U.S. President Donald Trump attends an event to honor Angel Families who have lost family members to crimes committed by people in the country illegally, at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 23, 2026.
Republicans are fearful that President Donald Trump is actively working against them in the midterm elections in a no-win hostage crisis.
The Atlantic's Michael Scherer spoke to CNN's Audie Cornish on Monday about the president's ongoing efforts costing the GOP the midterm elections.
"The latest concerns are spilling into the open after President Trump refused to sign a bipartisan housing bill at the last minute last week. Why? Well, because he wants Congress to pass his controversial bill aimed at controlling elections," Cornish said, announcing the segment.
Republicans spent the past several days speaking out about the failure on "affordability," which the president continues to believe is a "Democrat hoax."
NOTUS reporter Igor Bobic said that "a whole lot of Republicans" agree with the so-called "YOLO Caucus," meaning (you only live once). Bobic said that outgoing Republicans are allowed to speak more freely, but that behind the scenes, other Republicans are afraid to go on the record. Still, they are all saying the same things.
"They see a President who's more focused on, you know, renovating a golf course as opposed to signing a housing bill, a huge bipartisan housing bill that passed Congress overwhelmingly, that still hasn't gotten signed," Bobic said.
Cornish thinks that it was to "rob Democrats" of the photo-op and a success story, but Axios reporter Alex Thompson said, "it's much more petulant than that."
"And that it was a completely emotional decision by Trump, because he is obsessed with the SAVE Act and he denied his party wins and Republicans are basically resigned at this point," Thompson said. "Donald Trump is just never going to be on message throughout the midterms. He's not going to be up front talking about specific policies to bring down prices. And what you're seeing, in some ways, is a second-term Trump that just has an exhausted legislative agenda. They have not really proposed any big things."
But it was Scherer who explained that behind closed doors, Trump's aides have had to work hard to explain to him why he should care about the midterm elections.
"He basically assumes he's going to lose the House, he doesn't think it matters much, so he's trying to figure out what he can do, what leverage he has here, and right now he's taking his own party hostage," Scherer said. "I mean that housing bill is a messaging bill that's supposed to help Republicans go home and say, look, I do care about affordability, I'm doing stuff for you."
Instead, Trump is "hurting his own party."
Thompson added that in the new book by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan talks about the Trump political team drafting memos as far back as December, talking about Trump's lack of focus on issues that matter to voters. This was before the Iran war.