Rizky Amelia
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he intends to spend 32 days on the road this autumn, crisscrossing the country to campaign for Republican candidates in the November midterm elections that will determine which party controls Congress. Speaking to reporters at the White House, the president described the plan as a "literally a 32-day tour," with stops planned in states such as Texas and Ohio, where closely fought races are already under way. (Photo: Trump speaks to reporters at the White House on September 29, Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
The size of that commitment reflects how heavily the midterms are weighted on one man's political fortunes. The race is widely regarded as a referendum on Trump's second term in office, and its outcome will decide whether his political agenda confronts fresh legislative hurdles — or a much easier path — for the remaining two years of his presidency.
Trump has also stoked the stakes himself, going so far as to speculate that if Democrats capture both the House of Representatives and the Senate, he could face a third impeachment. The remark, made in the same period as his campaign announcement, underlines how the president has framed the midterms as an existential test rather than a routine off-year election.
On Tuesday, however, the president's tone was notably confident. He expressed optimism about his position and openly denied suggestions that Republican candidates are trying to put distance between themselves and his administration ahead of the vote — a suggestion that would itself suggest weakness if true.
"You love me, and I love them," Trump said, before adding: "They all want me to go. I'm one person. They all want me to go campaign." The exchange is a concise summary of the president's theory of the midterm map: that Republican nominees across the country genuinely want his brand, and that his personal popularity is an asset they can borrow rather than a liability they need to flee.
His optimism sits uneasily alongside the polling picture. A Wall Street Journal poll released last week put Trump's approval rating at 37 percent — the lowest recorded for any president in the lead-up to a midterm election since the newspaper began tracking the metric in 1990, when George HW Bush was in office. For a president who has made himself the party's chief strategist and standard-bearer, those are uncomfortable numbers with only weeks until voting begins.
Several factors appear to be driving the erosion. Recent polls indicate that voters are expressing frustration over the rising cost of living, a pressure compounded by the president's decision to launch a war against Iran, which has roiled global energy markets. Related Al Jazeera coverage notes that US consumer confidence has fallen to its lowest level since 2014, an economic backdrop unlikely to flatter an incumbent seeking economic justification for his record.
Critics have therefore suggested that Trump's slipping popularity could spell real trouble for a Republican Party that hopes to hold onto its majorities in both chambers. The strategic risk is familiar: a president who positions himself at the centre of the campaign invites voters to judge the whole ticket on his standing, so a weak national mood can travel down-ballot with him.
Supporters respond with a different reading of the same evidence. They have speculated that Trump could prove unusually effective at mobilising so-called low-propensity voters — people who typically skip midterms — and that the enthusiasm he generates on the stump is not fully captured by polling averages. It is an argument the party has leaned on before, and one the 32-day itinerary is designed to test.
The organising logic of the campaign is already visible. Trump's allies have pledged that the Republican leader would "campaign like it's 2024 again," a reference to his successful second bid for the presidency. This month, the party held its first-ever midterm political convention in Texas, where Trump delivered the keynote address — a venue choice that doubled as a preview of the states he plans to work hardest in the final stretch.
The itinerary's emphasis on Texas and Ohio is telling. Both host competitive toss-up contests, and both are central to any path to holding the House. A 32-day schedule is short by presidential standards but long by midterm standards, effectively giving the president a near-continuous presence in the states that will decide control of the lower chamber.
Not everything surrounding the tour has gone smoothly. The Department of Homeland Security, which has played a central role in Trump's mass deportation push, has recently drawn scrutiny for spending $20m on creating campaign-style advertisements praising the president's accomplishments. The ads have run in recent days, prompting complaints from lawmakers in both parties that taxpayer funds are being used to produce political propaganda.
That controversy has drawn direct rebuke. "We should not have to remind you that using government funding to create or air political ads like the ones that have been running over the last few days is illegal and a shockingly corrupt misuse of taxpayer dollars," Democratic Senator Patty Murray wrote in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin on Tuesday. Republican lawmakers have also criticised the effort, and critics have raised the possibility that it runs afoul of anti-propaganda laws.
The dispute is significant beyond the money involved. It exposes how closely governing functions and campaign messaging have become fused in this administration, and it hands Democrats a ready-made grievance as they try to build a case for a wave of anti-Republican turnout.
So the 32-day tour launches into a race defined by contradiction: a president who says he is loved, promising to campaign as if nothing is at stake, entering the final stretch with the lowest midterm-era approval rating of his modern era and an economy weighing on voters' minds.
Whether the answer to that contradiction is a mobilisation engine or a drag on the ticket will not be settled by speeches alone. It will be settled in the handful of states where the tour stops, among the millions of low-propensity voters he hopes to draw out, and in whatever Congress the winners assemble — a chamber he hopes to command, or one he has warned could try to remove him.
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