President Trump sat down with his top political advisers in the Oval Office and made a decision that has the political class reaching for the antacids.
The establishment types want him to play it safe and stay out of the way.
But Trump just told his team exactly what he plans to do with $400 million — and the answer is going to shock the critics who thought they had him cornered.
Trump Calls His Shot With $400 Million War Chest
According to a report from The Atlantic, President Trump gathered his political advisers in the Oval Office earlier this month to figure out how to deploy the $400 million sitting in his MAGA Inc. super PAC with less than three months left before the November midterm elections.
Some Republican strategists pushed for a localized approach — pour the money into individual House and Senate races, keep the focus on specific candidates, and let Trump stay in the background.
Trump rejected that entirely.
The solution he settled on, according to three people familiar with the meeting, was to lean directly into the Democrat strategy of making the election about him. The president ordered a series of television advertisements about his own record that will serve as a backdrop to the hundreds of individual House and Senate contests.
He told his ad team exactly where to start. “Go look at the clips,” the president told his team, according to one person familiar with the meeting. “I cite accomplishments all the time.”
And the rollout is coming fast. “We are going to unload the guns on both chambers real soon,” one person familiar with the discussions said.
Trump wanted what one person described as “environmental lift” ads — commercials that would focus on nationalizing the midterms broadly around his victories — and he suggested that the ad makers mine his own on-camera statements as building blocks.
What the Advisers Told Him — and What Trump Heard
Republican strategists are concerned about Trump’s low approval ratings and voter anxiety about the economy. One person familiar with the Oval Office strategy meeting put it this way: “When the issues that you typically campaign on don’t move voters — or voters are pissed off at you about those issues — the question becomes: What do you campaign on?”
The answer his advisers gave him was that the polling problem is a messaging problem.
His advisers told him that the poor polling reflects the fact that the voting public still does not know about many of his accomplishments — the dozens of new stock-market highs, a decline in fentanyl deaths, the “sealed” southern border, the increase in domestic-manufacturing production.
Trump’s advisers are hoping to drive home a discrete set of facts about his accomplishments over the past 19 months. The list is likely to include new tax breaks for certain workers and seniors, the stock market’s rise over the past two years, the military’s boat strikes purportedly targeting fentanyl, and his efforts to “seal” the U.S.-Mexico border, to name a few.
That’s not a small list. And if voters genuinely haven’t heard it, the question of why falls squarely on a media establishment that spent 19 months covering everything except the wins.
One person familiar with the discussions noted that “the president and his agenda are on the ballot to some degree.” Trump apparently decided that “to some degree” wasn’t enough — he wants it front and center.
Rather than distance himself from congressional elections, Trump has argued that he can drive turnout in those races by making himself the center of the conversation.
That’s the same instinct that won him two presidential elections against opponents who had every institutional advantage. The consultants who told him to play small in 2016 were wrong. The ones urging caution now may be wrong again.
The Convention, the Stakes, and What Comes Next
Republicans hold a narrow seven-seat majority in the House and control the Senate 53-47. Control of both chambers is very much up in the air in November.
And the stakes couldn’t be higher. If Democrats regain control of either chamber, they will be empowered to block Trump’s agenda and launch investigations into his administration for the final two years of his term.
Democrats who claim they have no plans to impeach Trump if they retake the House are repeating the exact same messaging they used before the 2018 midterms — and everyone remembers what happened after that. The Ukraine impeachment and the January 6 partisan proceedings followed in short order. Those denials are a political tactic, not a sincere commitment, and voters should treat them accordingly.
Trump isn’t waiting around to find out. Next month, he will host the Republican Party for a two-day “midterm convention” rally in Dallas aimed at nationalizing the November races. RNC Chairman Joe Gruters described it this way in a post on X: “This convention will be a Trumpapalooza, to showcase the work Republicans have done to advance the America First agenda.”
One of the people familiar with the Oval Office meeting pushed back hard on the doom-and-gloom predictions: “Anybody that is saying we are headed for a shellacking absolutely can’t just read the numbers.”
The historical headwinds are real. Historically, the incumbent president’s party loses seats in midterm elections. Since World War II, the only two midterm years in which the incumbent president’s party gained seats in the House were 1998 and 2002.
But history also said Trump couldn’t win in 2016. And 2020. And 2024.
The establishment Republican consultants pushing the “stay local, stay quiet” strategy have a long record of losing. They managed to blow a winnable Senate in 2022 by spending on the wrong races, hedging on Trump, and letting Democrats define the battlefield. Now some of those same voices want Trump to step back again and trust the process.
Trump’s answer, delivered in the Oval Office, was to tell his team to go find the clips and load the guns. That’s not the posture of a man who thinks he’s losing. And if his advisers are right that the record simply hasn’t reached voters yet, a $400 million ad blitz aimed at telling that story could change the calculation entirely.
The media spent 19 months either ignoring the accomplishments or burying them under wall-to-wall coverage designed to keep approval numbers depressed. Now Trump is going to spend nine figures making sure voters hear the other side of that story before they walk into the voting booth.
Democrats wanted to make November a referendum on Donald Trump. He just accepted the terms.
Sources: Mediaite, “Trump Will Reportedly Spend Millions Making the Midterms a Referendum on His Record”; The Atlantic, as cited by Mediaite; KUT Radio; PBS NewsHour
