Trump Says Quiet Part Out Loud About Wanting to Win Midterm Elections

Forget a conservative majority—Donald Trump personally needs Republicans to win big in the coming midterms.

The president tossed aside the significance of his allies’ local elections while speaking at the GOP retreat Tuesday, telling lawmakers that he needs the party to maintain control of the federal government in order to avoid a Democrat-led impeachment effort.

“You gotta win the midterms,” Trump said. “Because if we don’t win the midterms, it’s just going to be—I mean, they’ll find a reason to impeach me. I’ll get impeached.”

Republicans have had a trifecta in Washington since Trump returned to office, white-knuckling every branch of the federal government. If history is any indicator, that won’t bode well for the party come this fall: In a typical midterm cycle, the presidential party loses grounds via midterms, a phenomenon known as the “presidential penalty.” Those are the basic odds, even before Trump’s devastating tariffs and wildly controversial immigration agenda are taken into account.

But early indicators—such as a healthy dose of special elections in the last year—suggest that the national backlash to Trump’s second-term agenda could be worse for the party than usual. Democrats have already seen surprising gains in unexpected areas of the country, including in Tennessee, Georgia, New Jersey, Virginia, and Pennsylvania.

Meanwhile, Republicans seem to be on the verge of panic. Anxious about midterms, the White House has spent months trying to influence red states to gerrymander their congressional lines to turn more seats in Congress. So far, that pressure campaign has had mixed results.

The MAGA leader then went on to suggest that Republicans are too nice to impeach Democrats in turn, claiming that they could have impeached “Joe Biden for a hundred different things.” Fact check: conservative lawmakers tried to impeach Biden several times, though each effort crashed and burned as claims of mounting evidence turned out to be bunk. In one instance, the caucus’s star witness in the Biden-Burisma bribery scandal fessed up to fabricating the story with the Russians.

Trump, meanwhile, has plenty to worry about should he lose sway over the American legislature. Over the last several months, Trump has committed acts of war against Venezuela without congressional approval, forced the National Guard into cities around the country without forward consent of local governors and mayors, signed an executive order to end birthright citizenship, was revealed to be a close confidant and longtime friend of child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, and routinely attacked the foundational pillars of American democracy by challenging the bounds of the Constitution (to name a small handful of indiscretions).

That should give Democrats plenty of fodder to push Trump out of power—if they can muster the votes.

If they do, plenty of pending charges await the convicted felon—including the dormant consequences of ex-special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation.