An endorsement from Donald Trump could be a "kiss of death" for Republican candidates in the midterms next year.
Stanford professor David Brady believes the seal of approval from the president could make no difference or even impede candidates from securing their seat at the elections. Speaking to The Mirror US, Brady said, " think it'll have just about as much effect as it did in 2018, which is none. They lost 30 seats. But in 2018, when they lost 30 seats, they lost 30 seats."
It may also be a lack of "constraint" that affects the party in the 2026 elections, with Brady singling out the former Secretary of War, Jim Mattis, as an example. Brady said that "thre'll be more Democrats" in the House and Senate if poll predictions are to be believed, and this will be a lot worse for Trump.
He explained, "And the second thing is the first term, Trump did have some people like Mattis and others in there who worked to constrain 'em, and I don't see that constraint this time."
"So I suspect there'll be 25 to 30 seats that shift toward the Democrats in the House. The Senate is more of a toss-up because it's a lot of Republican safe seats." The split in the Republican party comes as a Nobel Prize-winning economist believes Trump himself is falling to pieces "on multiple fronts".
Paul Krugman suggested the series of collapses is only making the subsequent government hiccups worse, and that there is no end in sight to the problems for the GOP. He wrote, "Trump seems to be collapsing on multiple fronts, with the collapse on each front reinforcing the collapse on others."
"The Epstein affair is coming to a head even as the public loses all faith in his economic policy, and the whole structure of fear on which his regime rests appears to be evaporating. He also seems to be unraveling personally."
"We always knew that President 'Piggy' despised women and admired tyrants, seeing nothing wrong with hacking up your critics with a bone saw. But even a few months ago I think he would have been self-controlled enough to be less obvious about it."
"I don’t know how this ends, but all of a sudden a rapid implosion looks possible. No, I don’t know what that looks like. But the U.S. political universe looks very different than it did a few weeks ago."