President Donald Trump wants to be heavily involved in Republicans' midterm push. They're not all thrilled.
As Trump begins to unveil his midterm campaign plans, many Republicans facing tough elections — even in areas the president carried by double digits in 2024 — are wary of tying themselves too closely to Trump as his approval rating continues to drag.
Many privately admit they're stuck in an uncomfortable spot: By running too far from Trump, Republicans risk alienating the MAGA faithful or the president himself, whose super PAC is sitting on more than $400 million they desperately need deployed to help them win key races. But if the candidates keep Trump close, they could be dragged down by the president, as the unpopular war in Iran has increased costs for Americans across the country.
So far, they haven't settled on a unified approach, according to interviews with more than two dozen GOP lawmakers, candidates and operatives. Mostly, they don't want to talk about it.
When asked in an interview if he wants Trump to campaign in his swing district this fall or spend time elsewhere, Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.) gave an indirect answer.
"Listen, you know, I'm very happy with our campaign and the things that we're doing," he said. "Very confident with our conversations with the voters. I think we've got a great campaign plan, and we're laser-focused on communicating with our constituents and talking about issues that are important to them."
Some battleground Republicans have relayed to Trump's political team that they don't want him to visit their districts ahead of November, according to four Republican operatives involved in the conversations, granted anonymity, like others in this article, to candidly discuss private strategy and conversations.
And top GOP pollsters have advised some vulnerable Republican incumbents and candidates to not talk about Trump on the campaign trail, or at least limit their direct references to the president, according to three people with direct knowledge of the matter.
"We've told them he cannot come," said a senior Republican involved in a competitive House GOP race in a district where Trump won by double digits in 2024. "Candidly, he would not be helpful here … I do not believe they would send him without our OK. And if they did, we probably wouldn't campaign with him."
But Trump himself appears eager to get on the campaign trail: He told battleground Republicans during a Rose Garden dinner Wednesday that he will be heavily involved in the final 30 days. And many Republicans are eager for his operation to deploy its massive campaign warchest to try to preserve their congressional majorities.
And Republicans know the risk of infuriating a president who has historically not taken kindly to members of his own party who break with him.
"Some of the guidance has been, 'You're fucked if you mention him too much, and you're also fucked if you don't stay in his good graces.' So that is the problem," one House Republican in a competitive race said of internal conversations they'd had with pollsters and operatives.
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), who was at the White House dinner Wednesday night and has been targeted by Democrats before in a district Trump won by 13 percentage points two years ago, said she spoke to Trump at the event.
"I don't always like to publicly divulge my conversations, but he's in good spirits," Luna said Thursday morning at the Capitol. "And boy, oh boy, does MAGA Inc. have a war chest."
But, Republicans also noted that when Trump talked about his campaign plans Wednesday he specifically mentioned visits to two typically safe red states, where GOP incumbents are facing tough challenges from Democratic challengers. Trump said he would go to Alaska for Sen. Dan Sullivan and also boost Ken Paxton in Texas, two states that Trump won by roughly 14 points in 2024.
That redder territory is where a lot of Republicans want Trump to focus in the coming weeks, arguing he's the most effective on the trail there given his low approval rating with roughly two months until Election Day.
"Trump is still the most powerful turnout motivator for low-propensity Republicans or Trump Republicans, and so I think campaigns will and should use him and his brand in targeted ways like mail, digital, or text," said one GOP operative working on multiple competitive statewide races. "But I'm not going to try to bring him to town if he's underwater and it's going to hurt us with a majority of voters."
A White House spokesperson did not address detailed questions about Trump's approval ratings and Republicans asking for the president not to campaign in their districts, instead touting the president's record.
"President Trump has signed the largest middle-class tax cuts in history, lowered the cost of prescription drugs, sealed the border, driven violent crime to the lowest level in nearly a century, unleashed an energy revolution, and sent Americans' 401(k)s climbing to record highs," spokesperson Olivia Wales said in a statement. "The choice has never been more clear: doubling down on President Trump's winning, commonsense agenda or the Democrats' extreme liberal policies and obstruction."
Still, many incumbent members do welcome involvement from Trump.
GOP Rep. Rob Bresnahan, who is defending a seat in Pennsylvania Trump won by nearly nine points in 2024, said he would want the president to campaign in his district. "Sure, absolutely," he said. "Anytime we can work with the administration to accomplish goals for people in northeastern Pennsylvania, we're always excited to do that." Bresnahan said he hadn't seen Trump's approval rating inside his district.
"I'm my own person, and he's his own person, and oftentimes our ideas and what's best for northeastern Pennsylvania overlap, and sometimes they don't," Bresnahan said, citing "data centers" as one example of where he disagrees with Trump.
Even in cases where Trump has appeared with a battleground lawmaker, their campaign messaging emphasizes their differences. Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) — one of just three Republicans who represents a district won by former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 — is highlighting Trump jokingly calling him "a pain in the ass" at a recent rally in an ad focused on his bipartisanship.
Republicans are also grappling with whether to attend next week's midterm convention in Dallas, Texas, where Trump is eager to put on a spectacle. One who's not going is Rep. Tom Barrett (R-Mich.). "I can't control what the president's going to say at the convention, but I can control where I'm at," Barrett said.
But a nod to the balancing act, the Michigan Republican did attend a dinner with Trump at the White House, where the president gave him a shoutout alongside other battleground House Republicans.
The Republican National Committee is also warning Republicans against distancing themselves from the president.
"[Trump] is the biggest turnout machine for mid- to low-propensity voters and we need those voters to get to the polls," said RNC national press secretary Natalie Baldassarre. "If members are choosing to keep an arm's length from the president, they risk alienating their base [and] they risk 15 to 20 percent of their key Republican voters not turning out because they don't feel like they're a good supporter of the president's policies."
The National Republican Congressional Committee even rebranded its candidate recruitment list from the "Young Guns" to the "MAGA Majority" earlier this year — and no candidate had been added to the list without getting Trump's endorsement first.
NRCC Chair Richard Hudson, asked in an interview about some of his members privately saying they don't want Trump to campaign in their districts, downplayed those concerns.
"Well, based on our polling, the President's a net positive in every district," Hudson said. "And I've been encouraging him to get out and do events and do rallies. I'm going to continue to do that. I think the more he talks about his record and incredible achievements he's made over the last Congress, I think the better."
Other Republicans in battlegrounds came to the same conclusion, but for a very different reason.
"We can't turn around now and pretend that we don't know him," said another battleground GOP operative, pointing to Republicans who leaned on Trump's endorsement to make it through primaries. "Anyone who tries to distance themselves after hugging, you just can't get away with that. All you're gonna do is piss off the MAGA lovers, who we still need to keep in the family."
Plus, the operative said, "running away is a failure" because Trump has become so synonymous with the Republican Party.
"Every cycle people try to do that, and it looks disingenuous. At this point, Trump is baked into everything."
Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.