Donald Trump's Lost Control of the Monster He Created

The gold leaf accents on Donald Trump's political brand look to have lost their luster.

At the height of his influence entering the 2022 GOP primaries, Trump sought to shape the Republican Party in his image, his endorsement in competitive races ultimately coming to define who conservative voters supported and who they didn't.

One of those he endorsed was Kevin McCarthy, the ambitious California congressman who, shortly after the January 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol, traveled to Mar-a-Lago to extend an olive branch after previously criticizing Trump.

The following summer, Trump responded with his endorsement of McCarthy, calling him a "strong and fearless" leader for the GOP of the future.

After McCarthy suffered three consecutive defeats in a ballot of his peers to start the 118th Congress on January 3, Trump—it seemed—was no longer sure: In an interview Tuesday with NBC News' Garrett Haake, Trump declined to respond to a specific question about whether he supported McCarthy, saying only "we'll see what happens" when pressed.

By Wednesday morning, Trump was sticking with McCarthy. In a post on Truth Social, Trump urged Republicans to "NOT TURN A GREAT TRIUMPH INTO A GIANT & EMBARRASSING DEFEAT."

"IT'S TIME TO CELEBRATE, YOU DESERVE IT," he wrote. "Kevin McCarthy will do a good job, and maybe even a GREAT JOB – JUST WATCH!"

Within hours, the dynamics were already out of his hands.

In the fourth round of voting, 21 of the House's 223 Republican members declined to support McCarthy, with many saying he was too moderate, too entrenched in the Washington establishment, and too willing to capitulate to Democrats as he seeks to govern against a Democratic-led Senate and a Democratic White House.

Some of Trump's most ardent supporters in Congress—longtime anti-establishment figures like Matt Gaetz, Byron Donalds, Chip Roy, Ralph Norman and Lauren Boebert—were no longer listening to him, slamming Trump's pick on the floor of the House as a figure of the Washington, D.C., swamp Trump once swore to destroy.

"Even having my favorite president call us and tell us we need to knock this off," Boebert said on the House floor Wednesday ahead of the fifth round of voting. "I think it actually needs to be reversed. The president needs to tell Kevin McCarthy that, sir, you do not have the votes, and it's time to withdraw."

Trump's office has been contacted for comment.

Though his success as a candidate has long relied on the support of those outside the Beltway, his personal brand outside of D.C. hasn't fared much better—particularly as others have succeeded in rattling cages more than he had.

Where an invitation to Mar-a-Lago was once the equivalent of a winning lottery ticket, the Florida mansion has—in the months since the Republican primaries—become something of a circus of far-right fringe figures, with recent guest lists featuring defeated Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, onetime North Carolina Congressman Madison Cawthorn and white nationalist Nick Fuentes alongside longtime Trump sycophants like Rudy Giuliani, the disgraced former mayor of New York City.

During the announcement of his third campaign for president, reporters wrote of attendees they saw heading for the exits who were not allowed to leave, while the campaign itself has seemed void of energy, marked by poorly designed digital trading cards and an absence of the types of rallies that came to define the closing months of the 2022 midterms.

Even some of his children, whose names are inextricably connected to their father's, have largely sought to distance themselves from the Trump brand for other ventures, as the company he founded has been mired in a number of criminal cases in New York.

"While I will always love and support my father, going forward I will do so outside the political arena," his daughter Ivanka said in a statement after his announcement.