most famous phrases, he says, “We’re gonna win so much, you may even get tired of winning. And you’ll say, ‘Please, please. It’s too much winning. We can’t take it anymore, Mr. President, it’s too much.’ And I’ll say, ‘No it isn’t. We have to keep winning. We have to win more!’”

This is what he uttered at a rally during his 2016 campaign. And yes, he won those elections but then lost the next presidential election and the midterm elections of 2018 and 2022. He also failed in his attempt to cling to power after instigating the January 6 insurrection, and he could hardly have been said to win in the New York courtroom where he was found guilty of 34 felony counts. In all these instances, the phrase turned against him like a boomerang launched by a megalomaniac divorced from reality and occupying a parallel universe.

But Trump did go on to win again. He did so unequivocally in 2024 and has been doing so for a couple of weeks now, to the rhythm of what conservative analyst Matthew Cotinetti describes as “riding one of the most remarkable news cycles in memory.” So in a country obsessed with measuring victory and certifying failure, critics and supporters have agreed in recent days that Trump is on a roll, and he plans to take advantage of it to impose his Trumpist revolution.

The winning streak began on June 21 with the military attack on Iran’s nuclear program. The attack was not devoid of risk: it could have triggered all-out war — been the spark that would detonate the Middle East time bomb, an escalation in oil prices and a betrayal of the voters who had believed the promise that he would not involve the U.S. in new wars in places they had never heard of. A couple of days later, and after a weak retaliation from Tehran, Trump personally announced a ceasefire between Iran and Israel.

To seal that fragile truce, he forced the leaders of both countries to stop fighting by publicly treating them like two incorrigible kids in a schoolyard. He then left for the NATO summit in The Hague, where the alliance’s partners awaited him. There, all except for Spain agreed to increase their military spending to 5% as the U.S. president had asked. Clearly, he was pleased to see himself at the center of a new diplomacy, one that wreaks of age-old feudalism. The combination of the NATO leaders’ submission and the blow to Iran undoubtedly strengthened the position of the U.S. on the international stage.

Back home, doubts arose about the success of the mission against the Iranian regime, which Trump managed to turn into a semantic debate: were the three uranium enrichment facilities “obliterated,” as he claimed on the night of the bombings, or were they only damaged and the Iranian nuclear program delayed by a few months? In the absence of definitive reports, Trump railed that any criticism of the mission was tantamount to an attack on its heroic pilots.

As for the media that raised these doubts, it became the target of yet another smear campaign — something that would be shocking in a democracy, if it weren’t already so common. Trump has been attacking the press for the past 10 years and, this strategy — beyond leading half the U.S. population to lose confidence in journalism — resulted on Wednesday in the capitulation of Paramount. The conglomerate, which owns the CBS network, agreed to pay $16 million to bury Trump’s lawsuit over the editing of an interview with Kamala Harris that Trump, then a candidate, said was designed to “tip the scales in favor of the Democratic party.”

The pilots who bombed Iran were the highlight of the picnic at the Fourth of July celebrations at the White House. Two B-2 bombers swooped low over Washington before Trump appeared looking smug on one of the balconies next to the first lady, Melania Trump. His words sounded like a victory speech. He declared that in May the immigration authorities did not detect any illegal border crossings — the data surprised him so much that he even doubted its veracity. He also noted an uptick in the army’s enlistment figures and economic indicators. “Haven’t they been the most important two weeks in the presidential history of this country?” he asked. “As we enter our 249th year,” he added in reference to the holiday commemorating the 1776 Declaration of Independence, “America is winning, winning, winning like never before.”

Then Trump went down to sign his ambitious tax reform bill that he himself has christened the “big, beautiful bill.” He managed to get his party to approve the legislation by July 4, despite the suspicion that it could be electoral suicide.

The rush to sign the law — which includes a blow to social benefits that will leave 12 million people without health coverage, and tax cuts for the wealthiest — was nothing more than a theatrical whim of the leader. He chose to take advantage of the symbolic date — turning his MAGA agenda into law on July 4: what more could he ask for? — rather than give his own party time to finish debating a bill whose unpopularity is confirmed by the polls.

Its signing put the final nail in the coffin of GOP independence. For months, Republican members of both chambers, a mix of fiscal hawks and politicians concerned about its impact on their constituents and their prospects as candidates, publicly opposed the bill. But, in the end, only four members of both chambers dared to vote against it.

While Republican resistance melted, Trump landed another win: unemployment fell more than expected in June. This was in spite of the analysts who have been waiting for months for the Trump’s tariff policy to affect the labor market. Not only has it not done so, but Trump can chalk up additional victories such as the signing of a trade agreement with Vietnam, Canada’s withdrawal from a tax on Silicon Valley and the G-7’s gift to U.S. multinationals which are to be exempt from the minimum tax to which 130 countries committed themselves in 2021.

Despite the drums of the global trade war that have been beating since Trump’s return, the U.S. economy is proving resilient, even if the cost of living and housing remain an issue for the average American. Even the markets have been cashing in on Trump’s luck: despite the uncertainty and the U-turns of his economic policy, they reacted on July 3 to the positive figures in the labor market with extraordinary increases that made both SP&500 and Nasdaq record highs.

On the eve of July 4, it was also declared that those traveling for the Independence Day holiday would enjoy the cheapest gasoline since 2021 and that the Supreme Court had agreed to study a case related to the participation of trans athletes in women’s sports next year, a signature issue in Trump’s re-election campaign. It is also an issue that brought defeat to the University of Pennsylvania in a lawsuit they had filed on account of trans swimmer Lia Thomas — yet another capitulation of a prestigious higher education center in the new administration’s unrelenting campaign against the elites.

The Supreme Court had already sided with a ruling that reduces the power of federal judges to obstruct the relentless stream of decrees coming out of the White House. These are the decrees Trump is using to expand the scope of the executive branch and undermine the separation of the government and the judiciary. In other words, he is swiftly advancing his authoritarian drift.

The six conservative judges of the Supreme Court, three of whom Trump appointed, have left him freer than ever to impose his agenda. It will soon become clear how many of these triumphs are a mirage and how many will see Trump’s weary-of-winning fantasy played out. On July 7, he will receive Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after unilaterally proposing a 60-day ceasefire on his social network, Truth Social — a proposal Hamas appears to accept with a number of caveats.

Trump won the election promising that he would end that war and the war in Ukraine, the latter within the space of a day. This now seems absurd — even more so after Trump’s hour-long conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin which ended in disappointment, according to Trump. However, this blip has not stopped Trump from claiming the Nobel Peace Prize for himself again, although on July 3 he told supporters in Iowa: “Somebody else will get the Nobel Peace Prize for their writing about Donald Trump.”

The next date up on Trump’s agenda is July 9, the deadline he gave dozens of his trade partners to reach trade agreements to mitigate the impact of his tariffs. At the moment, there are only two deals on the table — one with the U.K. and the other with Vietnam, both of which are still in an embryonic state. He also has a truce with China, in addition to tariffs on steel and aluminum and cars.

It remains to be seen what happens when the deadline is reached. Will the White House’s aggressive approach to international trade again sink the markets, as happened in April, affecting inflation and unemployment? Or even decimate the 2026 July 4 celebrations as the lobby of Chinese fireworks importers warned this week. As silly as it sounds, this would be no small deal as 2026 will mark the 250th anniversary of the founding of the country.

But the most difficult challenge will be to sell the “big, beautiful bill” to his voters, who believed him when he said during his campaign that the GOP is “the party of the working class.” They will clearly be the ones to suffer the most from his cuts. The history of the U.S. abounds with presidents who have imposed reforms on Congress and then paid for it in the next election. Democrats are confident that this will be the case in the 2026 midterms, and that they will regain control of one or both chambers, given their belief that their rivals have just shot themselves in the foot.

If the analysis proves correct, the famous phrase, “you may get tired of winning” will once again turn against Trump, who declared to Michael D’Antonio, one of his early biographers: “Learning how to win is a very important thing [...] You can be tough and ruthless and all that stuff, and if you lose a lot, nobody’s going to follow you because you’re looked at as a loser.”

Perhaps there is no better explanation for why Trump refused to accept losing the election to Joe Biden in 2020. For this president, failure has the effect of kryptonite, that fictitious radioactive material that made Superman vulnerable.

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