Trump’s Big Midterm Strategy Is About to Backfire

President Donald Trump wants you to pretend that he’s on the ballot in the midterm elections.

Speaking in an interview aired on Fox News’s Hannity Wednesday night, Trump explained his latest strategy to get out the vote in November.

“There’s a theory that I get the vote,” Trump said. “You know, I see it all the time. ‘When Trump’s on the ballot, they win. When he’s not on the ballot, the people don’t go to vote.’ And I’m asking the people through your brilliant show, number one show, I’m asking the people to get out and vote, pretend I’m on the ballot.”

Trump’s remarks come as he’s directed MAGA Inc. to spend his $400 million elections war chest on ads that focus not on the Republican candidates who are running for the House and Senate, but on the president himself.

But Trump’s new approach to the midterm elections only works if people actually like him—and right now, they don’t.

In recent days, Trump’s approval rating has held at 33 percent, the lowest of his presidency. A poll from Reuters/Ipsos found that Trump’s war with Iran—a conflict that has come to define the first half of his second term—is even less popular, with an approval rating of just 31 percent.

Trump may have been a boost on a ballot before, but this time around, voters are watching his record fall apart. A recent poll published by Strength in Numbers/Verasight found that Trump was underwater on all issues across the board—including border security, which is historically his best issue.

Democrats were hoping to malign Republican candidates for the House and Senate by linking them to Trump—and now those candidates won’t be able to escape him. If this is seriously the president’s best strategy, Democrats may be in for a treat come November.

“Poetry is not sexual misconduct,” writes disgraced North Carolina Representative Chuck Edwards.

The congressman released a rambling 22-page letter to his House colleagues Tuesday detailing all the ways in which he was not a creep while using his position of power to make two young women in his employ feel uncomfortable at work. The letter follows a 25-page report from the House Ethics Committee that recommended Edwards be censured following “substantial evidence” that he violated House rules related to “sexual harassment and hostile workplaces.” Backlash from the report ultimately forced Edwards to pull out of his race for reelection.

Still, Edwards attempted to clear his name with his colleagues, as NOTUS first reported. In the letter, Edwards tries to argue that what the two women reported as harassment was just chummy boss-employee camaraderie, going on to bizarrely claim that “something that could be interpreted as romantic is worlds apart from establishing an unwanted sexual advance.” [Emphasis is Edwards’s.]

“An affectionate friendship is not a sexual proposition. A gift is not sexual misconduct. A compliment is not sexual misconduct. Poetry is not sexual misconduct.

“Friendship is not misconduct,” Edwards’s letter continues. “Generosity is not misconduct. Social interaction is not misconduct. Caring deeply about colleagues who have become important parts of your life is not misconduct. And conduct does not become sexual harassment merely because someone looking backward through thousands of pages can construct a theory under which it ‘could be interpreted as romantic.’”

Among the inappropriate actions listed in the committee’s original report, Edwards paid for expensive gifts and lavish vacations; he tearfully read an original poem at one staff member’s going-away party; he hired a singer to perform Ed Sheeran’s ‘Hills of Aberfeldy’ for her on her birthday; and he sent a trove of long, gushing messages to both staffers. Edwards also regularly commented on the two women’s appearance, calling them “pretty” and “breathtaking,” including comments like, “That’s a great looking dress, I like that color, I like that texture.”

In one staffer’s testimony for the committee, she explained that Edwards ignored “the fact that [she is] a young female in politics and that [her] image is everything. And while he can navigate rumors like those that are circulating now without concern because he is, I guess, a male in politics, he had no regard for how something like this could impact my career.”

Edwards will not remain a sitting member of Congress for long, so this letter looks like an attempt to save his reputation. Unfortunately for the congressman, the evidence speaks for itself.

Poetry is not sexual misconduct. But poetry written by your boss who thinks you’re “pretty,” read aloud at your going-away party, followed by a slideshow, followed by him bursting into tears in front of your co-workers … that might cross the line.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. lied to the Senate about his 2019 trip to Samoa.

During two separate confirmation hearings last year, America’s foremost anti-vaccine activist claimed that his trek to the Polynesian island country had “nothing to do with vaccines.” Fact check: It did.

Letters obtained by The Guardian and the Associated Press, published Thursday, reveal that Kennedy explicitly informed the Samoan prime minister ahead of his trip of his intention to study the efficacy of the measles, mumps, and rubella, or MMR, vaccine.

In one such letter dated January 20, 2019, Kennedy unambiguously argued that he believed two recent infant deaths on the island were “temporally associated with MMR vaccines.”

“For most of the world, investigation of adverse health events associated with vaccines—or any pharmaceutical for that matter—is both difficult and time consuming,” Kennedy wrote. “Health information systems are rarely designed to support rapid study of associations between diagnoses and specific vaccination events.

“It is, however, known that vaccines vary both lot-to-lot from specific manufacturers, and between manufacturers for a single vaccine type,” he continued. “This makes the likelihood of adverse lot and manufacturer specific effects higher for smaller nations where all vaccines can be from a few or a single lot and manufacturer.”

Kennedy’s visit preceded a deadly measles outbreak on the island in 2019. At the time, Kennedy’s anti-vax nonprofit, Children’s Health Defense, spread rampant misinformation about the efficacy of vaccines throughout Samoa, tanking the nation’s vaccination rate from a 60 percent–70 percent range to just 31 percent, according to Mother Jones.

Up until that point, Samoa had not experienced a severe measles outbreak since 1985, when 1,095 confirmed cases were reported to the World Health Organization. But in 2019, after Kennedy’s visit, the country reported 5,707 cases of measles as well as 83 measles-related deaths, the majority of which were children under the age of five.

During his confirmation hearings in February 2025, Kennedy repeatedly told skeptical lawmakers that his visit had “nothing to do with vaccines” and was actually focused on implementing public health systems that would digitize Samoan health records.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services told The Guardian in a statement that “Secretary Kennedy’s visit to Samoa in 2019 was unrelated to vaccines.”

The spokesperson added that “any claim or insinuation based on these letters that Secretary Kennedy lied under oath or to Congress is not only false but outright defamatory,” despite the fact that Kennedy was not sworn in under oath before his congressional hearings.

However, that didn’t grant Kennedy the ability and free license to lie to America’s lawmakers: It’s a felony to make false statements to or conceal facts from the federal government, as detailed by U.S. Code.

So long Karoline Leavitt, we hardly knew ye—and what we did know, we didn’t like.

Leavitt will officially step away from the podium Thursday, a relief to those of us who care about honesty in government. As press secretary, Leavitt lied all the time. She parroted the president’s fake stories, conspiracy theories, and baseless accusations. She defended his lack of transparency and antagonized his critics.

To her credit, Leavitt lasted longer than almost all of Donald Trump’s other press secretaries. She held the position from January 20, 2025, until August 27, 2026, a whopping 584 days total. This would be impressive if Trump didn’t have another 877 days left to go.

But this isn’t out of the ordinary for Trump, who Leavitt claimed Thursday is his own “best spokesperson.” Over the course of his two terms in office thus far, the president has had five press secretaries—each more ridiculous than the last.

After Trump’s first inauguration came Sean Spicer, who lasted a total of 183 days. As press secretary, Spicer was inarticulate and clown-like, and after seven months, he resigned over Anthony Scaramucci’s appointment as communications director. Spicer should best be remembered as he began: touting the crowd at Trump’s inauguration as “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period.”

(Although an honorable mention should be given to the time he literally hid in the bushes to avoid answering questions.)

After Spicer’s departure came Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who served for 711 days. Her style of defending despotism differed from Spicer’s shrillness. Instead, she focused on discrediting the press and deflecting from tough questions. And similarly to Leavitt, she departed from the podium in 2019 to spend more time with her children.

Stephanie Grisham served for just 282 days from July 2019 to April 2020, when she left to serve as chief of staff for the first lady. She later resigned, after Melania Trump refused to issue a statement condemning violence at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, and has turned into an outspoken critic of the president. Kayleigh McEnany replaced Grisham for the final 289 days of Trump’s first term—and she’s continued defending the president’s bad behavior as a host on Fox News.

Leavitt announced her departure earlier this month, following an abbreviated parental leave. (Apparently Trump wouldn’t leave her alone.) Despite Leavitt’s comparatively longer term, Trump has still managed to manufacture a mass staffing exodus from his administration.

Now Trump is hurtling toward midterm elections with record low approval ratings and without his MAGA “machine-gun” mouthpiece.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has his eyes on his next Army secretary, and true to form, the leading candidate’s résumé includes credible domestic abuse allegations.

Sean Parnell, the Pentagon’s chief spokesperson, Hegseth’s senior adviser, and a two-time failed congressional candidate, has been pushing his own name for the job for a while. Hegseth is apparently considering it, The Hill reported Thursday, even with the accusations against Parnell.

After losing his bid for Pennsylvania’s 17th congressional district in 2020, Parnell decided to run again for the state’s open Senate seat in 2022. But he ended his campaign after losing a custody battle over domestic violence allegations. Panell’s wife testified that he had choked her, strangled her, and verbally and physically abused their children. The judge ruled that there was “credible evidence” for the abuse allegations, though Parnell denied them.

Parnell’s potential nomination comes after months of tension between Hegseth and current Army Secretary Dan Driscoll over the defense secretary’s quest to purge senior military officials and remake the Department of Defense in his own image. Driscoll is expected to leave the Pentagon as soon as Labor Day.

Driscoll is a close ally and friend to Vice President JD Vance and until recently was at the top of the list of names to replace Hegseth, should the defense secretary end up on President Trump’s bad side. Parnell, on the other hand, is likely to make Hegseth’s grip on the armed forces all the more absolute.

“Mr. Parnell has a deep bench of supporters throughout the Administration and has worked tirelessly to enable cultural change and accountability in the Pentagon,” a Pentagon official with knowledge of Hegseth’s decision-making process told The Hill. “Leveraging his extensive combat and executive experience, he will bring the accountability, change, and engaged transformational leadership the Army so desperately needs at this time.”

Parnell’s potential rise in Hegseth’s Defense Department adds his name to the growing list of men who have recently been accused of sexual assault or misconduct while they were in positions of power in Washington. That list includes Cory Mills, Max Miller, Matt Gaetz, Tony Gonzales, Eric Swalwell, and Jimmy Gomez.