It has been challenging for political reporters to come up with language that sufficiently captures the extremism.

Donald Trump

His actions during his second term. I’ve utilized

“smash and grab”

To propose a leader alongside supporters who are acutely conscious of operating under limited timeframes, thus feeling compelled to inflict maximum harm upon the policies and establishments they loathe prior to leaving office in Washington. There is a particular rationale behind the aggressively extreme tactics we’ve observed recently.

executive orders

,

DOGE raids

, the chaotic

Trump trade war

, along with several questionable top-tier selections. After all,

history tells us

The Republican Party’s dominance over the federal government is highly probable to conclude after the 2026 midterm elections. Furthermore, the 47th president finds himself at the concluding phase of his political journey and does not seem overly concerned with the fate of the party he has led or much else following his departure from office.

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Even so, recent reliable reports indicate that instead of accepting the midterm outcomes and acting as he pleases, Trump actually cares deeply about what transpires in 2026—especially whether Republicans can overcome long odds to retain control of the House. My associate David Freedlander has reported this.

argued

This is the reasoning behind Trump’s early endorsement of New York Representative Mike Lawler for his potential 2026 gubernatorial campaign.

,

They currently hold a seven-seat majority, but with only three Republicans in Harris-won seats [one of them being Lawler] and eight Democrats in seats won by Trump, many GOP operatives believe that the party can actually hold on to the chamber in the midterms …

So essentially, Trump was endorsing House Speaker Mike Johnson. For months, Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill had been trying to convince Lawler to seek reelection, thinking that he is the sole candidate capable of retaining a seat in a district where Democrats outnumber Republicans—a seat they believe might be crucial for the GOP’s attempt to maintain control over the House.

,

If Trump is really concentrating on mastering the intricacies of winning specific House elections to such an extent, maybe there
is
the next day he’s pondering. Rachael Bade from Politico even goes as far as to propose that Trump might be considering this idea.

obsessed with the 2026 midterms

in sharp contrast to his level of interest the first time around in 2018:

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Far from writing off the House or Senate, he’s bullish about defying history and keeping Democrats away from committee gavels and subpoena powers, according to five Republicans I’ve spoken to, including several close Trump confidants.

He’s rolling out early endorsements in hopes of forestalling messy primary fights that could divert precious resources from the general election campaigns. He’s making recruitment calls and buttonholing other Republicans about how he can best use his political muscle. And he’s continuing to raise boatloads of money to shell out in 2026.

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In 2017 and 2018, Trump kept as much money to himself as he could, anticipating his own reelection campaign. Now his party could benefit a great deal from the two-term limit that means 2024 was the last Trump campaign. But the bigger question is whether the desire to hang on to the House in 2026 (the Senate is a much easier proposition) could lead the president to go a bit easier on the policy extremism and authoritarian power grabbing that definitely marked the first 100 days of his second term. Bade thinks so:

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Trump’s midterm obsession is also hovering over Capitol Hill as GOP lawmakers try to write his sprawling domestic policy agenda into law. On issue after issue, Trump appears to sympathize with swing-district moderates — the “majority makers” whose races will decide the majority.

Trump and his aides have pushed back on steep cuts to Medicaid in part because the politics stink. They’ve given a wide berth to blue-state Republicans who are pushing to raise the cap on the deduction for state and local taxes — a policy Trump signed in 2017 that helped sink him in suburban districts a year later.

He’s even toyed with the idea of raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans — something he believes would parry Democrats’ certain political attacks on a bill they say benefits the rich at the expense of the poor.

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This interpretation is credible but not totally compelling. Trump hasn’t insisted on the tax-hike-on-the-wealthy idea, and his “moderation” on Medicaid and SALT could just as easily reflect his indifference to policy details as any shrewd calculation of how his “big, beautiful bill” will affect congressional races. A more convincing case for his political prudence could be made if he chose to reverse the damage that his hirelings Elon Musk and Russell Vought continue to wreak throughout the federal government and to back off his confrontations with the federal judiciary. But let’s say he truly is pulling his punches on Mike Johnson’s behalf. What happens if (and this is entirely possible) the GOP’s slim prospects for holding on to the House in 2026 begin to vanish, which could definitely happen if the economy struggles or

Trump’s approval ratings

don’t recover from their current slough? Will we discover there is a whole new level of authoritarian radicalism Trump 2.0 has yet to pursue but might move toward if Democrats seem sure to bust up the trifecta? That’s a chilling possibility that should cool the jets of anyone eager to assert that Trump is behaving like a normal president.

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