Republicans are actively discouraging Donald Trump from visiting key areas during his midterm campaign push because of how politically poisonous the president has become.
Sources told Politico that Republicans are urging Trump’s team not to visit parts of Nebraska, including the blue-leaning Omaha district and other key districts where the president is recording dire approval ratings, fearing his presence will be a net negative ahead of the crucial Nov. 3 election.
Others have already decided they will not campaign alongside Trump–even when the president appears in red states.
“They’ve called me four times now to see if we want him to come, and I’ve said no,” one senior Republican, involved in a battleground House midterm race in a district Trump easily won in 2024, told Politico.
Another GOP operative working on midterm races gave an equally damning prediction of what would happen if Trump campaigned in a battleground state to try to give the GOP a boost.
“I suspect my candidates would come down with COVID,” they said.
Even those within the White House admit Trump visiting a swing district would “be a net negative” for the Republican candidate.
“The closer the race, the more the [Republican candidate] is trying to break from President Trump,” a White House official told MS Now.
The GOP is widely expected to suffer an electoral wipeout in November due to intense voter backlash to Trump’s handling of the economy and policies such as the Iran war.
Trump is taking the potentially disastrous decision to make the midterms a referendum on him and is placing himself front and center of the GOP’s campaign strategy.
This includes hitting the trail to appear at rallies in red states with key Senate contests, including Nebraska, Ohio and Alaska, as well as deep-red states such as Oklahoma and Alabama in the coming weeks.
A Republican operative involved in several battleground races across the country told Politico that one major issue for the president’s midterm strategy is that Trump’s voting base is “feeling the pain of Trump the most.”
“They have to turn those people out. But those people are p---ed at Trump, so it’s this weird dynamic of like: ‘Does he help? Does he hurt? Can he go and encourage the disenfranchised, the really p---ed off Republican Trump voter?’” the operative said.
“That’s really going to be what decides the outcome of this election.”
In response to the criticism, Republican National Committee spokeswoman Delanie Bomar told the Daily Beast: “Democrats are openly begging Kamala Harris and AOC—two 2028 frontrunners—to not campaign in battleground districts because of their toxic and unpopular records.
“Meanwhile, our candidates are chomping at the bit to get the president in their districts because when it comes to engaging Republicans and driving our voters to the polls, no one does it better than President Donald J. Trump.”
Elsewhere, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said he is desperate for Trump to hit the campaign trail in states that could go either way in November.
“When Trump travels, he hurts people,” Schumer told Semafor. “When he comes to town, that itself helps us. But then he always talks about the wrong things. He talks about things people don’t give a damn about.”
Despite his poor polling numbers, the White House believes Trump is still the “unequivocal leader, best messenger, and unmatched motivator for the Republican Party.”
“No one can dispute the fact that President Trump has created one of the most robust coalitions in political history with the MAGA movement, and the president understands how to communicate with them,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told Politico.
