‘我们是怎么走到这一步的？’：特朗普定义下的惨败共和党竞选
2026年11月4日 05:08:11.754Z / 美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）
唐纳德·特朗普总统在三天内举行的第四次政治集会上，向一位亲密助手提出了这个困扰他许久的问题：共和党怎么会陷入这么糟糕的境地？
当时是10月中旬，距离中期选举只剩几周时间，共和党在全国数十个选区的支持率正在流失。众议院多数席位已告丢失，参议院控制权竟出人意料地陷入胶着。特朗普启动了为期一个月的挽救行动，穿梭美国各地，动员那些他两年前轻松拿下的深红选区里冷漠的选民。
“这一趟旅行可太要命了，”一名熟悉这次私下交流的人士说，“他反复问的就是‘我们怎么会走到这一步？’”
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总统姗姗来迟的反思，凸显了共和党人过去数月一直努力应对的严峻局势。
特朗普不仅面临历史级的逆风与斗志昂扬的民主党，还将国家拖入一场没有清晰退出策略的不受欢迎战争。油价飙升引发了全面通胀，选民对生活成本的焦虑也随之加剧。
这些自酿的苦果让特朗普的支持率跌至历史新低。面对愤怒且觉醒的选民，共和党候选人迫切寻求摆脱这位领袖的下行引力的方法。
“大家都气疯了，”一位情绪低落的得克萨斯州共和党选战负责人在选举日前夕表示，“而特朗普对这一切毫无助益。”
最终，共和党付出了惊人的政治代价。满怀不满的选民重创了共和党在参众两院的多数席位，对共和党的执政发起了令人震惊的否决，这种否决甚至延伸到了长期被视为保守派阵地的地区。
到周二晚些时候，众议院共和党人正遭遇一场选举溃败，失去了两个特朗普两年前以超过10个百分点优势拿下的选区。两名民主党消息人士认为，这场横扫式胜利可能让民主党在众议院获得240个以上席位，而这在几周前还是难以想象的。
参议院的轨迹在某些方面对共和党来说更为灾难性——他们原本只需守住少数传统红州席位就能保住控制权。但事实恰恰相反，选举结果出炉仅数小时后，由于堪萨斯州、艾奥瓦州和南卡罗来纳州这些可靠共和党阵地的失利，参议院也落入民主党之手。
选举后果很可能让特朗普的权力大幅削弱，并为他政府最后两年的日子做好准备——民主党即将发起的一连串调查与反对，将威胁到他的议程寸步难行。
与此同时，更广泛的共和党突然陷入迷茫。即便选举结果尚未出炉，党内已陷入互相指责与事后诸葛亮的局面，共和党官员们正为选举结果不佳做准备。据对十余名特朗普助手、顾问、党务官员与选战负责人的采访显示，当共和党人整理中期选举的残局时，这场未能达到他们已降低的预期的选举，分歧只会进一步加深。
这些共和党人描述了过去一年里一系列有问题的决策与转折点，包括过于乐观的策略、摇摆不定的 messaging（这里指竞选信息传递）以及错误选择了一批极弱的候选人。
但最终，他们一致认为，共和党根本无法摆脱特朗普的影响。总统发动战争——随后又花了六个月时间对经济后果置之不理，转而推进自己的面子工程——这瓦解了他的联盟，并被证明对跨越政治光谱的美国人具有极大的毒性。
“说实话，这只能怪一个人，”亚利桑那州共和党策略师巴雷特·马森说，“如果没有那场战争，整个选举周期会完全不同。而那场战争就是由一个人挑起的。”
周二晚间，一名白宫官员拒绝接受特朗普应为共和党失利负责的说法，坚称这是候选人自己的错。
“特朗普总统为许多参选候选人做的宣传，比候选人自己做得还好，”该官员表示。
但白宫如今淡化失利、称其为不可避免且与特朗普完全无关的努力，与去年此时相比已是重大转变——当时他的顾问们制定计划，要违背历史规律，通过让特朗普“成为选举的一部分”（正如他的办公厅主任苏西·怀尔斯去年12月所说）来保住共和党微弱的多数席位。
当时共和党领袖们因特朗普掌控着 MAGA（让美国再次伟大）选民的多样且看似稳固的联盟而感到有底气。他们因名为“伟大美好法案”的大规模减税与支出法案通过而振奋。经济看似具有韧性，通胀也在缓解，这与拜登执政时期的高成本形成了鲜明对比。
共和党还有另一张牌：由特朗普高级政治顾问詹姆斯·布莱尔策划的史无前例的选区重划计划，提前将十几个国会选区转向共和党，缩小了他们在11月需要捍卫的席位数量。
据当时在场人士透露，这个看似竞争席位的缩小地图，构成了布莱尔与怀尔斯从2月开始在私下会议上制定的乐观中期选举策略的基础。
他们敦促共和党高层议员与盟友推进严谨的经济 messaging，强调特朗普的成就，包括生活成本方面的进展以及控制药品价格等受欢迎的优先事项。凭借这样的良好开端，共和党随后将请求选民再给他们两年时间来有效完成这项工作。
他们坚称，共和党需要保持一致——尽管他们也承认，纪律涣散的特朗普很可能不会这么做。布莱尔对某组人表示，总统会“按自己的方式行事”。
事实证明，这是严重的轻描淡写。
不到两周后，特朗普突然袭击伊朗，发动旨在推翻其政权的空袭并炸死该国大量高层领导人，希望为总统带来快速而响亮的胜利。
相反，这次攻势坚定了伊朗的决心，将美国拖入一场几周内就造成美军人员伤亡、导致霍尔木兹海峡石油运输中断、引发全球能源危机的战争。
特朗普及其高级助手最初淡化了这些后果，吹嘘战争几乎获胜，最终只会持续四到六周。但即便在早期阶段，一些特朗普顾问私下也意识到这可能导致政治灾难。
“很多人不知道我们为什么要这么做，”当时一名特朗普顾问感叹道，并补充称这一决定已立即让数月来精心筹备的中期选举工作“失效”。
“如果油价涨到每桶100美元，谁知道会发生什么？”这名顾问说，“这就是政治风险，没有任何商量的余地。”
接下来几个月，前景进一步恶化，战争淹没了政治讨论与特朗普自己的议程。计划中的总统持续巡回宣传其成就的行程被搁置。重大战略决策——比如何时何地动用特朗普约4亿美元竞选资金的一部分——也被推迟。
盟友们最担心的是，特朗普背叛了他作为致力于提振经济、让美国远离外国战争的总统的核心政治身份。
“他们低估了基本盘的反弹，”白宫的一名特朗普盟友在战争进入第二个月、油价涨至每桶100美元、美国汽油价格接近每加仑4美元时表示，“如果我们在4月份还没充分意识到这一点，那11月就完蛋了。”
到了夏天，很明显这场战争并非特朗普反复声称的“彻底胜利”，反而将笼罩整个中期选举周期。短暂停火在6月破裂，共和党候选人在这场冲突上缺乏清晰 messaging，他们原本计划依靠的每一项经济支柱都已瓦解。
汽油价格突破4美元并持续上涨，食品价格也一路攀升，民调越来越显示，选民反对这位承诺“上任首日”就会降低生活成本的总统。
在一些共和党圈子里，议员及其顾问私下计算着在竞选最后阶段是否、以及如何大幅与特朗普在关键问题上划清界限。已有少数人批评他推高物价的关税政策，或是对这场战争表达不满——尽管态度谨慎，且有几人还是在提前通知白宫之后才这么做的。
但即便特朗普的支持率触底，大多数人还是不愿采取如此重大的举动。
一些人得出结论，在过去18个月里为特朗普的每一个举动辩护与辩解之后，现在抛弃他不会在中间选民那里赢得多少公信力——而且肯定会损害他们在 MAGA 基本盘中的地位。另一些人则太害怕招来特朗普的个人怒火，转而选择坚持下去，希望他剩下的最狂热支持者能帮他们冲过终点线。
在白宫，原本旨在宣扬共和党政策成功、巩固国会多数席位的宏伟计划，最终缩减为孤注一掷，最后一次动员特朗普的 MAGA 基本盘。
总统基本没有参与微观层面的政治规划，有时会对身边人说他已经完成了自己的工作：他已经赢得了白宫。相反，特朗普花了大量时间监督他认为对自己的 legacy 至关重要的华盛顿周边的建设项目。然而，绝大多数美国人认为这是在浪费时间和金钱。
当他确实谈论选民关注的问题时，通常是把它们推开。特朗普坚称油价很快就会暴跌，并辩称伊朗战争值得“短期痛苦”。他为关税欢呼，还不加保留地拥抱人工智能行业——尽管民调显示两党都对这两者心存疑虑。
至于主导美国人担忧的 affordability（可负担性）问题，一位白宫官员与一名顾问表示，他最初将其斥为“骗局”，导致助手们慌忙收拾残局。令他们错愕的是，特朗普随后又反复提及，最终将其变成了自己竞选演讲的固定内容。
“这是他们编造的一个词，”特朗普在9月北卡罗来纳州的一次集会上抱怨道，“我被这个‘可负担性’的词缠了一年半。”
特朗普亲自挑选的候选人
与此同时，特朗普助手们试图缩小的中期选举地图反而扩大了——部分原因是特朗普亲自挑选的几名参议院候选人实力较弱。
在得克萨斯州，特朗普不顾共和党国会领袖的反对提拔了肯·帕克斯，这位深陷丑闻的候选人表现极差，该州一些选战负责人私下甚至质疑他是否真的想争取这个职位。
与总统关系密切的迈克尔·惠特利在北卡罗来纳州起步缓慢，尽管得到多名特朗普核心顾问的指导，却从未恢复状态。特朗普冲动背书的达琳·格雷厄姆（她要代替已故的哥哥——南卡罗来纳州参议员林赛·格雷厄姆），在这个2024年特朗普以18个百分点优势获胜的州，完全像个政治新手。
令特朗普团队愈发沮丧的是，几个通常安全选区的参众议员被实力远超预期的对手打了个措手不及。
“他们甚至在有迹象的时候都在松懈，”当共和党人忙于挽救堪萨斯州参议员罗杰·马歇尔摇摇欲坠的选战时，一名顾问抱怨道，而民主党人如今预计将在该州近一个世纪以来首次获胜。
随着汽油和柴油价格飙升，拖累全国共和党人的支持率，白宫寻找任何可能安抚面临新一轮经济压力的选民的政策杠杆。
特朗普支持获取更便宜的汽油，并批准卡车司机使用通常专供非道路车辆的免税柴油。他承诺向农民发放总计约150亿美元的补贴，到选举日将全部发放到位。
但这些举措基本没有效果，有时反而被特朗普为支撑共和党其他脆弱基本盘而采取的行动削弱。其中最具破坏性的是临时增加牛肉进口的决定——此举旨在降低食品价格，结果却只惹火了中西部各州的共和党人。
一名与白宫关系密切的共和党选战负责人表示，这场战争本身不仅不受欢迎，还引发了政府无法控制的广泛国内后果。
“它引发了一个直接影响总统的通胀问题，由此引发了上千种其他问题，”这名选战负责人说。
共和党面临的这一日益加剧的威胁，进一步凸显了该党最大优势的重要性：特朗普在超级政治行动委员会（Super PAC）中积累的约4亿美元资金，其中大部分来自希望在他总统任期第一年拉拢人脉的富有的捐赠者和企业。
然而数月来，由于特朗普不愿动用自己筹集的资金帮助其他候选人，以及共和党官员自身在日益恶化的选举地图上难以决定如何、在哪里部署资金，名为 MAGA Inc. 的这个政治行动委员会一直不愿花钱。
经过漫长的讨价还价，总统最终批准在最后两个月向全国各场竞选投入数亿美元。
官员们表示，这笔资金是对共和党的利好，让该党的两个主要超级政治行动委员会能够集中资金用于摇摆选区和可能赢得的机会，而特朗普的 MAGA Inc. 则专注于红区内部的选区调整。
然而，如何最好地动用总统本人仍是个问题。
在特朗普的圈子里，一些盟友认为共和党的最佳机会是让竞选本地化，重点攻击民主党，希望共和党选民对“社会主义”的恐惧能胜过他们更直接的不满。另一些人则认为，民主党已将中期选举变成了针对特朗普的战争，且因共和党基层缺乏热情而感到担忧，他们认为现在放开总统全力竞选也没什么损失。
“根本没有对抗的 messaging，”另一位盟友表示，“因为他们在为《伟大美好法案》登广告，但没人在乎。”
特朗普最终自己解决了这场争论。据熟悉内情的人士透露，9月中旬，内部民调显示共和党在全国各场竞选中持续落后，特朗普对此愈发烦躁，决定亲自出手解决问题。
特朗普的团队匆忙组织了最后一个月的冲刺，让他几乎每天换一个城镇，在全国奔波，恳请他的铁粉去投票——即便这次不是为他投票。
“我请你们假装我是选举的一部分，”特朗普在密歇根州的一场集会上说道，几乎在每场集会都发出类似呼吁，“当我不是候选人的时候，人们就不出来了。请出来投票。”
有时，近乎每日的行程让特朗普干劲十足，他沉醉于人群之中，享受着“美国历史上最伟大的投票动员机器”这一名声——正如一名顾问所描述的那样。而在其他时候，他则对不得不为一场不是自己的竞选活动在最后关头如此辛苦而愤怒，据与他交谈过的人士说。
共和党高层也将这场巡回视为利弊参半：他们希望特朗普标志性集会的回归能重振共和党低迷的基层热情，但同时要引导他前往可靠的红区，将对摇摆选区的任何伤害降到最低。
共和党官员在最后几天坚称，这些集会显示出提振投票率的迹象——即便特朗普的竞选信息前后不一，有时甚至令人困惑。
据熟悉内情的人士透露，比如在俄亥俄州的几次访问中，总统公开将矛头对准共和党参议员乔恩·赫斯特德的“屁股”——这是一种极具特朗普风格的赞美，源于他不相信赫斯特德在竞选期间对自己曾是第三分区大学橄榄球运动员的身份宣传得不够多。
然而，尽管特朗普的铁粉充满热情，这并未缓解选民对战争和高物价的担忧，也未能推动民调，而民调越来越显示共和党正被蓝色浪潮超越。
与他交谈过的人士表示，在特朗普的巡回接近尾声时，他的心情明显低落了。因此，在距离选举日不到24小时的时候，特朗普回到了一个他常说能让自己“放松”的话题：建设。
周一，特朗普站在林肯纪念堂倒影池前，在他最后一次中期选举前的演讲中，详细讲述了他与池子里的藻类的斗争，以及维修管道和更换草坪的关键决策节点。
共和党官员表示，这是一个奇怪的决定，但并非决定性的。特朗普八个月前就已为他的政党铺好了路——现在剩下的一切就是做好迎接冲击的准备。
CNN的凯特兰·柯林斯与马努·拉贾为本报道作出了贡献。
‘How did we get here?’: Inside a losing GOP campaign defined by Trump
2026-11-04T05:08:11.754Z / CNN
President Donald Trump was in the midst of his fourth political rally in three days when he asked a close associate the question that had been troubling him for some time: How did the Republican Party get in this bad of shape?
It was mid-October, and with just weeks to go to the midterm elections, the GOP was bleeding support in dozens of races across the country. The House majority was lost. Senate control was, improbably, a toss-up. And Trump had embarked on a monthlong salvage mission, crisscrossing the US to rouse apathetic voters in the kinds of blood-red districts that he’d carried easily just two years ago.
“It’s a sh*t-ton of travel,” said a person familiar with the private exchange. “And the question he keeps asking is, ‘How did we get here?’”
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The president’s belated revelation underscored the dire state of affairs that Republicans around him had spent the last several months struggling to combat.
Already facing historical headwinds and an energized Democratic Party, Trump had plunged the nation into an unpopular war with no clear exit strategy. Gas prices soared as a result, fueling widespread inflation and a resurgence of voter anxiety over the cost of living.
The self-inflicted wounds sank Trump’s approval ratings to record lows. Faced with an angry and disillusioned electorate, Republican candidates were now desperately seeking ways to escape their leader’s downward gravitational pull.
“People are so mad,” one glum Texas-based GOP operative said in the run-up to Election Day. “And Trump hasn’t done anything to help any of that.”
In the end, the GOP paid a staggering political price. Frustrated voters decimated Republicans’ majority in both the House and the Senate, delivering a stunning rebuke of GOP governance that extended well into areas long considered conservative strongholds.
By late Tuesday, House Republicans were facing an electoral rout, losing several districts that Trump won by more than 10 points just two years ago. Two Democratic sources believe the sweeping victories could give them more than 240 seats in the House, a number that would have been unthinkable just a few weeks ago.
The Senate’s trajectory was, in some ways, even more disastrous for Republicans, who had entered the midterm cycle needing only to defend a handful of traditionally red seats to keep control. Instead, the chamber also flipped to Democratic control just hours after the polls closed due to losses in reliable Republican strongholds like Kansas, Iowa and South Carolina.
The aftermath is likely to leave Trump dramatically weakened and girding for a final two years in office marked by an onslaught of Democratic investigations and opposition that threaten to grind his agenda to a halt.
The broader Republican Party, meanwhile, suddenly finds itself adrift. Even before the results rolled in, it was awash in finger-pointing and second-guessing as GOP officials braced for a poor showing at the polls. That discord is only likely to deepen as Republicans sift through the rubble of a midterms that failed to meet their already low expectations, according to interviews with more than a dozen Trump aides and advisers, party officials and campaign operatives.
Those Republicans described a series of questionable calls and pivot points over the last year, including an overly optimistic strategy, indecisive messaging and the misguided selection of a handful of extraordinarily weak candidates.
But ultimately, they agreed, Republicans simply couldn’t outrun Trump. The president’s decision to go to war — then spend six months dismissing the economic fallout while pursuing his own vanity projects — unraveled his coalition and proved deeply toxic to Americans across the political landscape.
“Honestly, there’s just one person to blame,” said Barrett Marson, an Arizona Republican strategist. “If the war had not happened, it would be an entirely different election cycle. And only one person started that war.”
On Tuesday night, a White House official rejected any suggestion that Trump bore responsibility for the GOP’s losses, arguing it was candidates’ own fault.
“President Trump did a better job promoting many of the candidates on the ballot than the candidates did themselves,” the official said.
But White House efforts to now downplay those losses as inevitable — and wholly separate from Trump — represent a major shift from this time last year, when his advisers mapped out a plan to defy history and preserve the party’s slim majorities by putting Trump “on the ballot,” as his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, termed it last December.
GOP leaders at that point felt emboldened by Trump’s command of a diverse and seemingly durable coalition of MAGA voters. They were invigorated by the passage of a massive tax cut-and-spending package dubbed “The Big Beautiful Bill.” The economy looked resilient and inflation was easing, offering a potent contrast to the high-cost Biden years.
Republicans also had another weapon in their arsenal: An unprecedented redistricting scheme, orchestrated by top Trump political aide James Blair, to preemptively shift more than a dozen congressional districts toward Republicans and shrink the number of seats they might have to defend come November.
The smaller map of perceived competitive seats formed the basis of an optimistic midterm strategy that Blair and Wiles laid out in private meetings beginning in February, according to people in the room.
They urged top GOP lawmakers and allies to advance a disciplined economic message that emphasized Trump’s accomplishments, including progress on the cost of living and popular priorities like reining in drug prices. Based on that strong start, Republicans would then ask voters to grant them two more years to effectively finish the job.
The Republican Party needed to stay on the same page, they insisted — even as they acknowledged that an undisciplined Trump likely would not. The president, Blair told one group, would be “doing his own thing.”
That would turn out to be a massive understatement.
Fewer than two weeks later, Trump launched a surprise attack on Iran, killing much of the nation’s top leadership in strikes meant to collapse its regime and deliver the president a quick and resounding victory.
Instead, the offensive hardened Iran’s resolve, drawing the US into a war that within weeks had killed American service members and halted the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, sparking a global energy crisis.
Trump and his senior aides initially downplayed the repercussions, boasting that the war was nearly won and would ultimately last just four to six weeks. But even at that early stage, some of Trump’s advisers privately recognized that it could spell political disaster.
“There are a lot of people who don’t know why we needed to do this,” one Trump adviser lamented at the time, adding that the decision had immediately rendered months of meticulous midterm preparation “obsolete.”
“If oil hits $100 (per barrel), who knows?” the adviser said. “It’s a political risk, and there’s no ands, ifs or buts about it.”
The outlook darkened further over the next couple months, as the war swamped the political conversation and Trump’s own agenda. Plans to send the president on a sustained tour to tout his accomplishments were put on hold. Major strategic decisions — like where and when to begin spending Trump’s roughly $400 million war chest — were delayed.
Perhaps worst of all, allies fretted, Trump had betrayed his core political identity as a president devoted to juicing the economy and keeping the US out of foreign wars.
“They underestimated the backlash in the base,” one Trump ally said of the White House as the war stretched into its second month, oil hit $100 a barrel and US gas prices neared the $4-per-gallon mark. “If we’re not plenty concerned about that in April, then we’re dead in November.”
By the summer, it became clear that the war was not a “total and complete victory,” despite Trump’s repeated claims, and would instead loom over the entire midterm cycle. The June collapse of a short-lived ceasefire had left Republican candidates without a clear message on the conflict, as every economic pillar they had planned to run on melted away.
Gas topped $4 and continued to rise, grocery prices were marching upward and polls increasingly showed voters revolting against a president who had promised their costs would go down “on day one.”
In some GOP circles, lawmakers and their advisers privately calculated whether and how sharply to break with Trump on key issues in the campaign’s final stretch. A handful had already levied criticisms of his price-hiking tariffs or expressed displeasure with the war — though tentatively and, in several cases, not before giving the White House advance notice.
But even as Trump’s approval ratings bottomed out, most declined to take such a significant step.
Some concluded that, after defending and justifying Trump’s every move for the last 18 months, abandoning him now wouldn’t win much credibility with swing voters — and would assuredly tank their standing with the MAGA base. Others were simply too wary of inviting Trump’s personal ire, calculating instead that it was better to stick it out and hope his most ardent remaining supporters could pull them across the finish line.
Inside the White House, what had begun as an expansive plan to trumpet Republicans’ policy successes and cement the congressional majority was eventually whittled down to a last-ditch bid to turn out Trump’s MAGA base one final time.
The president had remained largely disengaged from the nitty-gritty political planning, at times remarking to those around him that he had already done his job: He’d won the White House. Instead, Trump spent inordinate time overseeing construction projects around Washington that he viewed as critical to his legacy. Americans, however, overwhelmingly saw it as a waste of time and money.
When he did address the issues at the top of voters’ minds, it was typically to wave them away. Trump regularly insisted gas prices would soon plummet and argued the Iran war was worth the “short-term pain.” He celebrated tariffs and unreservedly embraced the artificial intelligence sector, despite polls showing deep bipartisan skepticism of both.
As for the affordability worries dominating Americans’ concerns, he’d initially dismissed them as a “hoax,” sparking a scramble among his aides to clean up his remarks, an administration official and an adviser said. To their dismay, Trump then went out and said it again and again, eventually turning it into a regular component of his stump speech.
“It was a word they made up,” Trump complained during a September rally in North Carolina. “And I got hit with this affordability word for a year-and-a-half.”
Trump’s hand-picked candidates
The midterm map that Trump aides sought to shrink, meanwhile, had widened — in part due to the weakness of several of Trump’s hand-picked candidates for Senate.
In Texas, where Trump elevated Ken Paxton over the objections of GOP Hill leaders, the scandal-plagued candidate was performing so poorly that some operatives in the state privately questioned whether he even wanted the job.
Michael Whatley, a close ally of the president, got off to a slow start and never recovered in North Carolina despite the tutelage of several close Trump advisers. Darline Graham, who Trump impulsively endorsed to replace her late brother, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, looked every bit the political novice in a state that went for Trump by 18 percentage points in 2024.
And to the Trump team’s deepening frustration, several House and Senate lawmakers in typically safe seats had been caught flat-footed by their stronger-than-normal challengers.
“They were coasting, even when there were signs,” one adviser griped as Republicans raced to shore up Sen. Roger Marshall’s flailing campaign in Kansas, where Democrats are now projected to win for the first time in nearly a century.
As gas and diesel prices spiked, dragging down Republicans across the country, the White House searched for any policy levers that might assuage voters facing fresh economic strain.
Trump endorsed access to cheaper forms of gasoline and cleared the way for truckers to use tax-free diesel typically reserved for off-road vehicles. He promised payouts to buoy farmers that by Election Day totaled roughly $15 billion.
But those gestures largely fell flat, and at points were directly undermined by steps Trump took to try to shore up other parts of the ailing GOP base. Among the most damaging was the decision to temporarily boost beef imports — a move designed to lower grocery prices that ultimately succeeded only in enraging Republicans throughout the Midwest.
The war, one Republican operative close to the White House said, was not only unpopular on its own, but had generated widespread domestic fallout that the administration could not contain.
“It created an inflation issue that became directly relevant to the president, and a thousand other things cascaded from that,” the operative said.
That rising threat to Republicans across the political landscape only further heightened the importance of perhaps the party’s biggest advantage: the roughly $400 million that Trump had accumulated in his super PAC, much of it from wealthy donors and corporations seeking to curry favor during the first year of his presidency.
Yet for months, that PAC, MAGA Inc., declined to spend amid Trump’s reluctance to give away money he’d raised to help other candidates and Republican officials’ own difficulties in deciding how and where to deploy cash across a worsening map.
After extensive wrangling, the president finally greenlit pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into contests around the nation across the final two months.
It was a welcome infusion for the GOP that allowed the party’s two main super PACs to concentrate their spending on swing districts and pickup opportunities, officials said, while Trump’s MAGA Inc. focused on triaging races deeper into red territory.
Yet there was still the matter of how best to utilize the president himself.
Within Trump’s orbit, some allies felt Republicans’ best shot was to localize their races and keep the focus on Democrats, in hopes that GOP voters’ fears of empowering “socialism” would win out over their more immediate frustrations. Others believed that Democrats had already made the midterms about Trump and, alarmed by the lack of grassroots enthusiasm within the GOP, they argued there was nothing to lose now from unleashing the president in full.
“There’s no counter message,” said another ally, “because they’re taking out ads for the [Big Beautiful Bill] and nobody gives two f**ks.”
Trump eventually settled the debate himself. In mid-September, after growing agitated by internal polling showing Republicans consistently trailing in races across the country, he determined he’d take the matter into his own hands, people familiar with the matter said.
Trump’s team hastily organized a final-month sprint that put him in a different town nearly every day, barnstorming the nation to plead with his devotees to go vote — even if, this time, it wouldn’t be for him.
“I’m asking you to pretend that I’m on the ballot,” Trump said during one stop in Michigan, echoing an appeal he made at nearly every rally. “When I’m not on the on the ballot, people don’t show up. Please show up and vote.”
At times, the near-daily travel invigorated Trump, who basked in the crowds and relished his reputation as what one adviser described as “the greatest turnout machine in the history of American politics.” In other moments, he raged at having to work so hard in the closing stretches of campaigns that were not his, people who spoke with him said.
Top Republicans also viewed the tour as a mixed blessing; they hoped the return of Trump’s signature rallies could resuscitate enthusiasm within an inert GOP base, yet worked to steer him toward solidly red districts to minimize any harm to toss-up races.
The rallies, GOP officials insisted in the final days, showed signs of boosting turnout — even as Trump offered an inconsistent and sometimes-baffling closing message.
During several visits to Ohio, for example, the president publicly fixated on the shape of GOP Sen. Jon Husted’s “ass” — a uniquely Trumpian compliment borne from his disbelief that Husted hadn’t done more on the trail to emphasize his past as a Division III college football player, people familiar with the matter said.
Yet for all the enthusiasm on the ground among Trump’s diehards, it did little to assuage voters’ concerns about the war and high prices, or visibly move polls that increasingly showed Republicans being overtaken by a blue wave.
As Trump approached the end of his tour, his mood had darkened significantly, those who spoke with him said. So with less than 24 hours to Election Day, Trump returned to a topic that he’s often described as “relaxing” to him: Construction.
Standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on Monday, Trump devoted much of his final pre-midterm speech to detailing his battles with the pool’s algae and the key decision points involved in repairing pipes and replacing grass.
It was a bizarre decision, GOP officials said, but not a fateful one. Trump had set his party on this path eight months ago — all that was left to do now was brace for impact.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins and Manu Raju contributed to this report.