Trump and the GOP Are Not Putting Their Money Where Their Mouth Is

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With three weeks to go before the midterms, and in spite of polls showing that the Democrats are in a strong position to win control of at least one chamber of Congress, Donald Trump and top Republicans are trying to project confidence. However, their actions, in particular the decisions related to which races to invest in, are belying that bravado and tell a different story.

For his part, the president, who routinely dismisses as “fake” any poll showing his low approval rating, suggested recently that the prevailing view that a Democratic victory looms is a conspiracy.

“The Dumocrats, along with their partners in crime, the Fake News Media, are trying to create the false narrative that, Donald Trump is so ‘unpopular,’ the Republicans are going to lose,” he wrote on his social media site. “Actually, it’s just the opposite. I’m so ‘popular,’ that the Republicans are going to WIN, and that’s being proven by the Record Setting Rallies we’re doing.”

However, that sense of optimism is not reflected in the spending of his MAGA Inc. super PAC or Trump’s own schedule.

In October, the president’s rallies are largely being held in states he won in the 2024 election — in some cases very comfortably — but where Republicans are now forced to protect their Senate seats.

So far this month, Trump has visited Texas and Ohio twice, while also traveling to Oklahoma, Alabama, Nebraska, Tennessee, and Alaska. He won all of them by double digits two years ago. Now, however, four of them feature very competitive Senate races.

The one outlier was New York, where Trump spoke last week.

In addition, MAGA Inc. is also playing defense. The super PAC aligned with the president is pulling out of one of the few races in which Republicans had hoped to possibly unseat a vulnerable Democratic incumbent and instead focusing on protecting districts that Trump won by 10 percent or more.

And that’s really the most telling sign of how things are going. Democrats are on the march and trying to expand the map as far as their money will allow it, whereas the GOP is in a triage mode.

This is most apparent in the Senate where Republicans have to defend more than half a dozen seats they currently hold (while all but abandoning North Carolina already). The Democrats, on the other hand, realistically only have to be concerned about Michigan.

Arguably, the race that is most symptomatic of the state of these midterms is Texas. When it’s all said and done, it seems likely that Republicans and their allies, including Elon Musk, will have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on trying to protect a Senate seat the GOP has held for more than 60 years.

The reason why the focus is now on the Senate is that the fight for control of the House seems to be on the verge of being decided in the Democrats’ favor.

While Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said recently that he viewed the prospect of the GOP losing its majority as an “unlikely scenario,” Republican groups are essentially already giving up on three districts they must protect to prevent a Democratic victory.

At this point, their only saving grace is that Democrats likely won’t have enough resources to compete in all of the districts they might be able to win.

In the coming weeks, readers can expect to see a lot more examples of Republicans giving up on certain districts while building firewalls elsewhere to staunch their losses. And, of course, Americans living in previously red districts will start seeing something they have not witnessed in years: campaign ads.

One of those viewers will be Trump himself.

The Congressional Leadership Fund, the super PAC aligned with Johnson, was just forced to spend $2 million on ads in West Palm Beach to protect a seat the president had won by 10 points in 2024.