President Donald Trump “has picked up on the fact” that a growing number of GOP lawmakers are racing to distance themselves from him as his approval ratings hit record lows — and he gave one GOP candidate a fierce “grilling” over the phone, Zeteo reported Saturday, citing multiple administration officials and advisers.
“As several Trump advisers and administration officials tell Zeteo, the president has picked up on the fact that a bunch of Republican politicians are cynically slinking away from the president’s increasingly toxic brand in the lead-up to November’s midterm elections,” Zeteo’s report reads.
“In the past several weeks, the U.S. president has, according to these sources, repeatedly vented to advisers that too many Republican candidates and lawmakers are leaving him out of their TV ads in the final weeks before Election Day.”
Recent polling data aggregated by CNN’s Harry Enten on Friday showed Trump with the “highest ‘strong disapprove’ rating going into a midterm election on record,” with 50% of Americans indicating that they strongly disapproved of Trump’s job performance. Additionally, the share of Americans who strongly approved of Trump’s performance fell sharply when compared with past midterm cycles.
With the midterms just over a month away as of Saturday, a growing number of Republican lawmakers and candidates have publicly broken with the president, notably on his deeply unpopular war against Iran. Others, like GOP congressional nominee in Kentucky Ralph Alvarado, have been accused of scrubbing their campaign websites of prominent references to Trump.
A Trump adviser told Zeteo on the condition of anonymity that the president’s team makes “sure to flag for the president fresh examples of 2026 GOP candidates whose campaign websites have scrubbed or minimized references to President Trump and his record.” Another source speaking on the condition of anonymity revealed details of an allegedly tense phone call between Trump and a GOP candidate.
“One Trump ally currently running for office recently received a call from the president grilling them on why they weren’t running more aggressively on Trump’s second-term accomplishments, according to a source familiar with the phone call,” Zeteo reported.
Trump reached the lowest approval rating of his political career earlier this week, with a Reuters/Ipsos poll finding that just 32% of Americans approved of his job performance.
