President Donald Trump appears to be staring down lame-duck status as the 2026 midterm election approaches, but that doesn't mean his administration will be any less dangerous, even if the GOP gets the thrashing experts expect, according to one ex-GOP analyst.
The president's overall approval rating his at 40% as of November 23, which is down 16 points from when he took office, according to The Economist. Similarly, Americans have largely soured on Trump's domestic and economic policies. Republicans also handed Trump a stern rejection by overwhelmingly supporting legislation to force the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, something the administration tried to prevent by pressuring people like Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) to vote against the bill.
Rick Wilson, a co-founder of The Lincoln Project and a former Republican strategist, argued in a new Substack essay that these issues can lead one to believe things are about to return to normal. However, Wilson warned, Trump is likely to become more dangerous as his support fades.
"Trump is not planning a quiet sunset," Wilson wrote. "He is planning a siege."
The president appears to be laying the groundwork for this siege by appointing people who challenged the legitimacy of the 2020 election to key posts within the federal government.
One such individual is Heather Honey, Trump's deputy assistant secretary for election integrity at the Department of Homeland Security. Honey worked for a state anti-voting group in Pennsylvania and continues to spread the debunked theory that Trump lost the 2020 election because of widespread voter fraud, according to Democracy Docket.
"Trump is already aiming the federal machine at the midterms...If you think a lame duck can’t cause chaos, you didn’t learn the lesson of 2020," Wilson wrote. The lame-duck period then gave Trump and his allies space to organize a coup attempt...Now imagine that same playbook with four years of institutional capture, a more radical staff, and a president who knows he can’t be reelected and doesn’t care who he burns."
"Watch what happens in red state legislatures and courts when Trump calls on them to throw out the election results, or when Mike Johnson declines to seat newly elected members."