‘Political malpractice on an epic scale’: Insiders panic over Trump's midterm plan

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during the annual Thanksgiving turkey pardoning ceremony in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., November 25, 2025.

As President Donald Trump continues his various plans to meddle in the 2026 midterm elections, a new report reveals that his controversial midterms convention is taking place in spite of deep reservations from his own party — and pretty much entirely because of Trump's say-so.

"'The president called me two nights before Thanksgiving last fall and he said, ‘Mike, we gotta do a midterm convention,’' Speaker Mike Johnson said,'" reported The New York Times' Annie Karni, Reid J. Epstein and Luke Broadwater on Sunday. “And I said, ‘That’s not a thing.’ And he said, ‘Make it a thing.’ OK. So we’re gonna do a midterm convention.”

The journalists earlier wrote that, despite Trump having hundreds of millions in the coffers presumably to spend on local races, he has not used it so far.

"And as they brace for the final costly weeks of their campaigns, he has yet to dole out hardly any of the nearly $1 billion he says his political action committee has raised," the Times wrote. "'This is my money that I control,' Mr. Trump said on Friday, suggesting he would spend between $400 million and $500 million on 'Republicans that I think are good.' His political operation reported on Saturday that it had made its first expenditure, to defend a Senate seat in Texas. But beyond that, Republicans have received little information about when or where the money come."

Indeed, all Trump did when he met with beleaguered Republicans last week is insist that he will make himself front and center during the upcoming midterms.

"In the White House Rose Garden last week, President Trump gathered some of the most politically endangered House Republicans for a dinner where he promised to make himself the face of the party’s uphill battle to keep control of Congress," they reported. The same article quoted Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), a moderate who is not running for reelection.

“I’m fearful that the president’s numbers are a ball and chain that will be hard to overcome,” Bacon wrote. “I’m worried that we’ve lost a lot of our swing voters. In the Midwest, tariffs aren’t popular. Ukraine polls at 70 percent — why aren’t we doing more for them? Nebraskans don’t like chaos and all the name calling and treating our allies bad.”

One conservative commentator bemoaned the fact that Trump has turned the midterms into a referendum on himself, arguing this is not in the party's best interest.

"Well, I mean, this is political malpractice on an epic scale, because normally if you're, you know, a swing-seat Republican, what you're trying to do is make this anything other than a referendum on Donald Trump," Charlie Sykes complained on Saturday. "If you make it a referendum on Donald Trump, you are in you're in deep s——. And so what is the message coming from the White House? It's got to be all about me. And next week they're having that midterm convention, that's going to be a s——show for the ages."

There is other anecdotal evidence that Trump's plan won't work.

"Listen, I have yet to find a Republican operative heading into these midterms who thinks that this GOP convention makes any sense whatsoever. It's going to be extraordinarily expensive for the Republican Party to put on," "The View"'s Alyssa Farah Griffin recently said. "And what I keep hearing is every single dollar that the party has should be going toward fighting for vulnerable House Republicans to try to retain control of the House, in supporting must-win Senate seats again to try to retain control of the Senate."

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