Heading into the Midterms, Trump Is Sure the GOP Is Winning. He Can’t Figure Out Why Voters Disagree

Heading into the midterms, President Trump is confident that Republicans have policy wins to sell to voters — but he's stumped as to why they're not buying.

The president went looking for answers at the annual House Republican retreat on Tuesday.

"We won every swing state. We won the popular vote by millions. We won everything, but they say that when you win the presidency, you lose the midterm," Trump told lawmakers assembled at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. "So, you're all brilliant people, most of you are in this business longer than me. That makes me smarter than you, because look where I am, right? No, it doesn't."

"But I wish you could explain to me what the hell's going on with the mind of the public," he added.

Trump's frustration heading in 2026 should serve as a flashing warning sign given his insistence on projecting optimism despite his lagging approval numbers, especially on the economy.

The House lawmakers he was addressing know that holding their narrow majority will be extremely difficult, and that many of the new young, minority, and working-class voters they welcomed into the coalition in 2024 can't be taken for granted in 2026. For some GOP lawmakers, the question isn't whether there will be a blue wave in the midterms but how high it will be.

As many Republicans see it, the GOP is facing trouble on the affordability front and has not been effective in selling the administration's achievements, from slashing illegal border crossings, pushing prescription drug-pricing reform, lowering gas prices, and working with Congress to extend the 2017 tax cuts. On the legislative front, many think more should be done to remind voters that in opposing last year's reconciliation package, every congressional Democrat voted to increase taxes for millions of Americans while opposing new tax breaks for tipped wages and overtime pay.

"We have a communications problem, and we got to let people know all the good the president's doing," Republican National Committee Chairman Joe Gruters told National Review in a wide-ranging interview last month, in which he maintained that the positive results of the administration's economic policies "aren't going to be felt overnight."

"The Democrats have been really good out there and kind of in a vacuum," Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) recently told Punchbowl News. "We've got a story to tell that hasn't been fully told. And it's up to us to tell it. And we will," added the Senate Republican leader, who plans to travel the country soon to help sell his party's legislative successes.

But as political parties regularly learn the hard way, patience doesn't come easily to swing voters. And Republicans' level-setting about the challenges ahead come on the heels of Trump's decision over the weekend to capture Venezuela's authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro and his wife in a U.S. military raid. Depending on how U.S. involvement in Venezuela develops over the next few months, in-cycle Republicans could spend much of 2026 fielding questions from constituents about the administration's long-term strategy there and elsewhere.

As the president's allies see it, Trump's actions in Venezuela fall neatly into the "promises delivered" column and congressional Republicans should not shy away from touting the success of the U.S. military operation in accomplishing its objective without losing any American lives.

"Republicans should not be apologetic and should actually be a lot more aggressive in saying the guy is a drug dealer and he’s killing Americans, and that’s an act of war," longtime Trump pollster John McLaughlin said in an interview with NR.  "President Trump had every right to go and stop it, and what he’s doing is he’s protecting Americans by bringing this guy to justice in the United States."

The president is expected to spend a big chunk of the 2026 cycle crisscrossing the country to sell his agenda, and the well-funded Republican National Committee is planning to hold a midterm convention to gin up enthusiasm among low-propensity Republican voters who don't show up when Trump isn't on the ballot.

The clock is ticking on how much more Republicans can accomplish this cycle before November, when congressional Democrats have a strong chance of breaking the GOP's unified control of Washington. Meantime, Trump continues to put pressure on congressional Republicans to nuke the filibuster so that his party can reduce the procedural barriers to passing legislation, a big ask for institutionalist Republicans who have spent their careers defending the filibuster against progressive impatience.

There are early indicators that administration officials are eyeing housing policy as part of their midterm-year affordability focus. "I know for a fact that they’ve looked at polling, and they're definitely looking at policies that can make owning a home more affordable to a lot more Americans," says McLaughlin, the Trump pollster.

On that front, Republicans in the House and the Senate are pushing housing-focused bills aimed at reducing regulatory barriers to home building and development, modernizing federal programs, and increasing overall housing supply. Trump also signaled in a televised address last month that he will soon announce “some of the most aggressive housing reform plans in American history” in 2026, though details remain sparse.

Democratic members of Congress and candidates believe that following the record-length federal government shutdown late last year, they succeeded in elevating health care as winning issue ahead of 2026. They also point to a series of off-year electoral wins in Virginia, New Jersey, and elsewhere last fall as proof that momentum is on their side a year out from the midterms.

And yet deep fissures remain over how the minority party should learn from its recent mistakes. To wit, Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin confirmed last month that the national party will not publicly release its autopsy of the 2024 election results after initially pledging to do so, infuriating some DNC members who are already frustrated by their chairman's continuing fundraising struggles and leadership style.

Moreover, as Democratic lawmakers continue to face pressure from their base to resist Trump's every domestic and foreign policy move, the still wildly unpopular party is still struggling to put forward a coherent and unified message on a range of issues such as foreign policy, artificial intelligence, Israel, and trade.

Meanwhile, the White House continues to remind Republicans of the consequences that will result from electoral failure in 2026: divided government, Democrat-led congressional investigations, and impeachment.

“You got to win the midterms, because if we don't win the midterms," the president warned Republicans at the House GOP policy retreat on Tuesday, “I'll get impeached.”