‘How did we get here?’: Inside a losing GOP campaign defined by Trump

Kent Nishimura/AFP/Getty Images

President Donald Trump was in the midst of his fourth political rally in three days when he asked a close associate the question that had been troubling him for some time: How did the Republican Party get in this bad of shape?

It was mid-October, and with just weeks to go to the midterm elections, the GOP was bleeding support in dozens of races across the country. The House majority was lost. Senate control was, improbably, a toss-up. And Trump had embarked on a monthlong salvage mission, crisscrossing the US to rouse apathetic voters in the kinds of blood-red districts that he’d carried easily just two years ago.

“It’s a sh*t-ton of travel,” said a person familiar with the private exchange. “And the question he keeps asking is, ‘How did we get here?’”

The president’s belated revelation underscored the dire state of affairs that Republicans around him had spent the last several months struggling to combat.

Already facing historical headwinds and an energized Democratic Party, Trump had plunged the nation into an unpopular war with no clear exit strategy. Gas prices soared as a result, fueling widespread inflation and a resurgence of voter anxiety over the cost of living.

The self-inflicted wounds sank Trump’s approval ratings to record lows. Faced with an angry and disillusioned electorate, Republican candidates were now desperately seeking ways to escape their leader’s downward gravitational pull.

“People are so mad,” one glum Texas-based GOP operative said in the run-up to Election Day. “And Trump hasn’t done anything to help any of that.”

In the end, the GOP paid a staggering political price. Frustrated voters decimated Republicans’ majority in both the House and the Senate, delivering a stunning rebuke of GOP governance that extended well into areas long considered conservative strongholds.

By late Tuesday, House Republicans were facing an electoral rout , losing several districts that Trump won by more than 10 points just two years ago. Two Democratic sources believe the sweeping victories could give them more than 240 seats in the House, a number that would have been unthinkable just a few weeks ago.

The Senate’s trajectory was, in some ways, even more disastrous for Republicans, who had entered the midterm cycle needing only to defend a handful of traditionally red seats to keep control. Instead, the chamber also flipped to Democratic control just hours after the polls closed due to losses in reliable Republican strongholds like Kansas, Iowa and South Carolina.

The aftermath is likely to leave Trump dramatically weakened and girding for a final two years in office marked by an onslaught of Democratic investigations and opposition that threaten to grind his agenda to a halt.

The broader Republican Party, meanwhile, suddenly finds itself adrift. Even before the results rolled in, it was awash in finger-pointing and second-guessing as GOP officials braced for a poor showing at the polls. That discord is only likely to deepen as Republicans sift through the rubble of a midterms that failed to meet their already low expectations, according to interviews with more than a dozen Trump aides and advisers, party officials and campaign operatives.

Those Republicans described a series of questionable calls and pivot points over the last year, including an overly optimistic strategy, indecisive messaging and the misguided selection of a handful of extraordinarily weak candidates.

Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

But ultimately, they agreed, Republicans simply couldn’t outrun Trump. The president’s decision to go to war — then spend six months dismissing the economic fallout while pursuing his own vanity projects — unraveled his coalition and proved deeply toxic to Americans across the political landscape.

“Honestly, there’s just one person to blame,” said Barrett Marson, an Arizona Republican strategist. “If the war had not happened, it would be an entirely different election cycle. And only one person started that war.”

On Tuesday night, a White House official rejected any suggestion that Trump bore responsibility for the GOP’s losses, arguing it was candidates’ own fault.

“President Trump did a better job promoting many of the candidates on the ballot than the candidates did themselves,” the official said.

But White House efforts to now downplay those losses as inevitable — and wholly separate from Trump — represent a major shift from this time last year, when his advisers mapped out a plan to defy history and preserve the party’s slim majorities by putting Trump “on the ballot,” as his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, termed it last December.

GOP leaders at that point felt emboldened by Trump’s command of a diverse and seemingly durable coalition of MAGA voters. They were invigorated by the passage of a massive tax cut-and-spending package dubbed “The Big Beautiful Bill.” The economy looked resilient and inflation was easing, offering a potent contrast to the high-cost Biden years.

Republicans also had another weapon in their arsenal: An unprecedented redistricting scheme, orchestrated by top Trump political aide James Blair, to preemptively shift more than a dozen congressional districts toward Republicans and shrink the number of seats they might have to defend come November.

The smaller map of perceived competitive seats formed the basis of an optimistic midterm strategy that Blair and Wiles laid out in private meetings beginning in February, according to people in the room.

They urged top GOP lawmakers and allies to advance a disciplined economic message that emphasized Trump’s accomplishments, including progress on the cost of living and popular priorities like reining in drug prices. Based on that strong start, Republicans would then ask voters to grant them two more years to effectively finish the job.

The Republican Party needed to stay on the same page, they insisted — even as they acknowledged that an undisciplined Trump likely would not. The president, Blair told one group, would be “doing his own thing.”

That would turn out to be a massive understatement.

Fewer than two weeks later, Trump launched a surprise attack on Iran, killing much of the nation’s top leadership in strikes meant to collapse its regime and deliver the president a quick and resounding victory.

Instead, the offensive hardened Iran’s resolve, drawing the US into a war that within weeks had killed American service members and halted the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, sparking a global energy crisis.

Trump and his senior aides initially downplayed the repercussions, boasting that the war was nearly won and would ultimately last just four to six weeks. But even at that early stage, some of Trump’s advisers privately recognized that it could spell political disaster.

“There are a lot of people who don’t know why we needed to do this,” one Trump adviser lamented at the time, adding that the decision had immediately rendered months of meticulous midterm preparation “obsolete.”

“If oil hits $100 (per barrel), who knows?” the adviser said. “It’s a political risk, and there’s no ands, ifs or buts about it.”

Brian Snyder/Reuters

The outlook darkened further over the next couple months, as the war swamped the political conversation and Trump’s own agenda. Plans to send the president on a sustained tour to tout his accomplishments were put on hold. Major strategic decisions — like where and when to begin spending Trump’s roughly $400 million war chest — were delayed.

Perhaps worst of all, allies fretted, Trump had betrayed his core political identity as a president devoted to juicing the economy and keeping the US out of foreign wars.

“They underestimated the backlash in the base,” one Trump ally said of the White House as the war stretched into its second month, oil hit $100 a barrel and US gas prices neared the $4-per-gallon mark. “If we’re not plenty concerned about that in April, then we’re dead in November.”

By the summer, it became clear that the war was not a “total and complete victory,” despite Trump’s repeated claims, and would instead loom over the entire midterm cycle. The June collapse of a short-lived ceasefire had left Republican candidates without a clear message on the conflict, as every economic pillar they had planned to run on melted away.

Gas topped $4 and continued to rise, grocery prices were marching upward and polls increasingly showed voters revolting against a president who had promised their costs would go down “on day one.”

In some GOP circles, lawmakers and their advisers privately calculated whether and how sharply to break with Trump on key issues in the campaign’s final stretch. A handful had already levied criticisms of his price-hiking tariffs or expressed displeasure with the war — though tentatively and, in several cases, not before giving the White House advance notice.

But even as Trump’s approval ratings bottomed out, most declined to take such a significant step.

Some concluded that, after defending and justifying Trump’s every move for the last 18 months, abandoning him now wouldn’t win much credibility with swing voters — and would assuredly tank their standing with the MAGA base. Others were simply too wary of inviting Trump’s personal ire, calculating instead that it was better to stick it out and hope his most ardent remaining supporters could pull them across the finish line.

Inside the White House, what had begun as an expansive plan to trumpet Republicans’ policy successes and cement the congressional majority was eventually whittled down to a last-ditch bid to turn out Trump’s MAGA base one final time.

Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

The president had remained largely disengaged from the nitty-gritty political planning, at times remarking to those around him that he had already done his job: He’d won the White House. Instead, Trump spent inordinate time overseeing construction projects around Washington that he viewed as critical to his legacy. Americans, however, overwhelmingly saw it as a waste of time and money.

When he did address the issues at the top of voters’ minds, it was typically to wave them away. Trump regularly insisted gas prices would soon plummet and argued the Iran war was worth the “short-term pain.” He celebrated tariffs and unreservedly embraced the artificial intelligence sector, despite polls showing deep bipartisan skepticism of both.

As for the affordability worries dominating Americans’ concerns, he’d initially dismissed them as a “hoax,” sparking a scramble among his aides to clean up his remarks, an administration official and an adviser said. To their dismay, Trump then went out and said it again and again, eventually turning it into a regular component of his stump speech.

“It was a word they made up,” Trump complained during a September rally in North Carolina. “And I got hit with this affordability word for a year-and-a-half.”

The midterm map that Trump aides sought to shrink, meanwhile, had widened — in part due to the weakness of several of Trump’s hand-picked candidates for Senate.

In Texas, where Trump elevated Ken Paxton over the objections of GOP Hill leaders, the scandal-plagued candidate was performing so poorly that some operatives in the state privately questioned whether he even wanted the job.

Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

Michael Whatley, a close ally of the president, got off to a slow start and never recovered in North Carolina despite the tutelage of several close Trump advisers. Darline Graham, who Trump impulsively endorsed to replace her late brother, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, looked every bit the political novice in a state that went for Trump by 18 percentage points in 2024.

And to the Trump team’s deepening frustration, several House and Senate lawmakers in typically safe seats had been caught flat-footed by their stronger-than-normal challengers.

“They were coasting, even when there were signs,” one adviser griped as Republicans raced to shore up Sen. Roger Marshall’s flailing campaign in Kansas, where Democrats are now projected to win for the first time in nearly a century.

As gas and diesel prices spiked, dragging down Republicans across the country, the White House searched for any policy levers that might assuage voters facing fresh economic strain.

Trump endorsed access to cheaper forms of gasoline and cleared the way for truckers to use tax-free diesel typically reserved for off-road vehicles. He promised payouts to buoy farmers that by Election Day totaled roughly $15 billion.

But those gestures largely fell flat, and at points were directly undermined by steps Trump took to try to shore up other parts of the ailing GOP base. Among the most damaging was the decision to temporarily boost beef imports — a move designed to lower grocery prices that ultimately succeeded only in enraging Republicans throughout the Midwest.

The war, one Republican operative close to the White House said, was not only unpopular on its own, but had generated widespread domestic fallout that the administration could not contain.

“It created an inflation issue that became directly relevant to the president, and a thousand other things cascaded from that,” the operative said.

That rising threat to Republicans across the political landscape only further heightened the importance of perhaps the party’s biggest advantage: the roughly $400 million that Trump had accumulated in his super PAC, much of it from wealthy donors and corporations seeking to curry favor during the first year of his presidency.

Yet for months, that PAC, MAGA Inc., declined to spend amid Trump’s reluctance to give away money he’d raised to help other candidates and Republican officials’ own difficulties in deciding how and where to deploy cash across a worsening map.

After extensive wrangling, the president finally greenlit pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into contests around the nation across the final two months.

It was a welcome infusion for the GOP that allowed the party’s two main super PACs to concentrate their spending on swing districts and pickup opportunities, officials said, while Trump’s MAGA Inc. focused on triaging races deeper into red territory.

Yet there was still the matter of how best to utilize the president himself.

Within Trump’s orbit, some allies felt Republicans’ best shot was to localize their races and keep the focus on Democrats, in hopes that GOP voters’ fears of empowering “socialism” would win out over their more immediate frustrations. Others believed that Democrats had already made the midterms about Trump and, alarmed by the lack of grassroots enthusiasm within the GOP, they argued there was nothing to lose now from unleashing the president in full.

“There’s no counter message,” said another ally, “because they’re taking out ads for the [Big Beautiful Bill] and nobody gives two f**ks.”

Trump eventually settled the debate himself. In mid-September, after growing agitated by internal polling showing Republicans consistently trailing in races across the country, he determined he’d take the matter into his own hands, people familiar with the matter said.

Trump’s team hastily organized a final-month sprint that put him in a different town nearly every day, barnstorming the nation to plead with his devotees to go vote — even if, this time, it wouldn’t be for him.

“I’m asking you to pretend that I’m on the ballot,” Trump said during one stop in Michigan, echoing an appeal he made at nearly every rally. “When I’m not on the on the ballot, people don’t show up. Please show up and vote.”

At times, the near-daily travel invigorated Trump, who basked in the crowds and relished his reputation as what one adviser described as “the greatest turnout machine in the history of American politics.” In other moments, he raged at having to work so hard in the closing stretches of campaigns that were not his, people who spoke with him said.

Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

Top Republicans also viewed the tour as a mixed blessing; they hoped the return of Trump’s signature rallies could resuscitate enthusiasm within an inert GOP base, yet worked to steer him toward solidly red districts to minimize any harm to toss-up races.

The rallies, GOP officials insisted in the final days, showed signs of boosting turnout — even as Trump offered an inconsistent and sometimes-baffling closing message.

During several visits to Ohio, for example, the president publicly fixated on the shape of GOP Sen. Jon Husted’s “ass” — a uniquely Trumpian compliment borne from his disbelief that Husted hadn’t done more on the trail to emphasize his past as a Division III college football player, people familiar with the matter said.

Yet for all the enthusiasm on the ground among Trump’s diehards, it did little to assuage voters’ concerns about the war and high prices, or visibly move polls that increasingly showed Republicans being overtaken by a blue wave.

As Trump approached the end of his tour, his mood had darkened significantly, those who spoke with him said. So with less than 24 hours to Election Day, Trump returned to a topic that he’s often described as “relaxing” to him: Construction .

Standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool on Monday, Trump devoted much of his final pre-midterm speech to detailing his battles with the pool’s algae and the key decision points involved in repairing pipes and replacing grass.

It was a bizarre decision, GOP officials said, but not a fateful one. Trump had set his party on this path eight months ago — all that was left to do now was brace for impact.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins and Manu Raju contributed to this report.

Kent Nishimura/AFP/Getty Images

唐纳德·特朗普总统在三天内举行了第四场政治集会，期间他向一位亲密的助手提出了一个困扰他一段时间的问题：共和党是如何陷入如此糟糕的境地的？

时值十月中旬，距离中期选举仅剩几周，共和党在全国数十场选举中支持率暴跌。众议院多数席位已失，参议院控制权也出人意料地难分伯仲。特朗普随即展开为期一个月的“挽救行动”，奔走于美国各地，试图唤醒那些两年前他轻松拿下的传统铁票区中如今冷漠的选民。

一位熟悉这笔私人交易的人士表示：“这简直是天方夜谭。他一直问的问题是，‘我们是怎么到这儿来的？’”

总统姗姗来迟的表态凸显了共和党人在过去几个月里一直努力应对的严峻形势。

面对本已举国上下不利的形势和士气高涨的民主党，特朗普将国家拖入了一场不得人心的战争，而且没有明确的退出策略。结果，汽油价格飙升，加剧了通货膨胀，也再次引发了选民对生活成本的焦虑。

这些自作自受的举动使特朗普的支持率跌至历史新低。面对愤怒而失望的选民，共和党候选人现在正拼命寻找摆脱其领导人负面影响的方法。

“人们非常愤怒，”一位情绪低落的德克萨斯州共和党人士在选举日临近时说道，“而特朗普并没有采取任何措施来缓解这种愤怒。”

最终，共和党付出了惨痛的政治代价。失望的选民们摧毁了共和党在众议院和参议院的多数席位，对共和党的执政给予了沉重的打击，这种打击甚至波及到了长期以来被视为保守派堡垒的地区。

截至周二晚些时候，众议院共和党人面临惨败，失去了几个两年前特朗普以超过10个百分点优势获胜的选区。两名民主党消息人士认为，这些压倒性的胜利可能使他们在众议院获得超过240个席位，而几周前，这个数字还是不可想象的。

在某些方面，参议院的走向对共和党来说更加灾难性。共和党原本只需保住几个传统上由共和党把持的席位就能在中期选举中继续掌控参议院。然而，由于在堪萨斯州、爱荷华州和南卡罗来纳州等共和党传统票仓失利，参议院的控制权在投票结束后几个小时就落入了民主党手中。

此事后果很可能使特朗普的实力大幅削弱，他将面临最后两年的任期，期间民主党将发起猛烈的调查和反对，这些都可能使他的施政纲领彻底停滞。

与此同时，共和党整体却突然陷入迷茫。甚至在选举结果公布之前，共和党内部就充斥着互相指责和事后诸葛亮，因为共和党官员们早已预料到选举结果会很糟糕。据十几位特朗普的助手和顾问、党内官员以及竞选人员的采访显示，随着共和党人努力从中期选举的惨败中恢复过来，这种分裂很可能会加剧。这场选举的结果远低于他们原本就很低的预期。

这些共和党人描述了过去一年中一系列值得怀疑的决策和转折点，包括过于乐观的策略、优柔寡断的信息传递以及错误地选择了少数几个极其弱的候选人。

Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

但最终，他们一致认为，共和党人根本无法战胜特朗普。总统决定发动战争——然后又花了六个月时间漠视战争带来的经济后果，同时忙于推进自己的个人项目——这一决定瓦解了他的联盟，并对美国各界人士都造成了极大的负面影响。

“说实话，这事儿只能怪一个人，”亚利桑那州共和党策略师巴雷特·马森说。“如果这场战争没有发生，选举结果将会完全不同。而这场战争也只有一个人挑起。”

周二晚间，一位白宫官员驳斥了任何关于特朗普应对共和党败选负责的说法，认为这是候选人自己的过错。

这位官员表示：“特朗普总统在宣传许多候选人方面做得比候选人自己做得更好。”

但白宫现在试图淡化这些损失，声称其不可避免，并且与特朗普完全无关，这与去年这个时候的情况截然不同。当时，特朗普的顾问们制定了一项计划，要打破历史的规律，通过让特朗普“参加选举”（正如他的幕僚长苏西·威尔斯去年 12 月所说的那样）来保住该党微弱的多数席位。

当时，共和党领导人因特朗普掌控着一个多元化且看似稳固的“让美国再次伟大”（MAGA）选民联盟而倍感鼓舞。一项被称为“宏伟法案”（The Big Beautiful Bill）的大规模减税和支出方案的通过也令他们精神振奋。经济看起来韧性十足，通胀也在缓解，这与拜登执政时期高昂的开支形成了鲜明对比。

共和党人还有另一件武器：一项前所未有的选区重划计划，由特朗普的高级政治助手詹姆斯·布莱尔策划，旨在先发制人地将十几个国会选区划向共和党，从而减少他们在 11 月可能需要捍卫的席位数量。

据在场人士透露，布莱尔和威尔斯从二月份开始在私人会议上制定了一项乐观的中期选举战略，该战略以较小的、被认为具有竞争力的席位分布图为基础。

他们敦促共和党高层议员及其盟友推进一套严谨的经济政策，重点强调特朗普的政绩，包括降低生活成本和控制药品价格等广受欢迎的优先事项。共和党人希望以此为坚实基础，争取选民再给他们两年时间，以有效地完成这些工作。

他们坚持认为，共和党必须保持步调一致——即便他们也承认，缺乏纪律的特朗普很可能做不到这一点。布莱尔对一个团体说，总统会“我行我素”。

事实证明，这远远低估了实际情况。

不到两周后，特朗普对伊朗发动了突袭，造成伊朗大部分高级领导人丧生。此次袭击旨在推翻伊朗政权，并为总统带来迅速而彻底的胜利。

相反，这次进攻反而增强了伊朗的决心，将美国拖入了一场战争。这场战争在几周内就造成了美国军人伤亡，并阻断了霍尔木兹海峡的石油运输，引发了全球能源危机。

特朗普及其高级助手最初淡化了此次事件的后果，吹嘘战争已接近尾声，最终只会持续四到六周。但即便在当时，特朗普的一些顾问私下里也意识到，这可能会带来政治灾难。

“很多人不知道我们为什么要这样做，”一位特朗普顾问当时感叹道，并补充说，这一决定立即使几个月来精心准备的中期选举“付诸东流”。

“如果油价涨到每桶100美元，谁知道会发生什么呢？”这位顾问说。“这是政治风险，这一点毋庸置疑。”

布莱恩·斯奈德/路透社

接下来的几个月里，前景进一步黯淡，战争淹没了政治讨论和特朗普自身的议程。原计划安排总统进行持续巡回演讲以宣传其政绩的安排被搁置。一些重大战略决策——例如何时何地开始动用特朗普约4亿美元的战争资金——也被推迟。

盟友们担心，最糟糕的是，特朗普背叛了他作为一位致力于刺激经济和让美国远离海外战争的总统的核心政治身份。

“他们低估了支持者的反弹，”一位特朗普盟友在战争进入第二个月、油价飙升至每桶100美元、美国汽油价格逼近每加仑4美元时这样评价白宫。“如果我们在四月份还不够重视这个问题，那么到了十一月份我们就完了。”

到了夏天，很明显，尽管特朗普一再声称取得了“全面彻底的胜利”，但这场战争并非如此，反而将笼罩整个中期选举周期。6月份短暂的停火协议破裂，使得共和党候选人在冲突问题上失去了明确的立场，他们原本计划的所有经济支柱都随之瓦解。

汽油价格突破 4 美元并持续上涨，食品杂货价格也一路攀升，民调显示，越来越多的选民开始反抗这位曾承诺“上任第一天”就降低他们生活成本的总统。

在一些共和党内部，议员及其顾问私下里权衡着在竞选最后阶段是否以及如何与特朗普在关键问题上决裂。一些人已经批评了他提高关税的举措，或对战争表示不满——尽管他们的表态较为谨慎，而且在某些情况下，他们事先还通知了白宫。

但即便特朗普的支持率跌至谷底，大多数人仍然拒绝采取如此重大的举措。

一些人认为，在过去18个月里，他们为特朗普的每一项举措辩护和开脱，现在放弃他并不会赢得摇摆选民的信任，反而肯定会损害他们在“让美国再次伟大”（MAGA）支持者中的地位。另一些人则过于担心激怒特朗普，他们认为最好还是坚持下去，寄希望于他最忠实的拥护者能够帮助他们赢得最终胜利。

在白宫内部，原本旨在大肆宣扬共和党政策成就并巩固国会多数席位的宏大计划，最终却缩减为孤注一掷，试图最后一次动员特朗普的“让美国再次伟大”（MAGA）支持者。

凯文·拉马克/路透社

总统基本上不参与具体的政治规划，有时甚至对身边的人说，他已经完成了自己的任务：他赢得了白宫。相反，特朗普花费大量时间监督华盛顿周围的建设项目，他认为这些项目对他的政治遗产至关重要。然而，绝大多数美国民众认为这是浪费时间和金钱。

当他确实谈及选民最关心的问题时，通常也是轻描淡写地敷衍过去。特朗普经常坚称汽油价格很快就会暴跌，并辩称伊朗战争值得承受“短期阵痛”。他大肆宣扬关税，并毫无保留地拥抱人工智能领域，尽管民调显示，两党都对这两项持深深的怀疑态度。

至于美国民众最为关注的住房负担能力问题，他最初将其斥为“骗局”，一位政府官员和一位顾问透露，这导致他的助手们不得不紧急澄清他的言论。令他们失望的是，特朗普随后又反复提及此事，最终将其变成了他竞选演讲的固定内容。

“这是他们编造出来的词，”特朗普在9月份北卡罗来纳州的一次集会上抱怨道。“我整整一年半都摆脱不了‘负担能力’这个词的困扰。”

与此同时，特朗普的助手们试图缩小的中期选举版图却扩大了——部分原因是特朗普亲自挑选的几位参议员候选人的实力较弱。

在德克萨斯州，特朗普不顾共和党国会领导人的反对，提拔了肯·帕克斯顿，这位丑闻缠身的候选人表现非常糟糕，以至于该州的一些工作人员私下里质疑他是否真的想要这份工作。

Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

总统的亲密盟友迈克尔·沃特利在北卡罗来纳州的竞选开局不利，尽管有几位特朗普的亲信顾问指导，也始终未能扭转颓势。特朗普冲动地支持达琳·格雷厄姆接替她已故的哥哥、南卡罗来纳州参议员林赛·格雷厄姆，但在这个2024年以18个百分点的优势支持特朗普的州，沃特利的表现完全像个政治新手。

更令特朗普团队感到沮丧的是，一些通常稳操胜券的众议院和参议院议员，却被比平时更强大的挑战者打了个措手不及。

“即使有迹象表明他们要输了，他们还是在混日子，”一位顾问抱怨道。与此同时，共和党人正争分夺秒地挽救罗杰·马歇尔参议员在堪萨斯州摇摇欲坠的竞选，而民主党人预计将在堪萨斯州赢得近一个世纪以来的首次胜利。

随着汽油和柴油价格飙升，拖累了全国各地的共和党人，白宫开始寻找任何可以缓解选​​民面临新的经济压力的政策手段。

特朗普支持提供更便宜的汽油，并允许卡车司机使用通常专供非公路车辆使用的免税柴油。他还承诺向农民发放补贴，到选举日时，补贴总额约为150亿美元。

但这些举措大多收效甚微，有时甚至被特朗普为巩固共和党其他摇摇欲坠的支持者群体而采取的措施直接破坏。其中最具破坏性的举措之一是暂时增加牛肉进口——此举旨在降低食品价格，但最终却激怒了整个中西部地区的共和党人。

一位与白宫关系密切的共和党人士表示，这场战争不仅本身不受欢迎，而且还造成了政府无法控制的广泛的国内负面影响。

“这引发了通货膨胀问题，而这个问题与总统直接相关，并由此引发了一系列其他问题，”这位工作人员说道。

共和党在整个政治格局中面临的日益增长的威胁，进一步凸显了该党或许最大的优势的重要性：特朗普在其超级政治行动委员会中积累的约 4 亿美元资金，其中大部分来自富有的捐助者和企业，他们希望在特朗普总统任期的第一年里讨好他。

然而，几个月来，由于特朗普不愿捐出他筹集的资金来帮助其他候选人，以及共和党官员在决定如何以及在哪里将资金投入到日益恶化的选情中时遇到的困难，该政治行动委员会 MAGA Inc. 一直拒绝支出。

经过一番激烈的争论，总统最终批准在最后两个月向全国各地的竞选活动投入数亿美元。

官员们表示，这笔资金的注入对共和党来说是一个受欢迎的助力，使得该党的两个主要超级政治行动委员会能够将支出集中在摇摆选区和有机会翻盘的选区，而特朗普的“让美国再次伟大”组织则专注于优先处理那些位于共和党传统票仓的选战。

然而，如何最好地利用总统本人仍然是个问题。

在特朗普的阵营中，一些盟友认为共和党最好的策略是将竞选活动局限于地方层面，并将焦点集中在民主党身上，希望共和党选民对“社会主义”势力扩张的担忧能够战胜他们眼前的挫败感。另一些人则认为，民主党已经将中期选举的焦点转移到了特朗普身上，并且由于共和党内部缺乏基层热情，他们认为现在全面启用总统也无妨。

另一位盟友说：“没有反驳的信息，因为他们正在为[宏伟法案]投放广告，但没有人关心。”

最终，特朗普亲自解决了这场争论。知情人士透露，9月中旬，由于内部民调显示共和党在全国各地的竞选中持续落后，他变得越来越恼火，于是决定亲自解决这个问题。

特朗普的团队匆忙组织了最后一个月的冲刺，让他几乎每天都去不同的城市，在全国各地奔走，恳求他的支持者去投票——即使这一次，他们投的不是他。

“我请求你们假装我的名字在选票上，”特朗普在密歇根州的一次竞选活动中说道，这几乎是他每次集会都会重复的呼吁。“如果我的名字不在选票上，人们就不会出来投票。请大家出来投票。”

有时，几乎每天的奔波让特朗普精神焕发，他沉浸在人群中，享受着自己作为“美国政治史上最强大的动员机器”的美誉——一位顾问如此形容他。但据与他交谈过的人士透露，有时，他也会因为不得不在并非自己竞选的选战的最后阶段如此卖力而感到愤怒。

朱莉娅·德马雷·尼金森/美联社

共和党高层也认为这次巡回演讲有利有弊；他们希望特朗普标志性集会的回归能够重新激发共和党基本盘的热情，但同时又努力引导他前往铁杆共和党选区，以尽量减少对摇摆选区造成的损害。

共和党官员在最后几天坚称，集会显示出提高投票率的迹象——尽管特朗普的最后讲话前后矛盾，有时甚至令人费解。

例如，据知情人士透露，在多次访问俄亥俄州期​​间，总统公开关注共和党参议员乔恩·赫斯特的“屁股”形状——这是特朗普特有的赞美，源于他难以置信赫斯特在竞选活动中没有更多地强调自己曾是三级大学橄榄球运动员的经历。

尽管特朗普的铁杆支持者热情高涨，但这并没有缓解选民对战争和高物价的担忧，也没有明显改变民调结果，民调显示共和党人正被蓝色浪潮所超越。

据与特朗普交谈过的人士透露，随着巡回演讲接近尾声，他的情绪明显低落。因此，在距离大选日不到24小时之际，特朗普又回到了他经常称之为“放松”的话题：建筑业。

周一，特朗​​普站在林肯纪念堂倒影池前，在中期选举前的最后一次演讲中，他用了大量篇幅详细介绍了他与池中藻类作斗争的情况，以及修复管道和更换草坪的关键决策点。

共和党官员称，这是一个令人费解的决定，但并非致命的决定。八个月前，特朗普就已将共和党引向这条道路——现在所要做的只是做好迎接冲击的准备。

CNN的凯特兰·柯林斯和马努·拉朱对本报道亦有贡献。