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Trump’s Fantasy Dream World in Dallas

Attendance at the Republican mid-term convention was anything but a full house, but that did not stop the Felon from claiming convention hall was packed. As one would expect, the Felon lied more or less non-stop - CNN complied his 16 biggest lies - and the event was more or less a worship service for the Felon and his insatiable ego. The affair ignored the Felon's terrible poll numbers and the increased attacks in the ongoing war with Iran that have driven energy prices and gasoline prices at the pump to new highs.  Outside of the Kool-Aid drinking faithful and self-prostituting GOP elected officials, one has to wonder whether anyone else believes the endless lies.  For Democrats the event put the spotlight on the Felon and his unpopularity and the main task for Democrats is to turn out those who sat out the last two elections either out of laziness or an assumption that Democrats would win without their votes. The other wildcard will be whether the Iranians and their Houthis allies - who according to Reuters have gained control of the island of Perim in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait that is at the mouth of the Red Sea - will take further actions to drive oil and ga prices even higher as election day approaches.  A piece at The Atlantic looks at the fantasy world on display in Dallas:

[The Felon] President Trump began his midterm-convention address last night by casting his spell on the crowd in Dallas. “This place is packed,” he announced from the stage, pointing to the back of the American Airlines Center, where everyone could see hundreds of empty seats. Those who looked up saw thousands more, whole sections without any people at all. But the crowd cheered anyway. A deal had been struck. Reality would be ignored.

After more than a decade in politics, Trump is facing his last great electoral test—his popularity is waning, his party is down in the polls, Republicans could lose control in the U.S. House and maybe the Senate. He demanded greater complicity minutes later, seeming to invent a person in the back of the room. “He’s leaving for the bathroom. He’ll be back in two minutes,” he said, pointing. “They’ll take a picture of his seat while he’s gone. And they’ll say Trump did not fill up the arena.”

Laughter joined with the cheers for their political wizard. It was working. Trump could say that he had passed “the largest tax cut in the history of our country,” even if that was not the case. He could claim to have won the presidency three times, when he’s actually done so twice. He could describe the recent past as “the most successful two years financially and every other way in the history of the presidency,” despite six in 10 voters saying he had made the economy worse. He could promise to pay every adult U.S. citizen $5,000 if Republicans held both legislative houses, as if that sum did not amount to about 80 percent of the federal discretionary budget.

“I’m asking you to pretend that I’m on the ballot,” he said. “I’m on the ballot. I’m on the ballot. Just one more time.”

The night was all about Trump. He was the alpha and omega, the focus and the solution. Attendees wore pictures of the president on lanyards around their necks, the ticket for entry to the arena. VIP boxes were stocked with Trump was right about everything hats. Oversize photos of the president lined the hallways. . . . When each speaker dropped Trump’s name, it was cause for riotous celebration.

Until now, national political conventions have been held only during presidential-election years, when delegates from each state gather to select their nominee. In the 1970s, the gatherings shifted from smoke-filled rooms for party business to televised infomercials for the candidates. Trump this year created a simulation of a simulation.  . . . The convention-in-name-only was for, by, and about one man—who, importantly, cannot be a candidate for president again, according to the U.S. Constitution.

“The only way to keep dangerous, radical, weird out of the Senate is a united Republican Party standing with our president, Donald J. Trump,” Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, bellowed from the stage. “Stand for the president, Donald J. Trump. This is a battle for the heart of our nation.

No president has tried something like this before. None has had so much money to spend on themselves at this point in a presidency. None has chosen to make the midterms a referendum on themselves while polling so badly. . . . . The strategist in chief has bet that turning out Trump voters, the ones who typically stay home when he is not on the ballot, is the only path forward. This is why the first ads he bought for the cycle were not about any candidates who are running this year, but about himself. This was why his latest show was a celebration of the unlimited possibility of his incantations.

Outside Trump’s curated fantasy world, not everything has gone according to plan. Trump’s political strategist, James Blair, announced after the off-year elections in 2025 that the president would be “very, very focused on prices and cost of living.” White House aides told us in the new year that the pivot would come after Trump scratched his itch for another confrontation with Iran. By May, as that conflict dragged on, Trump advisers told us quietly that if it had not receded, along with gas prices, by Labor Day, there would be trouble.

Two weeks ago, multiple Trump advisers told us they expected the kinetic part of the Iran war to mostly cease in September, clearing the way for lower gas prices. None of that has happened. Missiles are still flying in the Strait of Hormuz. Since the 2025 elections, gas prices have risen 39 percent, from $3.08 to $4.28; 30-year mortgage rates have increased 8 percent; electricity prices have gone up more than 4 percent. Charlie Cook, a political analyst and the dean emeritus of legislative-election handicapping, says that Republicans should brace themselves for a tough result. “The worst-case scenario for the GOP and best for Democrats today would have sounded ludicrous eight months ago,” he wrote recently. “The most plausible today resembles Republicans’ nightmare scenario at the beginning of the year.”

[F]ew Republicans still pretend off-camera that they will be able to maintain control of the House. Narrow Democratic control of the Senate, once outlandish, could be within reach. On the sidelines of the convention in Dallas, strategists muttered about recent polling in House races that shows jump balls where Trump won by double digits in 2024.

The outstanding question is whether Democratic candidates can emerge from the dim shadow of President Biden. . . . .On the whole, Democrats are delighted by Trump’s strategy—to put front and center a man whose unpopularity fires up their voters and further alienates the newly skeptical. “If the Democrats have a great year, it will be because they got their base out to vote in large numbers,” Rich Thau, the moderator of the Swing Voter Project, told us. “It won’t be because they magically converted these swing voters into Democratic senatorial and gubernatorial voters.”

His economic approval rating this summer, according to Quinnipiac University, stood at 34 percent, down from 53 percent on the eve of the last midterm elections on his watch, in 2018. The 2024 presidential election hinged on the rising cost of living, and after Republicans won the trifecta—the White House and both chambers of Congress—the expectation was that Trump and his party would fix what many still view as Biden’s economy. “I want to emphasize that this wasn’t to just slightly improve things,” David Winston, a Republican strategist who works with congressional leadership, told us. “They viewed a substantive outcome as what they were looking for.” It has not come to pass.

But no comments mattered more than Trump’s. He talked for nearly two hours, a rolicking, weaving address that only occasionally stuck to the teleprompter. It ended where he began. “Please pretend that I’m running, and get out and vote on November 3 or sooner,” he said. “Because, in actuality, I really am running.” In actuality, he is not. Or maybe he is, in a way. His crowd remained in their seats to the end. The room, at times, felt packed to the rafters.

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Canada and Iran Have Found Trump’s Achilles’ Heel

At the GOP mid-term "convention" in Dallas the Felon promisedthe  Iran war would be over immediately after the mid-term elections.  He also promised $5,000 checks to American citizens if Republicans maintain control of both houses of Congress. The first promise ignores the reality that the Iranians have a say as to if and when the war ends. The only way an immediate end to the war could come about would be for the U.S. to basically unilaterally concede defeat and try to move on. The second promise is ridiculous on its face, but no doubt the most fervent Kool-Aid drinkers will believe it.  Indeed, the Felon's behavior also ignores the reality that both Canada and Iran seem to recognize the Felon's Achilles heel: in both the U.S./Canada trade war and in the Iran war all they need to do is keep the price of oil and gasoline high or rising even more and, in the case of Canada, target states crucial to the GOP effort to retain control of Congress.  This leaves the GOP stuck with fear mongering against Democrats and bragging about tax cuts for the super wealthy. As a piece in The New Republic lays out both Canada and Iran have ways to hit back and cause economic pain that could drive voters to abandon the GOP and its insane leader.  Here are article highlights:

Canadian officials aren’t being coy about it: The retaliatory tariffs imposed Tuesday against the United States were deliberately chosen to hurt vulnerable Republicans before the midterm elections. “We are picking products that will target states in the U.S.,” Mélanie Joly, Canada’s industry minister, said late last month while announcing the tariffs. “We’re being wise and strategic to put political pressure, and that’s why we think it’s ‌the right thing to do right now.” Canada, fed up with Donald Trump’s bullying since he returned to office last year, is hitting the president where he’s most vulnerable —namely the slim congressional majorities that have allowed him to govern with more or less total impunity.

The tariffs particularly focus on vehicles, fish, and dairy, and will hit states with key particularly hard in states with key elections, like Maine, Michigan, and Kansas. There are early indications that they’re working. Nearly two-thirds of voters in Maine and Michigan view the trade war negatively, according to a CNN poll released on Wednesday. . . . But they’re hardly surprising. Trump has repeatedly attacked the U.S.’s northern neighbor, a close ally and biggest trading partner, and even mused about making Canada the “51st state” (an odd riff, given it would almost certainly be a blue one).

These tit-for-tat tariffs are also just desserts, however. Trump has spent much of his second term flouting the longtime convention of U.S. administrations avoiding direct involvement in other countries’ elections. He has endorsed right-wing and far-right candidates and parties in Argentina, Hungary, Brazil, and, most recently, Germany. He has used sanctions against Brazil to try to help spring his his pal and former President Jair Bolsonaro from prison, and sent Cabinet officials to Hungary to aid Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s reelection  campaign. He has used tariffs to try to pressure voters to back his preferred candidates . . . Now, Republicans in tough races will face an even steeper climb—and they’ll have to deal with the kinds of headaches that Trump has tried to inflict on liberal candidates in other countries.

Canada is not the only foreign nation whose actions will affect the midterms. Although no Iranian official has made as explicit a comment as Joly’s, there has been speculation for months that many of the nation’s actions in the stop-start Iran war, particularly those that lead to spikes in already skyrocketing energy prices, are intended to damage GOP chances in the upcoming midterms. “The Iranians are not dumb,” longtime Republican strategist Karl Rove told Fox News in late June. “They know that the fall campaign starts in earnest on Labor Day. I would not be surprised to see them attempt to have an influence on the outcome by creating problems in mid-August and causing oil prices to rise and uncertainty to grow.”

That is exactly what has happened, with strikes resuming in recent weeks and Iran now looking to escalate further, according to The New York Times, which reported Wednesday that “Iran’s leadership believes that now may be the best moment to raise the stakes, ahead of the U.S. midterm elections in November when an unpopular war could hurt Mr. Trump and the Republican Party.”

Still, Canada marks the most pronounced and deliberate—and Trumpian—attempt to punish Trump by targeting the midterms. The Canadians, too, seem to know that the fall campaign starts in earnest on Labor Day. And vulnerable Republicans are already reeling. “This is not China we’re dealing with; it’s Canada—our best friend, a country with whom our economy is completely intertwined,” Maine’s incumbent Republican senator, Susan Collins, said last month. . . . it’s hard not to see the entire issue as the president shooting his party in the foot—an avoidable debacle, like the Iran war. Now it’s one that may very well sink his party.

The irony of all of this is that much of Trump’s attempts at interference failed. He went all-in backing his close allies in Brazil and Hungary, and both failed to accomplish what he wanted—Bolsonaro is still serving a 27-year sentence for election interference, and Orban was defeated, ending a 16-year stretch in power. But Trump’s greatest faceplant may have come in Canada. Shortly after he won the 2024 election, he began to attack the nation’s liberal government, first with “51st state” mockery and then with tariffs. It failed spectacularly. Canadian voters had appeared ready to elect a conservative government, but instead kept the liberals in power. That backlash swept Mark Carney into power as prime minister, and he has emerged as a persistent thorn in Trump’s side—a vocal critic who is attempting to rally America’s estranged allies to be less dependent on the U.S. Now, Carney seems to be on the verge of doing something Trump couldn’t: Help to install a more favorable government abroad. 

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Republicans are Hoping ‘Trump-a-Palooza’ Isn’t Only About Trump

Today marks the start of the Felon's Republican mid-term convention in Dallas. With the Felon having record bad polling, Democrats are hoping the Felon makes the two day event all about himself and his grievances, including the unfounded claim that the 2020 election was "stolen", and acting as if affordability is merely a hoax.  Republicans are hoping for the exact opposite with focus on "Republican achievements" which primarily are comprised of huge tax cuts for the very wealthy, slashing funding for social programs that will harm millions of Americans, and supposed control of the border, ignoring, of course, high disapproval of ICE's ongoing outrages (see the image at right).  Since these "achievements" either ignore ongoing high inflation or are a cause of it, the Felon's tariffs are driving up consumer prices, and the Iran war debacle has driven to oil to over $100/barrel, it is unclear what kind of positive spin can be put on an economy where only the rich are getting far richer while the rest of us struggle to tread water at best.  A piece at Politico looks at the gathering which I - and likely many others - hope goes off the rails:

[The Felon] President Donald Trump will be at the center of this week’s GOP midterm convention. Many of his fellow Republicans are hoping he doesn’t make it all about him.

The parade of lawmakers, candidates, donors and party officials now headed to Dallas for the two-day spectacle are counting on Trump to make a compelling pitch on the national stage before voters hit the polls.

According to interviews with dozens of Republicans, they are largely hoping for a two-pronged approach aimed at getting the president’s committed supporters off the sidelines: a focus on what they call Democrats’ extreme positions and the accomplishments of the Republican Congress — most of which are now more than a year old.

Republicans have reasons to be wary. Trump’s approval ratings are at record lows for his time in office, and many swing-district GOP lawmakers are torn between running from an unpopular president and alienating his base of committed supporters.

There is little evidence Trump is content to let rank-and-file Republicans run away from him. The first pair of national midterm ads funded by his cash-rich political operation put Trump at the very center.

Even if not all agree Trump is the party’s best spokesperson at this point, they are eager to see a new effort to promote the tax cuts, which were enacted in July 2025, and want to see them touted anew in Dallas.

“It’s a great opportunity for us to brag about what the Republican Party has done the last year and a half,” added Rep. Craig Goldman (R-Texas). “So certainly talking about the One Big Beautiful Bill.”

While Van Orden and Goldman are attending the convention, which kicks off Wednesday and ends Thursday, many other lawmakers and candidates are staying back in their districts. Some of those Republicans said they have scheduling conflicts or simply want to campaign back home.

But there are also qualms about Trump’s obsession with priorities that many of them consider off-message ahead of the midterms — such as pressuring Congress to take up the GOP elections bill known as the SAVE America Act.

As GOP lawmakers begged Trump to get serious about tackling the high cost of living, the [Felon] president has instead openly scoffed at “affordability” as an issue concocted by Democrats to hurt Republicans.

He refused for months to help pass a major legislative package over the summer designed to help lower housing costs, and his trade wars and ongoing conflict with Iran have contributed to persistent inflation. A recent import deal designed to address rising beef prices came at the cost of upsetting American cattlemen.

Speaker Mike Johnson brushed off a question last week about the risk of having candidates show up at a Trump-focused event given his disapproval ratings.

“Politics 101 is just telling folks what you’re going to do, and then come to Washington and do it, and then go back and tell them what you did,” said Rep. Mark Harris (R-N.C.). “When you look at President Trump’s agenda, securing the border, we’ve done that. That he wanted to make the tax cuts permanent, we’ve done that.”

If there is one consensus message Republicans want the convention oriented around, it’s the choice between the legislative record Trump will be touting and a Democratic Party that they argue has moved way too far to the left — especially as progressive candidates, some of them democratic socialists, continue to win key primaries.

RNC national press secretary Natalie Baldassarre also said in a statement that the event would “put front and center Democrats’ desire to abolish police and prisons, raise costs, and strip away our freedoms,” while also promoting “Republicans’ historic achievements.”

Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) called the midterm convention — the first held since Democrats did them in the late 1970s and early 1980s — “an interesting concept” and said he would be paying close attention to the size of the television audience. But he said he would be back in his safe red district campaigning.

“I’m going to look forward to listening to it on the radio as I’m driving down the road, going from one spot in my district to another,” he said.

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