Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.
In an interview released Friday, Trump denied not caring about the GOP’s fortunes in the midterms. But he didn’t actually dispel the idea that he’s not terribly interested in being a team player and doing the things his party needs.
In the interview with Punchbowl News, taped on Thursday, Jake Sherman asked Trump about the narrative that he doesn’t really care about Congress and holding the GOP’s majorities in 2026.
“It’s not right,” Trump said, adding: “We’re gonna fight hard,” and, “it’s very important to the country that we win.”
But then he said a bunch of other stuff.
The president suggested that he’s doing Republicans a favor both by potentially spending some of his war chest on them — “I could spend it on pretty much anything I want,” Trump said — and by taking time out to occasionally take his message on the road.
“I didn’t have to be away in Nevada yesterday, I didn’t have to be in Los Angeles yesterday making speeches,” Trump said. “I didn’t have to be supporting all the people. I have a busy schedule.”
Trump added that he recently told someone that he had already won his own campaign, so “I’m not campaigning.”
Then came the comment that should really make Republicans pull their hair out: that their problems are of their own making, not his.
“The question is, will [people] vote? Because a lot of them are very angry at Republicans, to be honest with you,” Trump said, adding: “They’re angry at Republicans, but they’re not angry at me.”
This is, to put it lightly, not accurate.
Trump has dragged the country into an unpopular war with unpopular economic consequences. Iran will hurt the GOP in November. The only question is how much.
Patrick Wintour at The Guardian:
Tehran has set out a protracted negotiating timetable designed to keep Donald Trump embroiled in the Iran conflict until the midterm elections, in the hope of inflicting the same ruinous blow on his presidency as Jimmy Carter suffered over the 1979-81 US embassy hostage crisis.
For many inside Iran, inflicting meaningful revenge on Trump is a legitimate and self-standing war aim, reflected in the mood of those attending the funeral of the supreme leader Ali Khamenei where demands for retribution were ubiquitous.
While Iranian officials since the 1979 Islamic revolution have never trusted the US, that animus is now also directed personally towards Trump. He not only tore up the painfully negotiated nuclear deal in 2018, but he sanctioned the assassination of the military leader Qassem Suleimani and twice involved Iran in negotiations on its nuclear programme only to launch wars against it. He shows no remorse for the killing of the country’s supreme leader, or for the attempt on the life of Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian.
For weeks, President Trump had been laying the groundwork to declare victory in the Iran war should Tehran fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz, even floating the idea privately to senior aides that he’s willing to walk away without a nuclear deal, U.S. officials said.
But that scaled-back objective became more difficult when Iran insisted Saturday on its highest price yet for permitting the free flow of traffic in the waterway, seeking billions of dollars in U.S. payments, the removal of American troops from the region and an end of the U.S. naval blockade, among other things.
This rapid chain of events suggests Trump’s options for walking away from the conflict have again narrowed. Trump has repeatedly threatened—and then backed away from—a massive escalation of its bombing campaign. But the recent chaos in negotiations signaled Tehran is prepared for a long and grinding conflict.
“Iran’s recent hardline demands for reopening the strait make it increasingly difficult for the president to manufacture a face-saving off-ramp from the conflict,” said Mona Yacoubian, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.
Gregory Brew, an Iran expert at the Eurasia Group consulting firm, said, “The Iranians fully believe Trump wants out and is focused on opening the strait, which is why they are playing hardball.”
