5 signs the world is changing the channel on Trump
Even a Bloomberg podcast is renaming itself!
Image by Gerd Altmann, Pixabay
After the November 3 midterms, which Axios says “will live in history as a Watergate-level reset for democracy”, five indicators the world is changing the channel on Donald Trump:
- US Vice President JD Vance’s 600-word thought bubble on the real reasons for the Republican Party’s devastating midterm losses. Significantly, he cited the war on Iran, which Mr Trump began on February 28, cheek by jowl with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In his post-match analysis, Mr Vance cited the need to change the US relationship with Israel.
- Israel trying to cobble together a new government without Mr Netanyahu. The US relationship with Israel is increasingly in sharp focus and Israeli politicians seem keen on keeping Mr Netanyahu out, perhaps to offer their American military and monetary backers a less pugnacious reminder of why Washington is embroiled in an unwinnable war in Iran and the impasse is humiliating for the world’s only superpower amid global ire about soaring energy costs.
- On November 5, the S&P 500 slumped to its worst daily decline since April 2025 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq entered correction territory, as investors worried about the durability of the AI build-out. Meanwhile, SpaceX and Tesla’s Elon Musk started sounding wistful about “data centres in space”. Such pie-in-the-sky musings came as Texas went Democrat blue. Mr Musk’s companies and corporate giants such as Chevron and Caterpillar relocated to Texas in search of lower taxes and light-touch regulation. Mr Musk has famously decried California as the “state of overregulation, overlitigation, and overtaxation” and therefore, the polar opposite of Texas.
- Syria signed a defense cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia and is considering joining Pakistan, Türkiye and Saudi in the Mecca Pact that commits to a NATO-style mutual defense arrangement, thus further reshaping the region’s security architecture.
- And Stephanie Flanders, head of economics and government at Bloomberg News, announced that her podcast is doing away with the name Trumponomics and changing back to Stephanomics.
[Yet another sign, which isn’t directly related but may signify a moving away from the Trump era. Mr Trump’s missing knee-jerk denunciation may not only indicate a marginal change in his behaviour but also trigger matching responses from allies and adversaries of the Trumpian worldview: Paraguay’s President Santiago Peña, a great ally of Mr Trump, stepped down after the collapse of a digital bank he had recently part-owned. Leaving half the country’s adults without access to their accounts, Mr Peña may now face a criminal investigation. One of the few Latin American presidents to attend Mr Trump’s second inauguration, Mr Peña was praised by Mr Trump’s secretary of state Marco Rubio as a “strategic partner” and recently even visited Washington, D.C. to discuss critical minerals and economic cooperation. Mr Trump has not offered the usual bloviation about a witch-hunt.]
