Republican candidates break with Trump on Iran war and immigration
A Wall Street Journal poll of 1,500 registered voters conducted September 16-21 found that 37% of Americans approve of the job Trump is doing as president, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points. The poll marks the lowest approval rating of any president heading into a midterm election in Journal polls dating to 1990.
Among voters who backed Trump in 2024, 11% said they now regret their vote. Among Republicans who say they do not consider themselves part of Trump’s MAGA movement, 11% plan to vote for a Democrat for Congress this fall. Non-MAGA Republicans account for about one-third of GOP voters, according to the survey. Voters associate Trump with higher prices for food and gas, as well as higher mortgage rates and the proliferation of data centers across the country, according to a Republican strategist cited by the Journal.
As Trump was feting French President Emmanuel Macron in New York on Monday night — taking Macron on a tour of his Manhattan penthouse, grinning for photos and talking up the economy — he offered an optimistic view of the coming midterm elections. Republicans, Trump predicted, would overperform in November, according to people with knowledge of his private comments.
The Journal reported that few Republicans share the president’s rosy outlook on the midterms and that, five weeks before the midterm elections, Republicans are panicking and Trump is doing little to ease their minds. Over a whirlwind seven days, the president has made a series of moves that have confounded Republican candidates, strategists and lawmakers, the Journal reported.
In Michigan, Republican Senate candidate Mike Rogers released a campaign video set in a grocery store calling for an end to the war in Iran. “We have to bring prices down,” Rogers said. “The war with Iran needs to end, and end quickly.” In Iowa, Rep. Ashley Hinson, who is running for Senate, called for an end to the Iran war and said lawmakers should return to Washington to pause diesel exports and suspend the gas tax. Republican candidates in Ohio and Wisconsin have also called for an end to the war.
Over the past week, Republican candidates in critical races across the country have received new internal polling data that underscored the headwinds facing the GOP, setting off a fresh round of hand-wringing among campaign strategists, according to people familiar with the matter. Republican strategists are rushing to get more polling data ahead of the election, overwhelming the call centers that are tasked with canvassing voters about their views, according to a GOP campaign adviser.
Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar of Florida released a television ad filmed in front of the White House criticizing Trump’s immigration enforcement policies as excessive. According to people familiar with the matter, Trump has privately expressed frustration with Salazar’s break. A Trump adviser said the president understands that candidates must do what they need to do to win their races, even if that means backing away from the president or policies, and that Trump’s political team has been in close touch with campaigns seeking to differentiate themselves from the president’s views.
“This is the week where it felt like the bottom started falling out in earnest,” said Colin Reed, a Republican strategist. “President Trump is the Republican Party right now, and by virtue of his lower approval ratings, the entire party is dealing with that political reality.”
Some Republican lawmakers not up for re-election also publicly criticized Trump this week. Sen. John Curtis of Utah, who is not up for re-election until 2030, called for an investigation of Donald Trump Jr. following the disclosure that the president’s oldest son received a lavish afterparty as a wedding gift from a Russian businessman connected to the Kremlin. Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, who also faces voters in 2030, went to the Senate floor to raise concerns about Trump’s decision to invite Xi to the White House.
Back in Washington, Trump hosted an extravagant state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping, whom the Journal described as an authoritarian who has been the subject of fierce Republican criticism for years. Some Republicans said they were privately aghast by images from the dinner, including Chinese flags on the roof of the White House and officials on their hands and knees dusting off a red carpet before the Chinese leader walked across it. The same week he welcomed the Communist leader to the White House, Trump appeared in government-funded anti-communism ads that show clips of the president as a choir sings “Love Me.”
Trump’s week also included abruptly banning three media outlets from the White House, triggering a dayslong standoff that led major television networks to limit their video coverage of his events. At the United Nations, he threatened to annihilate Iran and escalate the war. He praised New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic socialist who has long been a boogeyman for the right, the Journal reported.
The White House this week began considering policy moves aimed at addressing voters’ concerns, including a temporary export ban on diesel fuel. Those discussions prompted a backlash from the energy industry, which has been closely aligned with Trump. Energy Secretary Chris Wright later played down the prospect of a ban, saying the administration is considering voluntary export restrictions.
“President Trump is the unequivocal leader, best messenger, and unmatched motivator for the Republican Party, and he is committed to maintaining Republican majorities in Congress,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle said.
Inside the White House, the mood has been grim at times, according to people familiar with the matter. A senior White House official acknowledged that the president’s political team is stressed about the coming election but said they also see a path where the party picks up seats in both chambers.
Some Trump allies have tried to convey how difficult the midterm environment is for Republicans, but Trump has at times cut off those conversations, according to a person familiar with the matter. The senior White House official said Trump’s political team regularly presents him with candid assessments of the midterm environment and polling. Trump keeps track of the number of days until the midterms and is focused on the roughly 35 races that are the most competitive, asking questions in the Oval Office about the candidates, according to a person who has heard him talk about the races.
Trump has at times suggested he expects Republicans to suffer significant losses in November, pointing to historic trends showing the party in power usually loses seats in midterm elections. But in public and in private in recent weeks, he has sought to project confidence that the GOP will defy expectations.
“He thinks we’re going to win, but it’s going to be close,” said John Catsimatidis, the New York grocery-store magnate and longtime Trump friend who was with the president when he met with Macron earlier this week.
Republicans are now investing heavily in races that were once seen as easy wins. Texas PAC, which is associated with the Senate Leadership Fund, has spent more than $100 million to boost state Attorney General Ken Paxton in his Senate race against Democrat James Talarico and could spend as much as $200 million by the election, according to a person familiar with the group’s planning. Polling has shown Talarico with a slim lead in a state Trump won by 14 points in 2024.
Democrats need to gain a handful of seats to win the House in November. The GOP-controlled Senate is seen as a tossup, though some Republicans are concerned the Senate map is shifting in Democrats’ favor. Which party controls Congress during the final two years of Trump’s second term could have major implications for the president’s agenda and could shape the political landscape ahead of the 2028 presidential election, the first since 2012 that Trump will not be on the ballot, the Journal reported.
White House and campaign officials said the president will hold dozens of tele-rallies for GOP candidates and plans to travel to battleground states. Next week he will hold rallies in Oklahoma and Alabama, states he won in 2024 by more than 30 points each.