Name: Can Trump really save the midterms for the Republicans? | BBC Americast
Uploaded: 2026-01-31T17:34:01.000Z
Duration: 28 min 35 s
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Was starting the campaign to win the midterms.

That's what Donald Trump's going to be saying for nine months in advance of the big political event of 2026, the midterm elections coming in November.

Can Republicans possibly hold on to the House and the Senate?

What will it mean for Donald Trump's presidency if they don't?

Hello, it's Sarah in the BBC's bureau in Washington, and

it's Anthony right here next to Sarah in Washington, D.C.

now, right now, November seems quite a long way off, but

it's going to come barreling at us very, very quickly, isn't it, when we've got these crucial midterm elections, absolutely vital for Donald Trump.

we're really lucky because one of our podcast friends, Brian Lanza, is going to come and try and tell us what the Republican campaign will look like.

He worked on Donald Trump's 2016 and 2024 campaign, so he's a great guy to talk to about this.

But let's lay out exactly what the stakes are first, because it is hard, isn't it, for a sitting president to try and do well in midterm elections, right?

Control of key governorships are in play.

And the Republicans have an uphill battle, traditionally something that Donald Trump himself pointed to in a rally he held this week in Iowa.

You know, the worst thing about the midterms is the fact that no matter what happens, the people that win the presidency, you win the, even if you're a good president, I think we had the best first year of any president ever.

It's like in the last 50 years, they've won it twice.

Can you believe it if something happens as a screw turns with the voters?

So even if it's a Democrat or Republican, whoever wins the presidency has a hard time with the midterm.

If we lose the midterms, you'll lose so many of the things that we're talking about, so many of the assets that we're talking about, so many of the tax cuts that we're talking about, and

I mean, I'm here because I love Iowa, but

I'm here because we're starting the campaign to win the midterms.

It's not the grandest sounding name for a set of elections, the midterms, is it?

What's at stake, Anthony, I think, is all of the seats in the House of Representatives a third of the seats in the Senate, and

is it about a third of the governorships across America?

And state legislatures, too, which is also important for determining policy in these states.

The stakes are high, there's no doubt about it, because control of Congress right now is held by Republicans entirely.

Democrats really don't have any hands on the levers of power.

If they win one chamber or both chambers, they're going to be able to grind Donald Trump's legislative agenda to a halt.

But more than that, they're going to be able to ramp up oversight of Donald Trump.

They're going to be able to hold hearings, issue subpoenas, have investigations.

They can make Donald Trump's life for the last two years of his presidency really difficult in the way they did for the last two years of his first term in office, where Democrats won control of the House of Representatives in January of 2019 and they impeached Donald Trump by the end of that year.

They would move to impeach him again, surely, wouldn't they, if they took control of either House?

A lot of sentiment to do something like that, although they may start a little lower on and focus on people like Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary, which they think they might have a better chance of actually bumping out of power.

They may have given up on impeaching Trump after two bites at it last time around.

Is he right when he says sitting presidents, their own party very rarely wins the midterms?

I know it's traditional that two years into your presidency, voters have maybe turned against you a bit, but

is he exaggerating when he says you can just basically never win them as a sitting president?

I'm not sure if the two times over the last 50 years is right, although I can think of two examples where the president's party did do better and pick up seats in midterm elections.

That was after the September 11th terror attacks.

And the Republicans ran on national security and homeland defense and did better in those midterms.

The other one, I think, was in 98 with Bill Clinton, the midterms in the second term of his presidency.

And that was right in the midst of the Monica Lewinsky scandal and House Republicans were in the process of impeaching.

And while the Democrats didn't take control back of the House, they did pick up some seats.

The rule is that as Donald Trump described it is a pushback against the president and his party who control power.

It is a way to put a check on a president who the public may think has overextended himself.

And certainly across the country now, from Minnesota to Texas, we can see some very, very animated people in opposition to Trump's policies.

It's not difficult to see how you would try and motivate them to get out and vote against what's happening.

It's going to be a problem though, isn't it, for Republicans that Donald Trump's name's not on the ballot?

Because there are a lot of people who do still support him, who still love him, but

may not bother to turn out to the polls if they can't vote for Donald Trump himself.

Just some candidates that he's approved of.

And actually his chief of staff, Susie Wiles was talking about this the other day when was on the Mom View podcast.

Typically you in the midterms, it's not about who's sitting at the White House.

It's you localize the election and you keep the federal officials out of it.

We're actually going to turn that on its head.

Because so many of those low propensity voters are Trump voters.

And we saw a week ago Tuesday what happens when he's not on the ballot and not active.

So I haven't quite broken it to him yet, but he's going to campaign like it's 2024 again.

So when she was saying a week ago Tuesday, she was talking to some of those off year elections where Republicans didn't really do that well.

And in those off year elections in Virginia and New Jersey, the Democrats did quite well.

And in some other, as we've discussed in the past, isolated little elections, like some state level elections in Georgia, the Democrats outperformed prior prior results, particularly the 2024 results when Donald Trump was on the ballot.

And if you look at special elections all through last year, special congressional elections, Democrats, even when they didn't win, they did better than they did in 2024.

Which tells you exactly the headwinds that Republicans are going to be going into if they hit this November with these midterm elections and do 13% worse than they did in 2024.

They are definitely going to lose the House of Representatives.

And it could very well put the Senate, which is a higher bar for the Democrats to try to take.

Yeah, because the margins are so incredibly tight at the moment now.

They change a bit, don't they, in the House because some people have resigned.

And what is the size of the Republican majority right now?

I think it's about a two seat majority in a 435 seat chamber.

It doesn't take much to tilt it back to the Democrats.

And there are seats that Democrats are targeting that Kamala Harris carried in 2024 that are controlled by Republican members of Congress.

For instance, I believe Nebraska is one of them.

There are some in California that have been redistricted, some in New York.

Now the redistricting in Texas has made it likely the Republicans will pick up some seats there.

But if this is a wave election, which we've seen in the past when there's an animated out of power party looking to get to the polls, if this is that wave election, then even these little redistricting things here and there and little details aren't going to matter.

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Can Trump really save the midterms for the Republicans? | BBC Americast

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