President Donald Trump is fighting “patterns of history” in the upcoming midterm elections, and even his own aides recognize he could be his own worst enemy in trying to counter them.
Halperin referred to a Tuesday evening working dinner at the Capitol Hill Club, near the House office buildings, with 75 to 100 attendees, all focused on strategizing ahead of the midterm elections.
“The mood, according to one attendee, was not panicked,” veteran political journalist Mark Halperin reported for Fox News. The “focused” meeting was heavy on history and statistical analysis and included administration heavy-hitters like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. The participants listened seriously, but even they acknowledged all their plans could be upended by the president himself.
“Perhaps the most candid moment of the evening came when Team Trump acknowledged a central reality of this presidency: Donald Trump will do what he wants to do,” Halperin reported. “He will say what he wants to say. He will not be governed by slide decks, message matrices or pleas from Republican candidates and strategists.”
The strategists in question included meeting host and Trump’s chief political architect Susie Wiles, who spoke briefly. Pollster and strategist Tony Fabrizio followed with 25 slides including demographic, issue, messaging and other statistics.
“The headline: The economy will be THE issue at the polls this November,” Halperin reported. “Not immigration. Not foreign policy. Not Epstein or the border. Not investigations or indictments or Jan. 6 retrospectives. The economy.”
Much as he did during his earlier campaigns, Trump’s 2026 midterm elections will focus less on traditional media outlets like broadcast or cable TV and more on digital platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. Wiles, Fabrizio and the rest also identified 36 House races and seven Senate races that would be critical for Trump’s midterm election successes — if Trump himself does not get in their way.
“The rest of the political apparatus, therefore, must be relentlessly data-driven and on message — two separate but related campaigns running in parallel: one instinctual and improvisational, the other disciplined and empirical,” Halperin reported.
Because Trump is widely expected to lose seats in Congress during the upcoming midterms, outsiders are alarmed at his calls for unprecedented direct federal interference in the elections. They believe that he is going to try to rig them so that he will not lose control of Congress and get impeached in 2027.
“I am worried, as I have said and others have been pointing out, about whether we will even have free and fair elections in 2026, let alone in 2028,” conservative historian Robert Kagan told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. “I think Trump has a plan to disrupt those elections, and I don't think he's willing to allow Democrats to take control of one or both houses as could happen in a free election.”
Trump is trying to require photo ID and proof of citizenship at voting places and has openly considered sending ICE to voting locations and challenging the results in key races where he loses. All of this, however, may backfire on him.
“His executive order imposing national election rules was challenged in court and sidelined,” Washington Monthly Politics Editor Bill Scher recently wrote. “His legislation imposing national election rules can’t clear the Senate and is turning Republicans against each other. His national voter database can’t get off the ground. The nationalize-elections well is dry."
He added, “Militarization of immigration enforcement has already backfired on Republicans, and any armed presence around election sites could easily do the same at the worst possible time. The number of energized and determined voters could easily outdo the number of intimidated voters.”