Opinion | Does Trump Want to Lose the Midterms?

Well, if he wanted to win the midterms, he’d be moving to the center. He’d be focusing on the things that Americans are angry about, disappointed in him about. He’d be supporting the strongest Republicans in contested races and doing everything he could to bolster Republicans in vulnerable states and districts.

He’s not doing even a little bit of that. Instead, he’s doing the opposite. He’s announcing a $1.8 billion slush fund that appears designed to pay out to Jan. 6 rioters. He endorsed the scandal-plagued, very controversial Ken Paxton over John Cornyn in Texas, giving Democrats a real chance at winning a Senate seat that should be way out of reach for them. He helped primary Thomas Massie, the House Republican who helped release the Epstein files. He helped defeat Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana senator who voted to convict him in his first term. He is attacking Brian Fitzpatrick, one of the very few House Republicans representing a district that voted for Kamala Harris.

Archival clip of President Trump: He likes voting against Trump. You know what happens with that. It doesn’t work out well.

He’s threatening to escalate the Iran war. And when asked whether he was worried about Americans’ finances, about their pocketbooks, about their cost of living, here is what he said:

Archival clip

Reporter: Mr. President, to what extent are Americans’ financial situations motivating you to make a deal?

Trump: Not even a little bit. The only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran — they can’t have a nuclear weapon. I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all.

What a gift to Democratic ad makers that clip is. Trump cares about control of his party, not of Congress. If he can win the elections in a way that tightens his control of Republicans, like through redistricting, he’ll take that. If not, he’s busy. He’s got other things to do.

I’m not saying he wants Democrats to win, but I don’t think he’d mind it if they did. A Democratic-controlled Congress gives him an enemy to fight. I think he gets a little lost without an enemy. It frees him from the tedious work of trying to pass legislation. It puts him back in the place he’s most comfortable, which is not wielding power; it’s claiming persecution.

What Trump would mind, what he does fear, is a Republican Party with a spine. He fears a Republican Party in which members of Congress begin to participate in the investigations of his scandals or they abandon him as his fortunes fall. And so he’s made his choice. He is showing them that to oppose him, even from the right, is to light your political future on fire.

The point isn’t just to defeat Massie or Cassidy or Cornyn or any of them. It’s to scare every Republican left in Congress, to make sure they know that Trump would gladly destroy each and every one of them personally, that he would gladly burn the entire Republican Party to the ground if that’s what it took to save himself.