GOP midterm prospects are in ruins — and they only 'have Trump to thank': Fox News analyst

President Donald Trump with Sen. John Thune and First Lady Melania Trump on January 8, 2025 (Office of Senator John Thune/Wikimedia Commons)

The odds that Republicans will lose both the House and the Senate in the upcoming midterm elections are increasing, and according to a new breakdown from a Fox News analyst, it will be entirely President Donald Trump's fault.

Democrats have been tipped to retake the House majority since late last year, when simmering voter resentment against Trump saw his approval rating tank and led to major Democratic victories in off-year elections. Due to an unfavorable slate of races, the Senate was seen as a long shot for the party initially, but as Trump and his agenda have grown more and more unpopular, the odds have slowly begun to break for Democrats, with some polls now putting the chamber as a toss-up.

Juan Williams is a veteran journalist who currently works as a political analyst for Fox News. Writing for The Hill on Monday, Williams said that the president's obsession with losing messages and the GOP's fear of opposing him means that the Democrats "may have Trump to thank" if they retake the Senate in November.

"Why is President Trump stuck on a political message that is leading his party to lose control of Congress?" Williams wrote. "The answer is staring Republicans in the face. But they can’t find the heart of the daring boy in the fairytale who speaks up to say, 'The Emperor has No Clothes.' Well, if you held a congressional GOP seat, do you think you’d be willing to go to raise your hand and tell Trump that President Biden won the 2020 election fair and square? Fear of getting that hand chopped off — figuratively speaking — has congressional Republicans refusing to speak up."

Williams highlighted the recent about-face of Texas Rep. John Cornyn, who changed his long-held opposition to nuking the filibuster in order to help pass Trump's contentious SAVE America Act. Cornyn is currently running in a heated GOP primary for a Senate seat in Texas, and many suspect he changed his stance in order to court an endorsement from Trump.

The SAVE Act itself is another obsession of Trump's that might be holding the GOP back from mounting an effective midterm strategy, with the president refusing to sign any new bills until it is passed. Stemming from his grievances over his loss in 2020, the bill would implement sweeping changes to voting laws, requiring proof of citizenship and ID to be presented when registering and voting, as well as eliminating virtually all mail-in voting. As Williams noted, these provisions could unintentionally harm the GOP, as they would likely disenfranchise certain voting blocs more likely to vote conservative, including senior citizens and women who change their last name after getting married.

Williams further noted that Trump has seemed largely uninterested in his own party's concerns about the midterms.

"None of that appears to matter to Trump. He will be 80 years old before the November election," he wrote. "His social media messages are increasingly violent and angry. He has launched a war without a clear endpoint. Polls show the war is unpopular with most Americans, notably all-important independent voters. Any strategy to bolster Republican victories in the 2026 midterms is secondary to him. After his party suffered major losses in the 2018 midterms, during his first term, Trump said the problem was simply that he was not on the ballot."

He added later: "It is no longer outside the realm of possibility that this time next year, House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) — armed with large majorities will be looking to pass a series of widely supported Democratic policies. Among them: Medicare for All, a $15 federal minimum wage, an end to the carried-interest loophole, and limits on what critics describe as the blank check of foreign aid to the Netanyahu government in Israel. And if that happens, Democrats may have Trump to thank."

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