President Donald Trump‘s importance to the Republican Party, reshaped in his image, and penchant for dismissing political norms have produced questions on how the president will deal with being a potential lame duck come January.
Those questions begin Tuesday, when the midterm elections will set the course and ultimately define the final two years of the president’s term.
Trump has often told voters to pretend he’s on the ballot to try to boost turnout, in the process forcing the election to be a referendum on his presidency, even if Republican candidates have tried to create space with the president.
But, regardless of Tuesday’s results, in which Democrats are projected to run away with the House and compete to flip the Senate, Trump is not expected to go quietly into the night.
Republicans close to the White House downplayed the idea that Trump will be a lame duck, in the words of one ally, “in the traditional sense.”
“The GOP will still revolve around him even once the 2028 race begins in earnest,” the strategist told the Washington Examiner. “He just has too big of a personality to not be the center of the GOP universe”
White House spokesman Davis Ingle added that Trump is the “unequivocal leader, best messenger, and unmatched motivator for the Republican Party.”
“He is committed to maintaining Republican majorities in Congress,” Ingle told the Washington Examiner.
But others, including GOP strategist Matt Dole, contend Republicans will start to distance themselves from the president from Wednesday as they try to stake out “their own plot of ground in the post-Trump era.”
“People will try to define what they think the Trump coalition was, and take a piece of that coalition for themselves,” Dole told the Washington Examiner. “You’ll start to see people jockey for presidential politics almost immediately, and there’s going to be some reckoning in the Republican Party. There’s going to be some people who support Trump until noon on Jan. 20, 2029, and are going to be mad that there are people who are sort of trying to plot their own course.”
Against that backdrop of the 2028 Republican presidential primary, the last two years of Trump’s second administration will likely be separated into two different eras — the immediate aftermath of Wednesday’s elections, during which the GOP will retain control of Congress, and from Jan. 3 onward when the 120th Congress is sworn in for their respective terms, likely with Democrats controlling at least one chamber.
During that first period, a Republican strategist previewed potential movement from Trump and the Republican Congress on permitting reform and an omnibus bill before Democrats likely control the House.
“There’s going to be that time period where I think and hope Trump will be more constrained,” the strategist told the Washington Examiner. “But once the Dems actually take charge, they were elected with a mandate to essentially prosecute the president. I think that’s going to extend in a lot of ways to his family, and in some very personal attacks there, and I think that’s going to cause a tremendous backlash from President Trump.”
Trump appears to be preparing for such investigations, repeating his openness to issue preemptive pardons for him, his family, and his aides, which could complicate congressional oversight starting in January.
“I would if needed to,” he told the New York Post in an interview published on Monday. “I would not even think about it. I’d do it.”
In the same interview, Trump said his strategy regarding a Democratic Congress will be to veto legislation before negotiating compromises.
Comments, such as those, have exacerbated Democrats’ concerns that Trump, who has never been beholden to political norms, will be even less restrained from Wednesday since he will never have to win an election again.
“If this administration has demonstrated anything, it’s that President Trump is willing to use every lever of executive authority to deliver on his promises,” another Republican strategist told the Washington Examiner.
A separate Republican strategist continued that Trump’s “going to be very angry” if Democrats win the House, as they are predicted to do, and pursue impeachment against him.
“You can almost look to what happened in 2019 as a playbook for what we could be seeing in 2027,” the strategist said. “Trump, when he’s in these horrible positions, he does tend to react like a wild animal and is very unpredictable, and he casts off political norms.”
That unpredictability, however, could start as early as Wednesday considering the prospect of legal challenges to election results in the likes of Alaska after the Senate race in that state was upended last month by a report Democrats poached a spoiler Republican candidate with the same name as incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-AK) to run in the four-person contest.
Even with the veto power, Dole acknowledged that losing control of Congress will “certainly [affect] his legacy.”
“He loves a political fight, and so we will get some classic Donald Trump moments that I’m sure the Democrats will think that this is just one more example of him just being the worst guy in the world, and his coalition will think is just the greatest thing in the world,” he said.
Postelection concerns will include foreign policy, particularly ending the Iran war, in addition to his legacy projects, a priority underscored by him on Monday making his closing argument at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
“While past administrations tore down statues, allowed thugs and murderers to run wild, and let our capital fall into shameful disrepair, we’re treating our capital city with the love and the honor that it deserves,” he said during the event. “We respect it.”
Trump reopened the Reflecting Pool during his remarks after a more than $16 million renovation, which has been prolonged because of poor work conducted by a no-bid contractor with whom Trump has previously employed for projects at his golf club in Sterling, Virginia.
With voters reiterating to pollsters that they care more about the economy, not Trump’s legacy projects, midterm elections have historically been referendums on the incumbent president, with Republican commanders in chief, on average, losing 23 House seats since Harry Truman, for example.
The largest loss, however, was recorded by former President Barack Obama in 2010, losing 64 seats.
On the eve of the election, Democrats have an average 9-percentage-point advantage in generic congressional polling.
Before Tuesday, a Republican strategist acknowledged that the midterm elections are “more than anything a referendum on the war in Iran and the downstream economic turmoil it triggered.”
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Another Republican strategist emphasized Trump’s accomplishments regarding the border, but conceded “the cost of living has stayed elevated.”
“A lot of that’s due to interest rates, but obviously gas prices and the war in Iran has contributed to that, and then you get this merger with AI and the fears,” the strategist said. “They’re like, ‘Well, am I really that much better off?’”