Trump has been doing a lot of ‘lashing out’ lately, and his foremost sources of irritation seem to be his fellow Republicans.
Last Friday, Jim chronicled what seemed like a coordinated breakout among the GOP’s office seekers as one Republican after another sought to establish their independence from Donald Trump. All that movement at the same time, and in one direction, struck Jim as too conspicuous to be attributable to individual candidates’ calculations. Well, he was right.
That same day, Politico revealed that the president had grudgingly come to terms with his unpopularity. He understood the imperative Republican candidates are observing as they sidle out from under Trump’s shadow. At least, that’s what the president’s aides told Politico’s reporters.
Trump has “recently swallowed dissent so long as candidates criticize his policies and not him personally,” the outlet reported. Discerning readers might wonder how Republicans can express that dissent if they cannot speak out against the policy preferences with which they disagree or highlight the president’s manifest characterological defects. Nevertheless, Trump is supposedly open to some friendly criticism — in theory, at least. There’s even an informal process in place for registering that dissent with the president’s gatekeepers.
“More often times than not, a candidate or an elected official will call the White House and ask how to do it, because they are not interested in going against the president,” one unnamed “person familiar with the White House’s thinking” told Politico. Another source, a White House staffer, outlined the “safe” ways for Republican candidates to establish their independence from the president. “They criticize staff. They criticize implementation,” the individual said. “It hasn’t been ‘Trump failed’ or ‘Trump’s wrong.’”
It’s starting to sound like the president himself isn’t convinced that he needs to let Republican candidates go their own way. And when it comes to the Republicans in his Floridian backyard, Trump has made it clear that he will brook no dissent.
It’s not just Republican Representative Maria Salazar who is feeling Trump’s wrath. The South Florida representative, whose district is 70 percent Hispanic, enraged the White House after she produced an advertisement criticizing the president’s deportation program. “Trump reposted more than a dozen messages criticizing Salazar on Truth Social, the president’s social media platform,” Politico subsequently reported over the weekend, “including one user’s post that read: ‘So we need a NEW Republican to Replace Salazar.’” Rather, the entire Florida Republican Party is being brought “to heel.”
“Earlier Saturday, Trump lashed out at a Miami Herald story that reported how GOP gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds had removed references to the president from his campaign website,” Politico’s Playbook newsletter read Monday. The outlet’s reporters note that some Republicans, including outgoing Governor Ron DeSantis, plan to keep their distance from Vice President JD Vance when he campaigns in the state later this week. It may be coincidental, but these maneuvers are also consistent with a worsening political environment for the incumbent party. “The nonpartisan Cook Political Report has shifted 15 House races nationwide toward Democrats, including three seats in Florida,” the report observed.
Trump has been doing a lot of “lashing out” lately, and his foremost sources of irritation seem to be his fellow Republicans, but the president’s agitation only confirms the depths of his party’s troubles. Between that and where the president is choosing to spend the final weeks of the 2026 midterm election cycle — Florida, Ohio, Oklahoma, Alabama, etc. — suggests that the political landscape is as bad for Republicans as the polls indicate.
Republican candidates can be forgiven for observing that the GOP outperforms the president’s job approval rating in the generic ballot test. Moreover, they are justified in sensing an opportunity in the polls of individual battleground districts, where the average Democratic lead, according to the Cook Political Report’s survey earlier this month, is just two points, not ten points. If the GOP’s candidates could establish their own independent bona fides with their voters ahead of November, the thinking goes, Republicans might be able to stave off the worst-case scenario for their party.
If only the president would let them.