President Donald Trump declared he's not concerned about Republicans facing a midterm reckoning this fall, but a columnist noted the frantic moves he's making that show otherwise.
The soon-to-be-80-year-old president insisted "I don't care about the midterms" at last week's cabinet meeting, drawing cheers from Democrats and gasps from political commentators, and blithely dismissed voters concerns about gas prices and other high consumer costs, but New York Times columnist Frank Bruni said those statements are just for show.
"Don’t be fooled," Bruni wrote. "He may be too arrogant and insulated to fret as much as he should, but there are reasons for his public nonchalance. There are also plenty of exceptions to it."
The most obvious evidence is Trump's intense focus on stacking the deck in his party's favor by pushing mid-decade redistricting in GOP-led states, Bruni wrote, and he has punished Republicans who resisted those efforts in Indiana and elsewhere.
"The success of this campaign of intimidation has no bearing on the presidential contest in 2028 or on Senate races this year," Bruni wrote. "It’s all about the House, which just so happens to be the chamber most often affected by midterm pendulum swings and the one where Democrats are probably best poised to reclaim a majority. If that didn’t trouble — even terrify — Trump, why all the thundering and threats?"
Trump has also demanded legislation that would limit mail-in voting and require voters to provide proof of citizenship, which Republicans believe would suppress Democratic votes, and while those measures are unlikely to pass the Senate, Bruni said that still benefits the president politically.
"His overwrought assertions of the need for it serve his favorite fiction: Democrats steal elections, so Republicans must go to great lengths to defend themselves and the country against that," Bruni wrote. "The unflagging energy he devotes to this nonsense reflects the undeniable angst he feels about the midterms. He’s prophylactically delegitimizing and challenging any results that repudiate him."
Trump has acknowledged that the president's party historically loses the midterm election, as the GOP did in his first term, and he told Republicans earlier this year that would likely mean another impeachment if Democrats regain the majority after November's vote.
"That doesn’t sound like denial. It sounds like distress," Bruni wrote. "And while the five months since then may have blurred Trump’s focus and left him even more estranged from reality than he typically is, they haven’t knocked him unconscious. Beneath all that bluster and makeup, he’s sweating."
