President Donald Trump rarely hesitates to show his anger when political trouble closes in on him. However, as the Republicans face a growing challenge in the midterms, one well-known conservative claims that Trump's recent actions now seem less like normal combative behavior and more like clear desperation.
In his article on Tuesday in The Bulwark, Conservative pundit Bill Kristol cited Trump's sudden attack on Annie Andrews, the Democratic Senate nominee, as proof that the president has become concerned about a race the Republicans previously had no reason to fear.
“It’s neither unfair nor untrue to observe that one man, Donald J. Trump, is today exhibiting clear signs of not-at-all-quiet desperation,” Kristol wrote.
While traveling to Nebraska to campaign for Republican Senator Pete Ricketts, Trump posted a comment about Andrews on Truth Social on Monday. In that post, he used an anti-transgender slur against Andrews and encouraged the voters of South Carolina to support Republican Senator Darline Graham.
What struck Kristol was that Trump had not recently been in South Carolina and that he wasn't scheduled to campaign there, whereas Andrews had mostly not made Trump the focus of her campaign.
Kristol proposed a simpler explanation, that is, Trump might have been given a briefing on just how close the race has become.
Two recent public polls have revealed that Graham is just one percentage point ahead of Andrews. InsiderAdvantage gave Graham 46% and Andrews 45%, whereas the Trafalgar Group also found the race to be tied by a single point. In both cases, the margins were within the margins of error of the surveys.
The Republicans are now allocating money to address that issue. According to a report by Axios on Tuesday, the Senate Leadership Fund, the primary super PAC supporting Republican Senate candidates, is putting $5 million into South Carolina to assist Graham. The group referred to the spending as an "insurance policy."
It represents a major defensive expenditure in a state that Trump won easily in 2024 and where the Republicans have for a long time had the advantage in statewide federal elections.
Andrews took the high road when responding to Trump, sticking to what she is campaigning for.
“As a mom and a pediatrician, I’m in this race to fight for my patients, my three kids, and South Carolina,” she wrote, adding that she would work with anyone to lower costs and improve life for families.
Kristol linked South Carolina with the difficulties facing the Republicans elsewhere, mentioning that Trump was in Nebraska on Monday campaigning for Ricketts and referring to the competitive Senate races in states such as Alaska and Texas.
“It seems President Trump and I are not the only ones who reached the conclusion that South Carolina is in play,” Kristol wrote.
He claimed that the fact that Trump had interfered in an election which should normally be a safe one for the Republicans was significant.
So with a wave this real, and this big, and probably still getting bigger, even South Carolina could be swept away. And so Trump is living a life of noisy desperation, Kristol wrote.
