It wasn’t easy, but Donald Trump successfully pushed Sen. Darline Graham across the finish line in South Carolina’s Republican special Senate primary. In fact, there can be little doubt that the president deserves the bulk of the credit for the appointed senator’s narrow win: He endorsed her, headlined a local campaign event for her, held a tele-rally on her behalf, published dozens of messages to his social media platform touting her, helped orchestrate endorsements for her and even opened his wallet for her.
The results left many in GOP politics wondering whether they, too, will get what Politico described as “the Darline treatment” from the president before voters cast their ballots in the fall.
The answer is … complicated.
While every modern American president largely gave up on fundraising after winning a second term, Trump did not. On the contrary, the incumbent has spent much of the past year and a half making a concerted effort to fill the coffers of his aligned super PAC, called MAGA Inc., which is sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars with 10 weeks remaining in the midterm elections.
The good news for Republicans is that Trump is prepared to start spending some of that money. The bad news for Republicans is that the president apparently intends to spend the money on advertising that celebrates him, not them. The Atlantic reported:
President Trump gathered his top political advisers in the Oval Office early this month to solve a problem of riches: how to spend his super PAC’s $400 million political war chest with fewer than 100 days to go before the midterm elections. […]
Some GOP strategists favor focusing entirely on specific races in an effort to convince voters of the merits of individual candidates and local issues. But Trump himself has rejected that approach.
The Atlantic’s report, which has not been independently verified by MS NOW, went on to note that the president “ordered a series of television advertisements about his own record,” adding that Trump “suggested that the ad makers mine his own on-camera statements as building blocks.”
To put it mildly, this is an unconventional approach. Given the circumstances, Democrats want to turn the 2026 elections into a referendum on the unpopular president, his flailing party and the discouraging status quo. Republicans, in contrast, want to make the midterms less of a referendum and more of a choice, with a focus on individual races and candidates.
In other words, Democrats want to nationalize the election cycle, while Republicans want to localize it.
Trump apparently wants to embrace the Democratic strategy, using the super PAC he controls to air ads that emphasize how awesome his awesomeness is. This will dovetail with the Republican National Committee’s highly unusual “midterm convention,” which will kick off in Dallas in just two weeks, and which RNC Chairman Joe Gruters has said will be a “Trumpapalooza,” headlined by the president himself.
All of which is to say, the 2026 spotlight will be on the historically unpopular president, with both parties effectively saying the same thing: “If you’re happy with Trump, vote Republican. If not, vote Democratic.”
At a rally late last week in South Carolina, Trump told supporters, “What I really want you to do is pretend, please, that I’m on the ballot. … Just say that I’m on the ballot one more time.”
Evidently, he’s taking this idea quite seriously, in ways that probably won’t benefit his partisan allies.
The post Trump eyes new round of campaign ads celebrating himself ahead of the midterm elections appeared first on MS NOW.
