The worst part about living in Donald Trump’s Washington has been seeing just how much fun he and all the MAGA vandals he brought to power have been having sacking and pillaging the place. This while the rest of us longtime Washingtonians who abided by norms, shared values and even bipartisanship were filled first with shock, then a feeling of helplessness, and hopelessness. It could border on passivity. What could be done?
A year ago, I wrote a guest essay for Times Opinion about how scared many of us were in Washington: “Nobody feels safe. Nobody feels protected. This is a city where people seek and, if it all goes well for them, wield power. But today in Washington, those who hold — or once held — the most power are often the most scared. It is not something they are used to feeling.”
Sometimes it felt as if the Trumpists could smell our fear, and seemed to be enjoying it.
Last fall, when the MAGA revolution was at its most brazen and apparently unstoppable, I remember running into Kellyanne Conway at a newish private club, already packed with crypto types, who scolded me: “Sally, I wish you would stop writing all these pieces about how terrible Washington is now and how everyone is so depressed and scared. We’re having fun! You know what your problem is? You’re not invited to the right dinners and parties.”
I held my tongue. But there is a reason I have avoided the gleeful, glitzy new MAGA society that has sprung up over the last year and a half, and tried to ride it out with my friends.
Lately, the vibe has shifted. The MAGA Republicans don’t seem to be having such a good time ransacking the place anymore.
It’s not that the party is over, exactly. And to be clear, there’s lots more damage that will be done to this city, and to our democracy — not to mention America’s place in the world — before Mr. Trump and his rabble are through. But it’s clearly starting to dawn on the MAGA minions that the morning after is going to be a doozy.
Now they’re the ones in despair, fearful and losing hope.
Even the true believers are questioning the MAGA theology.
Why are we at war with Iran still? Our military is humbled, our reputation in tatters, and now gas prices are going up again.
The distractions keep coming, of course. The cage fights on the White House lawn; the sweltering, sparsely attended 250th celebrations; the desperate speech claiming rigged elections. Even the algae-clotted Reflecting Pool has become a spiritual destination, a shrine for democratic pilgrims.
Many Republican lawmakers are beginning to quiet-quit. The Wall Street Journal called it the G.O.P. “zombie Congress” — not in open revolt, exactly, but not ready to take a bullet for the president and his self-serving crusades as the midterms approach.
Then there’s Mr. Trump’s estrangement from some of his biggest allies: Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, Alex Jones and Ann Coulter, not to mention former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. Even onetime Trump-skeptical Republican senators who had joined the bandwagon, like Bill Cassidy and John Cornyn, have, after being primaried by Trump-endorsed challengers, been more vocally critical. And even Joe Rogan has had his altercations with the president.
All of that is heartening to Washingtonians who see these rifts as representative of Mr. Trump’s weakening fan base throughout the country.
One night last month, the New York financier and Times Opinion contributor Steven Rattner and his wife, Maureen White, had their popular annual cocktail buffet at the Hay Adams Hotel on the rooftop overlooking the White House. Everyone gathered on the balcony to see the Claw — the U.F.C. fighting stage built on the South Lawn of the White House — which then dominated the view. The minute people looked at it, they would burst out laughing. It was so garish, so grotesque and so bizarre that the only proper reaction was disbelief.
The many Democratic politicians and supporters in attendance were feeling energized. There were signs of — dare we say it — bipartisanship, a cause for optimism: The Senate had just voted against Mr. Trump’s war with Iran, and his poll numbers were sliding perilously toward the 20s. Mr. Rattner’s toast was simple: “I feel hopeful.”
One of the Democrats at the Rattner dinner was Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee. Mr. Warner said that the mood in Washington, especially among the Republicans, had changed considerably since the early days of the second Trump administration. The proposed $1.776 billion fund for those supposed victims of government persecution “is such an abuse that nobody can defend it. Will that translate into huge electoral wins? I think so.”
Mr. Warner pointed to the war in Iran: “absolute folly.” Not to mention the self-dealing, the ballroom, the Reflecting Pool, the pardons, the at least $2.2 billion the president made in his first year back in office. “My colleagues say: ‘We can’t go on like this. This is obscene.’ But will they say it publicly?”
Even Lindsey Graham, whom I considered a friend and who was popular in the Senate and one of the few senators always advocating bipartisanship, had lost his moral compass. Before his death last week, he’d remade himself into one of Mr. Trump’s staunchest supporters. What will he be remembered for? His loyalty to a president he once openly despised?
The cage fights may have been the tipping point for many here — the moment, with the combatants tromping with cartoonish bravado through the White House, that it became clear that Mr. Trump was punch-drunk, raging against his enemies.
The day before the cage fights, Cafe Milano, one of the hottest restaurants in Washington for the past 34 years, was packed. Much to the chagrin of some of the regulars, a number of the MAGA crowd in town for the U.F.C. event were there, including Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner and David Ellison, whose Paramount+ had exclusive broadcast rights to the fights.
But the mood felt off. Less jubilant. As if they knew that the U.F.C. fights were really going to be the moment when MAGA jumped the shark.
“The Republican Party is in shambles today,” J. Michael Luttig, a former judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit who turned against Mr. Trump, told me.
“Trump eats his own,” he said, pointing to Senators Cornyn and Cassidy, whom the president successfully had primaried. “Taking them out was a turning point for Congress.”
The presidential historian Michael Beschloss, who from Day 1 of Mr. Trump’s first term warned of a potential dictatorship, likened the mood in Washington today to an earlier time. In 1931, with the country in the grips of the Great Depression, Republicans lost control of the House for the first time in 12 years. Two years later, they lost the White House. “I don’t see people looking fearful, helpless and hopeless here anymore,” Mr. Beschloss said. “We have now seen that democracy is alive and kicking.”
“People are genuinely disgusted and they’re now combative,” said Leon Wieseltier, editor of Liberties magazine, about the mood shift. “Like Popeye, they’re essentially saying, ‘That’s all I can stands, and I can’t stands no more.’ Before he eats his spinach to fortify himself.”
Sally Quinn, a journalist and novelist, has been writing for The Washington Post since 1969.
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