The quick and popular policy wins that came easily to President Donald Trump during his first months in office are getting harder to achieve as he nears his one-year anniversary.
Two examples of his struggles were clear this week. First, his push for peace in the Middle East and Ukraine continued to be hung up on as the parties involved refused to settle their differences.
And his use of National Guard troops to crush crime in Washington, D.C., a success that was heralded by the city’s liberal mayor, met disaster when an Afghan immigrant allegedly drove across the country to shoot and kill one West Virginia Army National Guard member and critically wound another.
Both appeared to irk the president, and he didn’t take kindly to questions about those policies. He responded to a question about Afghan asylum by calling a reporter “stupid,” and his press office, frustrated with the media, created a website to call out bias.
President Donald Trump snapped at a reporter during a heated exchange over questions about the DC National Guard shooting, asking, “are you a stupid person?” pic.twitter.com/lhn9xnDvPK
— New York Post (@nypost) November 28, 2025
He continued to claim that the economy was booming, but the public wasn’t buying it. Consumer confidence fell again, as did his approval ratings.
Some on Capitol Hill suggested that he was already feeling the impact of being a political “lame duck” as more and more Republicans started to challenge him.
The Washington Examiner’s David Sivak, for example, wrote on Saturday that Trump “still enjoys deference from the vast majority of congressional Republicans.” But, he added, the president “is fighting a creeping narrative that his hold over Washington is slipping, and that he will soon be a lame-duck president with diminished influence.”
Our graders agreed. Democratic pollster John Zogby noted wins for the president, notably the dropping of election interference charges in Georgia, but he also cited the creeping influence of a “dark side.” Conservative grader Jed Babbin, meanwhile, called it a “weak week.”
John Zogby
Grade: F
Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom of the West Virginia National Guard was just 20 years old when she was fatally shot two blocks from the White House while part of the administration’s mission to patrol Washington’s streets. My heart goes out to her family. Somehow, everything else is a whole degree less important.
President Donald Trump had a mixed week. Criminal charges related to election interference in Georgia after the 2020 election were dropped and will not be brought up again. Both the stock market and the price of gold rose. Retail sales on Black Friday are expected to top $1 trillion.
But the dark side intervenes. Consumer confidence continues to plummet.
Trump took to social media to issue a rant about asylum following the arrest of the suspect in the National Guard shooting. In a sign of policy being enacted by revenge and anger instead of the law, Trump promised to halt further asylum considerations for Afghans brought to the country after the fall of Kabul. Much of what he said was not legal.
He called one of the White House press corps’ top reporters “stupid” and a “stupid woman” for merely asking a legitimate question about asylum. And he insulted Minnesota and called its governor “seriously retarded.”
Immigration and crime are back in the forefront, but not the debate that these issues really require. Trump was an embarrassment this week. Sarah deserved better.
Jed Babbin
Grade: C
It was a pretty weak week for President Donald Trump and his team, with both peace plans — Ukraine and Gaza — falling apart and the beginning of designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization. And there was the shooting by an Afghan immigrant of two National Guard members from West Virginia, one fatally.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky blew past Trump’s deadline for a response to the Ukraine peace plan on Thursday. Russian President Vladimir Putin — who got almost everything he wanted from Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff — said it was the beginning of a negotiation, not the end. Trump keeps setting deadlines that world leaders ignore.
Thanks to the Hamas terrorists, the Gaza peace plan has totally fallen apart. Hamas won’t disarm and won’t give up governing Gaza, so Israel will keep shooting. There won’t be any peace until one side is destroyed.
Trump took a timid step toward designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a global terrorist organization by beginning the paperwork, and only for certain branches of the group. That was uncharacteristic for Trump. He must be under pressure from some Arab “allies” such as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman to go slow.
The shooting death of a West Virginia National Guard member and wounding of another near the White House shouldn’t startle anyone. The accused killer was an Afghan who brought jihad with him into this country thanks to lax vetting by the Biden administration. The shooter faces the death penalty when he goes to trial, according to Attorney General Pam Bondi.
MAGA leader Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) decision earlier this month to resign from Congress in January was hailed by liberals as proof that Trump’s movement is dead. It’s not. The biggest problem is that Vice President JD Vance isn’t gaining in popularity. Trump has said he wants Vance to succeed him, but that is highly unlikely.
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Jed Babbin is a Washington Examiner contributor and former deputy undersecretary of defense in the administration of former President George H.W. Bush. Follow him on X @jedbabbin.
John Zogby is the founder of the Zogby Survey and senior partner at John Zogby Strategies. His latest book is Beyond the Horse Race: How to Read Polls and Why We Should. His podcast with son and managing partner and pollster Jeremy Zogby can be heard here. Follow him on X @ZogbyStrategies.