The Flailing President

The White House’s South Lawn was prepared just so: A full honor guard, complete with American and Chinese flags, stood at attention. The new White House helipad, made of four-inch-thick black-and-white California granite, seemed to gleam. President Trump appeared pleased—but something was missing. Where were the TV cameras?

For a president who needs media attention like he needs oxygen, this was an unacceptable development ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s welcome ceremony last week. Trump whirled around to his aides and demanded they fix it, and a staffer raced to the briefing room to ask ABC News whether it would film the arrival, two people familiar with the exchange told me on the condition of anonymity, given the private nature of the conversations. But the answer was no: The networks were boycotting participation in the TV-pool rotation in solidarity with CNN, which Trump had banned from the White House, along with two other media outlets, days before. No major U.S. television network recorded Trump’s over-the-top greeting for Xi, and the news channels refused to display images taken by the White House or any other outlet, American or Chinese. Trump did not get to show off his extravaganza. And he had only himself to blame.

At the risk of understatement, Trump has never been one to think all that many moves ahead. But his impulsive decision to ban media outlets spawned unintended consequences that derailed his own plans. Again. That’s been a real theme for much of this year: Many of Trump’s actions—quite a few impetuous and ill-considered—have only hurt him and his fellow Republicans ahead of November’s midterm elections. He was elected two years ago to drive down prices, but his tariffs have done the opposite, and a recent reignited trade war with Canada has hurt Republican candidates whose state shares a border with our neighbor to the north. His war of choice in Iran continues to sputter along, leaving gas prices elevated as Trump threatens annihilation one day and offers negotiation the next. He insists on championing AI while the public has swiftly turned on it. And he’s obsessed with vanity projects—including, yes, that helipaid that cost at least $5 million—even as polls suggest that many Americans feel that he is out of touch with the Everyman he once claimed to represent.

The numbers are bad: Trump’s approval rating dropped to 37 percent in a new Wall Street Journal poll this week, marking the lowest rating in that poll since 1990 for an incumbent president heading into a midterm election. He’s even lower in other polls. The president, the most dominant figure in the GOP in generations, will soon hit the campaign trail for his party—but he is beginning in deep-red states, an eyebrow-raising bit of scheduling that suggests acknowledgment of his weak political standing. More and more Republicans are starting to worry about a blue wave, one that seems certain to secure the House for Democrats but could very well, in an outcome unthinkable even a few months ago, yield a Democratic Senate as well. With barely a month until Election Day, and with early voting already under way in a number of states, Trump and his party are flailing.

A Trump rally has been the signature political event of the past decade of American politics. The president considered forever walking away from them after his final one during the 2024 campaign, but he has been talked into reviving them now and then at a smaller scale and with heavy security. He held only a handful last year and, despite aides promising that he’d barnstorm the country with more frequency in 2026, rallies have still been rare; in September, he held just one (in North Carolina). He’s traveled domestically far less this term, distancing himself from the concerns of his voters. But with October and the stretch run of the midterm campaigns now here, Trump seems set to gas up Air Force One.

Trump will begin with visits to two GOP strongholds (Oklahoma today, Alabama tomorrow) before then journeying on Saturday to Ohio, a state he won three times but where polls show Republican incumbent Senator Jon Husted trailing his Democratic opponent, former Senator Sherrod Brown. Ohio is not the only reliably red state that now seems to have a Senate seat up for grabs: Iowa, Texas, Alaska, Kansas, and maybe even Nebraska (where Trump will travel next week) are all now in play. Earlier this year, the 2026 Senate map looked foreboding for Democrats; now strategists from both parties view control as a toss-up.

Matthew Bartlett, a GOP strategist who worked in the first Trump administration but quit after the January 6 Capitol riot, told me that the president hasn’t given Republicans anything to run on, saying they have “no results to point to, no agenda to promise either.” And he said that many in the party feel that the bottom is dropping out and a wipeout could be coming. “Many recent elections have broken late, and hard, and often in one direction only,” Bartlett told me. “Among Republicans there is little hope that things get better before Election Day, but grave concern they may get worse.”

Despite the challenges facing Republicans across the country, neither Senate race in Alabama or Oklahoma seems particularly close (at least for now). So why is Trump going there? For any president, even an unpopular one, his most valuable resource is his time—and heading to those deep-red states comes at the expense of a potential stop in a swing district (though the stop in southern Oklahoma does bleed into a Texas media market). The answer might be surprisingly simple: ego. “The president knows he is still going to get big, adoring crowds there,” one close outside adviser told me. Plus, there has been some debate in GOP circles as to whether or not a Trump visit would actually help in some battlegrounds; several Republicans in tight races are weighing whether to request a presidential visit, party strategists have told me. Two candidates, Susan Collins of Maine and John Sununu of New Hampshire, have already said no, and others have refused to commit. Another GOP strategist familiar with the president’s travel plans insisted to me that Trump will travel frequently and help boost turnout for Republican candidates, but they allowed that polling may suggest states that Trump should avoid.

The White House downplayed any internal GOP concerns. The spokesperson Davis Ingle told me in a statement that “President Trump is the unequivocal leader, best messenger, and unmatched motivator for the Republican Party, and he is committed to maintaining Republican majorities in Congress.”

[Read: The Republicans are bolting from Trump]

Yet there have been signs of Republicans distancing themselves from Trump on more issues, including immigration enforcement and ending the war in Iran. But that unpopular conflict may shadow the party for the foreseeable future: Many diplomats from the Middle East who attended the United Nations General Assembly last week privately feel that the war will, in stops and starts, likely continue well into next year and potentially throughout the rest of Trump’s term, threatening to drag down Republicans’ political fortunes for multiple elections.

Trump has lurched from one distraction to another—Renaming Lake Ontario! Offering $5,000 to every adult citizen if Republicans win in November!—but he has yet to shift the electorate’s dim view of his presidency. He’s still pushing claims of election fraud, even though few Republican candidates have joined in. He even authorized the Department of Homeland Security to use taxpayer money to pay for what is, in essence, a Trump campaign ad despite prohibitions on using federal funds for propaganda. Trump took this provocative step while sitting on a massive campaign war chest, and many Republicans groaned at yet another unnecessary controversy. “I like the message, but it shouldn’t be paid for by taxpayer dollars,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota, told reporters this week.

The weekend before that, Trump abruptly banned CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House grounds without telling many of his senior aides (some of whom, on a Friday afternoon, had already left for the weekend). He was reportedly frustrated by some of the coverage that his close aide Natalie Harp had shown him. A few days later, a federal judge ordered that the three media organizations be allowed to return to the White House complex. Even then, the president’s aides found ways to temporarily block them from certain events—and trigger alarms that Trump was beginning to defy court orders. But some of the president’s advisers told me they saw the ban as counterproductive and could, as it did with the Xi visit, deprive Trump of some of the media coverage he craves.

That moment with China’s leader underscored what is arguably Trump’s biggest problem: He has lost touch with what Americans actually care about. The Xi summit was a cornucopia of warning signs for worried Republicans. It came amid a national discourse about the dangers of artificial intelligence, which included a push from industry leaders for additional safeguards on a fast-growing technology that, some insiders have warned, could wipe out humanity. But Trump’s been fixated on how AI has propped up the stock market and some sectors of the economy, and he has refused to slow down its growth. His one nod to how poorly AI is being perceived: He suggested it be renamed “super intelligence,” or SI.

[Read: The deferential president]

The entire decadent spectacle seemed out of step with a country deep in an affordability crisis. The black-tie guest list was dotted with billionaires and tech titans as Trump feted the leader of the Chinese Communist Party, even though he continues to assail Democrats for allegedly being communists. The president was eager to show Xi his under-construction ballroom that few voters support. Xi also seemed to feign interest when Trump gave him a tour of the Presidential Walk of Fame that he installed along the West Colonnade, complete with his predecessor Joe Biden depicted as an autopen. And then, as if the real spectacle wasn’t gaudy and elitist enough, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino posted an AI-generated video on social media that imagined him, his wife, and Trump family members at a champagne-soaked state-dinner after-party. Elon Musk promoted an even more ridiculous rendition. It all felt like a gift to Democrats, who pounced on the videos to paint those in the president’s orbit as dilettantes looking to enrich only themselves.

Susan Del Percio, a longtime Republican strategist, told me that even Trump supporters who are concerned about the economy feel that the president no longer cares about them. “Voters are angry because they are hurting, and through his actions, Trump is telling them that he doesn’t give a damn,” she said.

This week featured another event that likely will not land well with Americans who are struggling financially. Trump presided over a “Golden Age” event that featured business leaders and billionaires—and no talk of affordability challenges. Once more, Trump defended AI and even boasted that it would power a new government-services website. He then joked about where it stood among his accomplishments, saying, “If it is the biggest thing I’ve ever done, I’ve done a shitty job as president.”

You can bet Democrats will grab that one too.