The last few weeks have revealed a growing trend in Donald Trump’s presidency that his inner circle would prefer to remain shrouded in secrecy. Unlike in his first term, when Trump dominated the Republican Party with an iron fist and the slightest public criticism from a GOP lawmaker meant a political death sentence, the president now looks undeniably weak.
Republicans across the country have taken note of the fact that Trump simply isn’t who he used to be. His threats no longer deliver results, as his recent failure to pressure Indiana’s supermajority of Republican state senators into mid-cycle redistricting made abundantly clear. After a string of high-profile political failures and still damaged by the MAGA base’s rage over the as-yet-unreleased Epstein Files, Trump is limping into the 2026 midterms with less political juice than ever before.
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It’s getting harder for the GOP to hide its concerns about what Trump’s incompetence means for next year’s elections. In a shocking private statement last week, Trump’s handpicked RNC chairman Joe Gruters admitted that Republicans are facing “almost certain defeat.”
The leaked admission, first published by The Bulwark’s Andrew Egger and Jim Swift, sent the GOP into a coast-to-coast tailspin. As Gruters emphasized multiple times in his remarks, the last year has been a catastrophe for Republicans.
“It’s not a secret. There’s no sugarcoating it. It’s a pending, looming disaster heading our way,” Gruters said. “The chances are Republicans will go down and will go down hard … this is an absolute disaster.”
Gruters may be the first Republican leader willing to sweat Trump’s growing national unpopularity out loud, but he’s hardly the first to head for the lifeboats. This year saw GOP lawmakers resign or retire from Congress at a staggering rate, including four in the last month alone. In total, 29 Republicans have announced they will not seek reelection in 2026, nearly 60% of all retirements or resignations this year. Some have gone quietly. Others are choosing a megaphone.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has marked her own impending departure with a wave of criticism aimed at her own party leaders, including the admission that the same Republicans who swear loyalty to Trump in public also mock him behind his back. As Emily Singer noted, Greene’s departure is a “canary in a coal mine for MAGA,” not only because it narrows Speaker Mike Johnson’s already razor-thin House majority, but because Greene was once one of Trump’s closest and most influential allies.
But Trump’s popularity headaches aren’t limited to stinging broadsides from his former friends. Earlier this month, the White House announced a plan to mask the damage of Trump’s tariffs by sending American families a $2,000 “tariff dividend check.” The check wouldn’t have made up for how much most families have spent in the months since Trump’s tariff policies sent prices skyrocketing, while simultaneously adding to a national debt that has already leapt past $38 trillion on Trump’s watch.
Senate Republicans weren’t buying it; and for once, they were willing to say so. Trump’s $2,000 payoff fell flat with GOP leaders who are more concerned with the record $1 trillion that Trump has added to the debt in under a year. When Trump hinted that he’d be willing to bypass the Senate and send out the checks himself, even allies like Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy snapped back.
"I think it's got to come through Congress," Kennedy said, adding that the White House could find itself facing Senate investigations if it tried to cut them out of the equation.
Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy
It’s hard to imagine Republicans feeling so comfortable criticizing Trump in 2017 or even 2020, but his latest stretch of unpopularity is record-breaking in its own right. At no point in his first term did Trump ever face such a long period of unpopularity across so many issues.
And unlike in his first term, Trump’s MAGA base now directly blames him for failing to address rising prices and rising corporate layoffs.
One Politico poll found that nearly 40% of Republicans thought Trump had mishandled the economy in his first year. His handling of the economy also scores dismal numbers: An Economist/YouGov poll conducted between Dec. 5-8 found him 16 points underwater on economic issues—the lowest point of his political career.
But no crisis looms quite as ominously on the horizon as the vaulting cost of health care. Congressional Republicans looked to Trump to propose a path forward that would avoid the punishing increases to Americans’ health insurance premiums, only to find the president uninterested and “hands-off” about their biggest political liability.
Last week a proposal to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies failed in the Senate, in large part because Trump simply refused to get involved despite frantic Republican requests for his help. For the Republicans still trying to win reelection next year, Trump now looks more like a liability than an asset.
Trump’s mishandling of the economy and health care has convinced Greene that there’s no hope left for Republicans ahead of 2026, when she expects voters to punish the GOP for their legendary level of incompetence.
“I do believe at this time that Republicans will lose the midterms, and I think that’s unfortunate,” Greene said in a CBS News interview last week. “I very much wanted to be part of a Republican majority in Congress that solved problems for the American people, that delivered what we promised to America.”
Voters—even those who supported Trump in 2024—are waking up to the fact that Trump and the GOP have made their lives worse in nearly every way possible, and that the White House has no plan for pulling them back from the financial brink. The smarter Republicans recognize that with voters this angry, distancing themselves from Trump is now a matter of political survival.
With veteran Republican lawmakers retiring from the party in droves and even more facing tough reelection campaigns in dozens of swing districts, the party’s panic has never been more palpable. As they fight to avert a possible electoral wipeout in November, the GOP needs a strategic and savvy leader more than ever. Unfortunately, all they have is Trump.
