This week, one of the most talked-about stories has been President Donald Trump’s decision to spend taxpayer money on campaign ads that the administration is misleadingly characterizing as “public service announcements.” The move is vintage Trump in that the ads are both staggeringly corrupt—the administration is spending $20 million of the Department of Homeland Security’s money on them, in violation of the Hatch Act—and propagandizing slop. One ad, which uses a song without the artist’s permission, has Trump asking people, “Love me.” Another warns of a “final battle.” So far, the administration has only spent a fraction of the money that’s been allocated to this endeavor, so you can count on seeing many more iterations of these fake PSAs, which Trump is said to be guiding.
But rather than think of this as some kind of flex, or one more scandalous abuse of the public trust, I want to suggest that what these ads represent is desperation—an acknowledgment that if Trump’s goose isn’t cooked yet, the pot is at least boiling. I also think, if anything, this fusillade of propaganda will likely backfire.
These ads haven’t generated good news for Trump; very few people outside of the administration and its obvious sycophants have tried to defend them. Moreover, the media seems resistant to give this story the “both sides” treatment. As with Trump’s 25-minute prime-time ramble last July, the political press seems wise to what’s going on. Of that aforementioned speech, TNR editor Michael Tomasky said, the overall reaction to the president’s attempt to shine us on “tells us that that power he had over people and institutions a year or 15 months ago has evanesced.” I think these PSAs do little else than advertise that fact.
I am not sure that Republican lawmakers necessarily agree with that assessment, but their own appraisals range from avoidant to withering. As MS NOW reported this week, “even congressional Republicans are expressing concern that the ads may violate the laws governing PSAs.” Senate Majority Leader John Thune is quoted in the piece as saying that he didn’t mind the message of the ad but believed “it shouldn’t be paid for with taxpayer dollars.” That’s about the nicest thing any Republican who made their way into the story had to say about it, with Senator Mike Rounds saying, “It’s not something I would have done” and the outgoing Thom Tillis comparing it to Viktor Orbán. “I hate it,” said Tillis, bluntly.
Trump’s midterm activities aren’t limited to these controversial ads. According to reports, the president is planning to spend 32 of the next 35 days on the road campaigning for Republicans. As Politico notes, many of his intended destinations suggest the GOP is in tremendous peril. Instead of swing states and traditionally competitive districts, Trump is visiting “bastions of conservatism” like Alabama, Oklahoma, Ohio, and Texas. He’s even going to trek out to Alaska, “a significant commitment of time and presidential resources that underscores how dire the situation is for Republicans.” As one GOP donor told Politico, “The problem is that the fires are everywhere right now.”
The biggest question is whether Trump’s growing effort to further inject himself into the midterm cycle is going to help or hinder the electoral hopes of Republican lawmakers. In at least one contentious race, the Republican candidate is calling Trump an albatross. According to leaked audio obtained by The New York Times, Texas Senate candidate Ken Paxton told a room full of donors that Trump’s weird midterm convention in early September—which was held in Texas, in the hopes it would boost Paxton—had the opposite effect. “So to be honest with you, the numbers—when we did that convention—it dropped our numbers. Everybody’s numbers dropped. Right now, yeah, not good.” (As Lawfare editor Eric Columbus pointed out, it’s also not good “when your 12-person private fundraiser includes someone who hates you enough to leak damaging audio.”)
The Paxton audio is a potent snapshot of some larger trends. All across the country, we’re seeing stories of GOP strongholds edging toward collapse as onetime Trump voters bear the weight of his administration’s incompetence. There are daily reminders that other Republicans are trying to create distance between the president and their campaigns, and even defying him on key matters. On Wednesday, in fact, West Virginia Senator Jim Justice broke with Trump on the matter dearest to the president’s heart—his mass deportation machine. “Maybe we’re doing something wrong here or there,” he said. You think?
Over the course of the year, as Trump’s approvals hit new lows and began to decimate the GOP’s midterm ambitions, I’ve tried to figure out what Trump and his fellow Republicans could do to reverse or even just arrest those trends. For a brief mad moment, I thought that the negotiated Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. and Iran might provide a springboard Trump could use to extricate himself from his crazy war. This didn’t come to fruition. The truth is, to save their bacon, Republicans would have to do things they are genetically incapable of doing: improve people’s lives and fix the economy. As I pointed out two weeks ago, Republicans—despite their misgivings about Trump—are still touting their One Big Beautiful Bill Act: a document that says the wealthiest among us deserve thousands of extra dollars, and the rest of us deserve some measure of pain.
It’s all adding up to defeat. The Cook Political Report says a Democratic takeover of the House is a “done deal” and that winning the Senate is “very realistic.” The Quinnipiac generic poll of the House has Democrats opening up a 51 percent to 39 percent lead, which are bloodbath numbers. The only headwind Democrats face is that while voters seem willing to give them their vote this year, they’re not as ready to give them their affection. Still, you’d rather be the Democrats right now than the GOP, who like Vice President JD Vance have been left begging voters for a “second chance” without understanding that they’ve already received that second chance—and they’ve blown it.
This article first appeared in Power Mad, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by deputy editor Jason Linkins. Sign up here.
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