President Donald Trump told Republican candidates at his midterm convention in Dallas to run their campaigns as if he were personally on the ballot — an order, just one week later, they appear to have ignored, New York Magazine reported Thursday.
"I'm asking you to pretend that I'm on the ballot," Trump told the crowd. "I'm on the ballot. I'm on the ballot."
But a Washington Post analysis of more than a million social media posts found the opposite trend playing out among candidates. Republican mentions of Trump or MAGA have fallen sharply compared with earlier in the year, with some campaigns scrubbing his name from their websites entirely, and candidates in several competitive races skipping the convention altogether.
Ironically, the politicians talking about Trump most right now are Democrats, who referenced him in about one in five of their posts the same week, according to the analysis.
Republicans are similarly cold on Trump's other convention centerpiece: a proposed one-time $5,000 "Trump dividend" for every citizen if the GOP holds Congress, with no explanation of funding or implementation. Democrats have mocked the idea as a barely disguised bribe, while most Republican candidates are either dismissing it as fiscally reckless or simply avoiding the topic. A recent poll shows voters are overwhelmingly against the proposal.
New York Magazine columnist Ed Kilgore argued Thursday that the disconnect stems from Trump's insistence that affordability concerns are a "hoax" and Congressional Republicans' desperation to address rising prices.
"Congressional Republicans, on the other hand, think public concerns about living costs need to be addressed via some party-branded proposals to show that the party understands voters’ top issue and intends to do something about it," Kilgore wrote.
"This enrages the president, who wants everyone to know that America has in fact entered a 'golden age' in which the economy is red hot and getting better every day in every way. He regards the whole affordability issue as a “hoax” (as he insisted once again in Dallas) and seems to think of voters who fret about their ability to make ends meet as ignorant ingrates who need to be told they’ve never had it so good."