U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at the Republican National Midterm Convention in Dallas, Texas, U.S., September 9, 2026.
CNN polling analyst Harry Enten could not understand the logic behind Republicans’ rare mid-term convention, and he did not hold back his outrage on a panel discussing the RNC Dallas event.
“This is like bizarro land. I mean, what are we doing? A midterm convention? And we're going to put up a president in primetime who's more underwater than the Titanic,” Enten said. “You know, he's twice as unpopular as he was back in 2018. The majority of voters say that, in fact, they're less likely to vote for a candidate who's endorsed by Donald Trump.”
“Wait, what was that?” demanded CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins.
“A majority of voters say that they are less likely to vote for a candidate if they are endorsed by Donald Trump,” Enten repeated. “This was a CNBC poll. And more than that, you know, and then it's going up against … the first football game of the season. So, on one hand, they're putting this president front and center. On the other hand, they're putting it up against what is now America’s pastime.”
Collins pointed out that Trump brought “half of his administration” with him to the Wednesday convention to praise the president’s work, including hi Attorney General Todd Blanche and Vice President JD Vance — neither of whom poll particularly high among voters.
“It's not focused on Republicans that are in tight races,” Collins said.
“I have to say there's a reason this hasn't happened before,” said panelist Bill de Blasio, former Democratic mayor of New York. “It’s extremely strange. Look, if you want to do something right before the election … to really energize your base, I could see that. And if you were doing something a year out, I could see that. But I cannot understand what's going on here. And it makes me feel at times like he's given up on the midterms.”
“I mean, how many things can you do that literally are poking your own party in the eye before people say, ‘wait a minute, maybe there's actually a pattern here.’ This looks like a president who already assumes he has lost the House of Representatives, because no one in their right mind would be doing this thing right now,” de Blasio added.
“I think is also interesting that Trump still has a massive war chest that he's barely spent on these midterms,” said panelist Alyssa Farah Griffin, who worked with Trump in his first term. “He just deployed something like $10 million to Ken Paxton's [Texas Senate] race. Republicans shouldn't even have to be spending in a Texas Senate seat. So, I think a lot of Republicans around the country are like, ‘rather than do this convention, give us some money, get us on the airwaves, donate to our superPACs, not really this.’”
And Griffin agreed with Enten that it was “wild to do this the night that football is back.”
“For a man who knows TV better than probably any living president, I have to imagine he's really angry that his staff booked this night, the night that football is back.”