Donald Trump’s Ides of August
The late summer curse has felled presidents before. Democrats have plans to trip up Trump and his fellow Republicans this year, too.
AUGUST USED TO BE THE DOLDRUMS OF THE PRESIDENCY—a sleepy month when the leader of the free world could escape the oppressive Washington humidity, relatively confident that his administration would withstand a sleepy news cycle.
But those were the good ol’ days.
More recently, August has been where presidencies go to die.
In August four years ago, amid the violent withdrawal from Afghanistan and the resurgence of COVID, President Joe Biden saw his approval rating dip below 50 percent for the first time. It never recovered, as Biden struggled throughout the rest of his term to regain public confidence. In 2005, it was August when Hurricane Katrina pummeled the Gulf Coast, cementing a dark second term for George W. Bush. For Barack Obama, the cruelty of August became a political genre unto itself: from the Tea Party protest of 2009 to the credit downgrade of 2011 to the chemical attack in Syria in 2013 and the Ferguson riots in 2014.
With August 2025 fast approaching, the possibility of presidential peril is presenting itself once again. Democrats are certainly eager to see it happen. And in conversations over the past week, it’s clear they also have plans to make it so.