Trump bets his legacy on high-risk second term
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Illustration: Maura Kearns/Axios
President Trump is mired in risk:
- Risk his Iran war of choice goes bad.
- Risk the February job losses are a trend, not a blip.
- Risk the stock market keeps dropping.
- Risk his tariffs, and now soaring oil costs, are pushing prices higher.
- Risk that deregulated AI accelerates job losses.
- Risk that Democratic enthusiasm leads to a midterm wipeout.
Why it matters: Trump fancies himself a high-risk, high-reward president, a confidence cheered by the vast majority of Republican officials and voters. But risk is risk — and by most measures, it's rising everywhere.
By the numbers: Early polling on the Iran war suggests there may be little or no reward to be had, particularly with the swing voters Trump has lost over affordability concerns.
- Pollster G. Elliott Morris took an average of high-quality surveys and found just 38% of Americans support U.S. military strikes in Iran — lower than retrospective support for the war in Iraq in 2014.
- Most Republicans support the war. But no broader rally-around-the-flag effect has materialized.
Zoom in: For years, Trump, Vice President Vance and the broader MAGA movement argued that war with Iran would be catastrophic — too costly, too risky, too likely to spiral.
- Six U.S. service members have died since the opening strikes. Trump told TIME when asked whether Americans should be worried about retaliatory attacks at home: "I guess ... When you go to war, some people will die."
- The first 100 hours of the war alone are estimated to have cost $3.7 billion. Oil prices are up more than 25%, with the instability threatening Persian Gulf investments that Trump has made central to his economic vision.
- Trump told Axios he must be "involved" in selecting Iran's next leader — but also acknowledged the worst-case scenario: "We do this, and then somebody takes over who's as bad as the previous person."
The intrigue: Some Middle East experts, including hawkish Trump allies in Washington, believe the president is playing with fire by encouraging Kurdish militants to cross into Iran and fight the regime.
- The possibility of a brutal civil war — in an ethnically diverse country of 93 million — could tip Iran into the prolonged chaos that defined George W. Bush's legacy in Iraq.
- Trump, asked about polls showing most Americans oppose the war, told the New York Post he's not worried: "I think that the polling is very good, but I don't care about polling. I have to do the right thing."
Zoom out: Even before his attack on Iran rattled global markets, Trump was losing the argument on the economy — historically his strongest issue.
- New data show the economy shed 92,000 jobs in February — far worse than the 60,000-job gain economists expected, and the third time in five months the labor market has contracted.
- Surging oil prices threaten to reverse the genuine progress Trump has made on gas prices and inflation, with new risks to the kitchen-table costs at the core of voters' affordability concerns.
- His tariffs — sold as a path to cheaper goods and more American jobs — have so far delivered neither, with prices rising and manufacturing shedding jobs for 13 of the past 14 months.
Between the lines: The Trump administration has gone all-in on AI accelerationism, pressuring GOP state lawmakers to back off on safety regulations that could constrain the technology's explosive growth.
- This might be Trump's biggest bet of all: AI could supercharge the economy and cement his legacy as the president who unleashed the next industrial revolution.
- But most Americans are deeply skeptical and anxious, fearing AI could accelerate job displacement, hollow out the middle class and eventually threaten humanity itself.
White House deputy press secretary Kush Desai said in a statement to Axios: "The biggest risk America faces is backing down from President Trump's America First agenda and abandoning the president's push to secure our borders, mass deport criminal illegal aliens, safeguard our national security, and restore America as the most dynamic economy in the world."
- "The so-called 'experts' have repeatedly predicted doom and gloom since President Trump took office, and they have repeatedly been proven wrong. President Trump and his administration are laser-focused on continuing to deliver for the American people."
What to watch: Trump's biggest political risk is losing Congress in November, and watching his second term collapse into investigations, impeachment and legislative gridlock.
- The midterm environment is trending against Republicans across every early indicator — primary turnout, generic ballot polling and special election results.
- A swift, clean victory in Iran could help stabilize Trump's numbers. A prolonged conflict — with casualties, spiking prices and no clear endgame — could turn a difficult midterm map into a wipeout.
Go deeper: Trump's power play.
