President Donald Trump’s policies and personal conduct regularly generate fierce backlash from his political adversaries. But over the last two months, fresh counterblasts are coming from an unexpected quarter: his allies.
Three House Republicans joined Democrats on Tuesday on a rare procedural vote to rebuke the president and GOP leadership, which paved the way for more GOP lawmakers to vote for a resolution to block Trump’s Canada tariffs on Wednesday. The final head count of Republicans who backed that resolution as it was adopted, with mostly Democratic votes: six.
A Republican governor who leads a national association representing governors of both parties said this week that the group would not attend a typically bipartisan White House meeting because Democrats were not invited. Trump later said all Democratic governors were also invited — with two exceptions.
And last week, Republicans inside and outside Washington rebuked Trump for sharing a social media video that depicted former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes.
In unusually stark terms, Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, a loyal Trump ally and the only Black Republican in the Senate, called the video “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House.”
The dynamic is playing out across the country and around the globe — on issues from Trump’s posts about the Obamas and slain director Rob Reiner to the tactics of his mass deportation campaign and the implementation of his tariffs.
But the wave of pushback may be most noteworthy as an indicator of where Republicans stand heading into the midterm elections in November.
The bottom line, according to GOP insiders, is that Trump’s overall approval rating has fallen — to 39% from 42% in December, according to a new NBC News Decision Desk poll of adults — and that makes him less fearsome.
In addition to months of surveys showing that most Americans are dissatisfied with the economy, Trump has lost substantial ground on immigration, which was once a winning issue for him. Now, 49% of adults strongly disapprove of his immigration crackdown, according to the NBC News Decision Desk poll, which was conducted from Jan. 27 to Feb. 6.
A White House official did not reply to a request for comment on how Trump views increasing public disapproval of his policies and rhetoric from within his own coalition.
For congressional Republicans facing tough races and the possibility of losing the House, along with those who have chosen to retire rather than face voters, Trump’s falling poll numbers have changed their incentives. Resistance may even grow fiercer once the primary season is finished, political strategists said, and Republican candidates do not have to worry about Trump’s endorsing their opponents.
“President Trump has demonstrated a willingness, and in fact an eagerness, to engage in primaries in ways that no president ever has — this has kept his [Republican] conference in line,” said Marc Short, who was the White House liaison to Congress and chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence during Trump’s first term. “However, the laws of political gravity still apply, and as there’s less support for his two signature issues of the economy and immigration, he will continue to see more Republicans distance themselves as we get closer to the midterm election.”
The latest rounds of recoil have been among the most forceful. But they are not the first.
In December, Trump invited criticism from fellow Republicans by blaming the murder of Rob Reiner on the director’s own anti-MAGA politics. Last month, he alienated a major bloc inside his own coalition — gun rights advocates — by repeatedly saying Alex Pretti, whom federal agents shot and killed in Minneapolis, should not have been armed, even though he had a permit to carry his gun in public.
Manosphere media star Joe Rogan, who helped Trump win in 2024, compared the tactics of immigration enforcement agents in major American cities to those deployed by the Nazi Gestapo, and two Republican senators, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, called on Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to resign after she and other officials described Pretti as a domestic terrorist despite video evidence contradicting their claims.
Tillis said last month he will block any nominee to the Federal Reserve until the Justice Department ends an investigation of Chairman Jerome Powell that he and other Republicans have described as political retribution for Powell’s clashing with Trump over interest rates.“It is the independence and credibility of the Department of Justice that are in question,” said Tillis, who recently opted against seeking re-election. His opposition complicates the path to confirmation for Trump’s pick to succeed Powell as chairman, Kevin Warsh.
Even across the Atlantic, where Trump’s MAGA movement mirrors the rise of the hard right, conservative European leaders helped a successful revolt against Trump’s plan to buy or seize Greenland.
“When a U.S. president threatens a European territory using trade pressure, it’s not dialogue, it is coercion,” Jordan Bardella, president of France’s far-right National Rally, said last month.
At times, Trump has backed down or changed course in the face of harsh condemnation. Trump rarely apologizes, but he said that “we feel terribly” after federal agents shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis and that agents “make some mistakes sometimes.”
He pulled Border Patrol commander-at-large Gregory Bovino, the face of his mass deportation campaign, out of Minneapolis after Pretti’s shooting and replaced him with border czar Tom Homan, who was widely seen as less inflammatory. He abandoned his plan to take over Greenland and instead left the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, claiming the framework for a deal to have greater access to Greenland. And though he refused to apologize for reposting the image of the Obamas, the White House deleted it.
There is always a symbiotic relationship between a president and members of his party in Congress: They may all rise or fall together. But in midterm election years, when most lawmakers are on the ballot and the president is not, they will distance themselves if they think it is necessary for survival.
In a perfect world, said a veteran Republican consultant who is working on multiple campaigns this year, Trump and his aides would make allowances for criticism and adjust their tack to help the GOP at the ballot box. When the White House hears an outcry from Republican candidates, strategists and voters, it is a plea for course correction, the consultant said.
“Crowd-sourced calibrations tend to work,” he said. “I would say that a lot of Republicans are hopeful that the White House will take the cues and they will move at a bit of a slower pace and on a bit of a straighter line.”
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