President Donald Trump is doubling down, and in some cases doubling up, on a campaign strategy he’s employed across the past two election cycles: calling into tele-rallies for downballot Republicans.
Trump has long used his phone well beyond the duties of the presidency. This year alone, he’s conducted dozens of impromptu one-on-one interviews with reporters to control the narrative surrounding the war with Iran, now in its sixth month.
However, in recent weeks, the White House has begun listing evening tele-rallies on the president’s public schedule, though the events themselves are not live-streamed on the White House’s official channels.
James Blair, the president’s top political aide, told the Washington Examiner that Trump has done tele-rallies for years, in addition to his patented in-person rallies, logging more than 60 during the 2024 cycle and “dozens” leading up to the 2022 midterm elections.
“Obviously this is much easier logistically,” he explained, noting that many of those phone appearances flew under the radar. “We just don’t broadcast it. Never have.”
Blair took a leave of absence earlier this year from his role as White House deputy chief of staff to run Trump’s outside political operation. He suggested that the tele-rallies are now appearing on the president’s daily schedule because he “just [doesn’t] work there anymore and [doesn’t] get asked, and therefore no one says to leave off.”
Peter Loge, a professor at George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs and the director of the Project on Ethics in Political Communication, suggested that the White House’s inclusion of tele-rallies on Trump’s schedule blurs the lines between government and campaign operations.
“President Trump has a history of mixing politics, self-interest, and government,” he told the Washington Examiner. “Running politics on the official White House schedule is one more example of Trump treating the White House as something he owns, rather than something he borrows from the American people.”
Trump has joined at least 16 tele-rallies since reentering office last January, with two coming last year and the remaining 14 occurring after April of this year.
Monday night, Trump tele-rallied for Sens. Darline Graham Nordone (R-SC) and Michael Alfonso (R-WI), the son-in-law of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who is running for Congress in Wisconsin. In some cases, the president has joined multiple tele-rallies for the same candidate, such as Rep. Barry Moore (R-AL), whose U.S. Senate campaign drew separate tele-rally appearances from the president in May and June. In other cases, Trump has opted to join multiple tele-rallies on the same night, such as Monday.
Still, the actual efficacy of the tele-rally, at least compared to in-person stumping from the president, remains to be seen. Trump-backed Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) lost his primary last week just days after the president called into a tele-rally in support of his reelection campaign. Trump’s April 20 tele-rally with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) in Virginia also failed to stop the state’s ballot initiative that would have granted Democrats a favorable electoral map. Virginia’s Supreme Court would go on to strike down the new map after the initiative passed.
Heading into this year, the White House predicted that Trump would be hitting the campaign trail every week to both tout his record in office and support downballot Republicans.
White House officials cited to the Washington Examiner that Trump has made 21 visits across the country so far this year “to highlight his accomplishments alongside Republicans in Congress.”
The total falls eight visits short of the weekly pace set by the White House ahead of 2026, while five of those trips featured multiple visits across multiple legs.
Two senior Trump administration officials conceded to the Washington Examiner that Trump, who routinely appears in public more than his immediate predecessors, had slowed down his domestic trips compared to his first term.
“I think there’s two things at play here. One, just realistically, there’s too much going on right now for him to be able to do all of these rallies in person. Maybe there’s a world where he can go to South Carolina and Wisconsin in the same day, but we’re not living in it right now,” one of the officials joked. “And No. 2, ever since 2024, we’ve seen that the threats against President Trump’s life are not to be taken lightly.”
The White House declined to answer questions about whether security concerns or other matters are leading the president to take part in more and more tele-rallies.
TRUMP SAYS ‘JIHADISTS’ ARE BEING ELECTED IN DEMOCRATIC PRIMARIES
“President Trump is the unequivocal leader of the Republican Party who is committed to maintaining Republicans’ majority in Congress,” White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales told the Washington Examiner. “In just over one year, the President has made our country greater than ever before with the most secure border in American history, the largest middle-class tax cuts ever, and the lowest murder rate since 1900.”
“President Trump will continue to draw a sharp contrast with his commonsense agenda and the radical Democrats in Congress who allowed millions of illegal aliens to flow through the border, unanimously opposed the Working Families Tax Cuts, and are soft on crime,” she concluded.