U.S. President Donald Trump reacts as he holds a press conference at the end of his participation in the NATO leaders summit at the Bestepe Presidential Compound in Ankara, Turkey, July 8, 2026.
Former Republican strategist Steve Schmidt has clearly had enough of President Donald Trump. Now he’s willing to get his organization’s money involved.
The final 80 days leading up to the 2026 mid-terms are a pivotal time for GOP majorities in the House and Senate. Under their current Republican management, the House is rubber-stamping many of Trump’s unpopular policies. The Senate, while only slightly more cautious about Trump’s orders, appears unwilling to enforce Congressional clout over the White House, and Senate Republican leaders are happy to approve Trump’s most controversial administrative appointments.
This must end, said Schmidt, who co-founded the hotly anti-Trump Lincoln Project in 2019.
“That is why The Save America Movement is launching the “Donald Trump Hates You” campaign, which is built on this simple truth. Beginning today, Americans will see a plane with this banner flying across the Florida panhandle,” Schmidt announced on his substack. “Next weekend, posters will go up in Washington, DC, timed to coincide with the Freedom 250 Grand Prix.
Trump, said Schmidt, is “filled with contempt for the American people, to whom he has lied — when it was being tracked in his first term by The Washington Post Fact Checker — more than 30,000 times, and from whom he has stolen billions of dollars.”
“He has unleashed state violence against the American people, smeared the reputations of murdered citizens, prosecuted innocent Americans, and lost a war under the weight of his fantastical incompetence,” Schmidt continued. “He has idiotized every institution he touches. He tried to overthrow the US Constitution when he lost a fair election in a deranged coup attempt that has weakened the republic more than any single act ever undertaken by any president across 250 years.”
Trump also “hates the US Constitution,” argued Schmidt, pointing out Trump’s December 2022 bogus claim of a stolen election, and his argument that “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”
Schmidt then ticked down a long list of other “hates” Trump has accumulated, using Trump’s own words to incriminate his grabby behavior toward women. His own quotes also suggest he hates Muslims, immigrants, and Black people.
He also hates his own “sycophants,” who Schmidt said Trump “abandoned on Air Force One as he escaped the menace of the Iranians on an Ankara tarmac at three mph in a catering truck with Natalie Harp, whom he apparently loves.”
But above all, Trump apparently hates his own supporters, said Schmidt. “There is no group he seems to despise more.”
“I mean it. He hates you,” he added. “Voting for someone who hates you never works out for anyone. The easiest way to tell if you are hated is to listen and watch. Hear the words and watch the actions. … Observe the disgustingness and hideousness of this man. Appreciate what he is and what he stands for. More than anything know this: Donald Trump hates you … and you get a vote in 81 days.”
