U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to media ahead of boarding Marine One to depart to attend the NATO Summit in The Hague, Netherlands, from the South Lawn at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 24, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
President Donald Trump's former White House communications director Mike Dubke said that it's clear Republicans messed up.
Speaking on CNN's Thursday panel, host Audie Cornish began the segment by saying that it's clear the GOP has put itself in a difficult position for the 2026 election. On Tuesday, Virginia voters passed a ballot measure to redistrict the state in response to the Texas Republicans doing their own mid-decade redistricting to try to redraw maps to maintain a congressional majority.
"So there's like a blame game in full swing. You got fingers being pointed every which way, mainly after this big redistricting fight loss in Virginia," said Cornish.
The Daily Beast reported something similar, noting that party officials are pretending that everything is fine and Democrats will only be able to make modest gains in the House. The redistricting map will reduce the number of Republican districts from five to one. The problem for the GOP is that it isn't the only state where they've lost battles like this.
The Wall Street Journal similarly reported that there is a growing sense among GOP officials that Trump “had miscalculated by pressing Texas last year." After the move, Democrats responded in kind, calling out Republicans for the move.
“We should have anticipated and played three or four moves ahead,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.). when speaking to the Journal. “We’ll pay for it in November."
He then told CNN's Manu Raju: "You gotta play chess. You got to think 2 or 3, four moves. And when you have an adversary or opponent, a political opponent, you gotta to always think, 'What are they going to do in response?' So I think this was foreseeable."
Former George W. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer agreed, “Unleashing Texas was bad for the nation and it turned out to be bad for the GOP."
“This was avoidable, and if Texas hadn’t gone first, it is conceivable that Republicans actually would be better off than where they are now,” he added. “So, Republicans picked the fight and lost the fight.”
Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Tx.) said that he's hearing people ask whether Republicans were "asleep at the wheel." He told CNN, I "can't disagree with that. We should start putting money where it needs to go because, you know, losing the House here because of a potential, you know — now going to 10 to 1 in Virginia is not a good thing."
Cornish noted that the other benefit to Democrats is that their voters are already mobilized months before the election.
"You know, at a certain point it feels like Democrats were actually able to win this," she said.
Dubke said that it's clear they're living in a world where "two wrongs make a right." He means that Republicans did something wrong, so Democrats responded by also doing something wrong to make it equal again.
"We shouldn't have been in this fight in Texas to begin with," complained Dubke. "We wasted a lot of money. I guess the broadcasters are happy, but everybody else is upset. We wasted a lot of money. This Virginia referendum is a vote that goes against two previous elections in which Virginians chose to have a nonpartisan commission set this up. This is just a terrible place for us to be."
He tried to look on the bright side by saying that it happens every ten years anyway, but Cornish said that was the point from Democrats at the start.
"Isn't that the point, that we do it every ten years, not every five?" she said. Dubke said he isn't certain it makes things any better.
Former Biden White House director of message planning Meghan Hays countered that Republicans "drastically miscalculated ... the political risk here. And I think that they just thought Democrats would be asleep at the wheel."
White House deputy chief of staff James Blair was the architect behind the redistricting strategy. He has been on leave to run the Trump political operation despite all of the recent failures.
“What I expect is that when all of this redistricting sort of continues this cycle is that there will be a narrow advantage for Republicans,” he told the Washington Post.