Since losing the 2026 midterms to Democrats, Republicans under President Donald Trump have searched for a way to regain the political ground they lost. Yet according to a former Republican state chair, their answer is right in front of them: Abandon the president whose politics led to disastrous defeat.
"Chris Vance had a blunt read on last week’s election," wrote Seattle Morning News' Charlie Harger on Sunday. "The former Washington State Republican Party chairman said the Trump era is finished, and Republicans who want their party back need to start fighting for it now."
He quoted Vance telling him that Trump “will never again lead the Republican Party in a national election. The calendar and the Constitution prevent that. The battle for 2028 is beginning right now.”
Harger continued, "The people running the state party don’t see it that way. And Vance said the Republican groups he most wants to reach won’t let him in the room. Vance represented Auburn in the state Legislature and on the King County Council, chaired the state GOP and was the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in 2016. Now he’s with Our Republican Legacy, a national group that former U.S. Sens. John Danforth, William Cohen and the late Alan Simpson started in 2024. The goal is to steer the party back to what Vance calls its 'core conservative, Reaganite values.'"
Vance then told him, “We’re a movement within the Republican Party."
Speaking with AlterNet in September, Trump's former communications director similarly observed that the president has weakened his own party.
"I would say to you that they've become cowards," Scaramucci told AlterNet. "They've become self-aggrandizing. We started this interview by me saying that they only care about themselves and their own personal power, and they've become cowards. If they were not cowards, they would've sought Donald Trump's removal. If they were not cowards, they would've convicted Donald Trump in his second impeachment after the ridiculous, and I want to emphasize the ridiculous, Matthew, the ridiculous insurrection and the fomenting of that insurrection. If they were not cowards... But they're cowards."
Personally, Trump's moods have swung drastically since he suffered the setbacks he did during the 2026 midterm elections.
“The 80-year-old president’s response has swung wildly between conciliation, aggression and farce,” The Guardian recently reported, mentioning, as one example, Trump appointing “violent fighter and warrior” Dana White of the Ultimate Fighting Championship as White House press secretary before retracting it by claiming the offer was a joke.