There was that surprising schedule change from the White House tonight, with just five days to go until the midterm elections next Tuesday. The president is canceling his final two scheduled rallies for this cycle, leaving just one more in Florida tomorrow on his schedule. Now, of course, few politicians have logged more miles than this president. Today, he actually held his 25th rally this month, that one in South Carolina for Republican Senator Lindsey Graham.
But in the closing days of this campaign and hours and minutes of an election that is going to have a major impact on the rest of his presidency, it's notable that Trump is scrapping rallies that he had planned in Iowa and in Kansas. Those are both traditionally red states where Republicans are right now fighting Democrats to hang onto their seats. And the White House now says instead, the president is going to hold rallies to stretch his message even further to a bigger audience. But it may have been the president's answer that was the most revealing about what's going on, when he was asked why he's adjusting his schedule.
You not going to Kansas have nothing to do with you being sick and travel. You sick? And that one there was sick. Who are you with? I'm with Reuters. You are sick. Reuters is terrible. But what were you to make sure you were doing well? Look at this guy is way out of shape. Look at how badly he comes to me. Say you're not going to go to Kansas because he's doing very well. I'm going to do a tele-rally tomorrow. I'm doing Florida. You said, what's the reason after doing what, 28? He says. What's the reason for this year that you're not going to Kansas? You know, the reason is I don't feel I have to go to Kansas. I'm going to Florida tomorrow, and I'll do if something else comes up. But he said, you're not going to Kansas, sir. Are you feeling well? You've been following me for two weeks. I feel perfect. You are disgusting. Put yourself in shape. You look like hell.
Now, that reporter from Reuters, Jeff Zeleny, asked a straightforward question about the president's schedule. He got an irritated answer, as you heard there, especially given it's the president himself who has touted his own ability to maintain a busy schedule.
He does. So the one thing I can say is that no president has ever worked so hard on a midterm. Nobody has ever campaigned like I have for midterms. I haven't. I've been doing this stuff for a week, and afterwards I get more rallies than I've ever done for myself. You know, I've done 26 of them then. I have worked very hard. I've done 14 rallies in nine days, and that's a lot. I'm going to Georgia, but it's a strain on your voice. It's a strain, you know? It's not normal. I'm doing something different. I'm working like a dog.
Now, there's another reason why canceling these final two rallies of the 2026 midterms stands out to those of us who have covered Trump for years. If you'll remember, during the final 72 hours before the 2018 midterms, President Trump held seven rallies in Montana, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana and Missouri. He told his team then he wanted to be on the road as much as possible, especially in those final few days as voters were casting their ballots tonight. Sources say, though, that some Republican officials are relieved by the president's decision to cancel those final two rallies. One top Republican official told my colleague Jeff Zeleny, quote, 'Thank God he hasn't moved the needle anywhere.' And a second official saying, quote, 'Everyone who has seen the president, who wants to see him in the meantime in Kansas, Senator Roger Marshall, where, of course, the president was expected to go and rally on his behalf, offered this reaction to the news that the president is no longer coming.'
Senator, any reaction to the president canceling the in-person rally this weekend?
I'm not sure yet. I think that by doing so well in the polls that he's probably got better places to spend his time. I'm not sure.
Now, we don't have insight into the senator's polling, but a brand new CNN poll actually found that Senator Roger Marshall's race is still very close. Actually, as you can see here, it's within the margin of error. If there's been a surge in his numbers, we have not seen it materialize yet in the polling. And there's a similar story playing out in Iowa, where CNN's latest poll of polls shows a one-point race. Now, both of these contests, as it stands tonight, could go either way. That's the exact kind of toss-up races that the president has said are best dealt with him showing up in person.
But the rallies are very well attended, and I think we will change the whole, you know, we've done a lot of them. And over the last week and a half a lot, I think we've really turned it around. And, you know, I think the rallies have turned, and frankly, just what I think the rallies have really, these rallies have energized and really energized the Republican Party. And, you know, we're doing so well. And it's just raised them to a level that, you know, nobody can believe. I mean, it's just amazing what a 14 points or something. And that was my rally as an example. We're up in Texas. We were in, we're up in Alaska. We're up everybody. Every place that I've gone to, we're up.
I tell a rally somehow, like a better option for President Trump, knowing his style and what he would say is his strong suit.
Yeah. Listen, he's done tele-rallies for a very long time now. I remember in 2016 we done plenty of tele-rallies, and I think his point is, is he's trying to hit more in the short amount of window. I mean, that's the argument they're trying to make. And there is feeling among at least the Republicans, maybe, Chris, to tell us differently, that Kansas is stabilized. So they're reassessing the plans they feel Kansas is in is necessary. But tele-rallies is a very effective way of hitting a much broader audience in a faster amount of time.
I don't know, I hear Charlie, I think Zoom. Is that effective?
I don't, I think the bigger question is to what extent does having Donald Trump making news in your local market help or hurt? And the reality is, on the one hand, Donald Trump's job approval is not great right now. There's very little polling I can find that would have any good news for what people think about the Trump brand. On the other hand, partisanship matters. And in really red states, Donald Trump won by double digits. And look, I don't think that these Republican candidates in these states are necessarily going to win by double digits. But that's the trade-offs that they're trying to weigh right now is a president who is unpopular on average across the country. Is it possible for him to still somehow be a net benefit across a variety of red states? I think it's a very open question how strong a force partisanship and the red-state nature of some of these places will wind up being in the midterms.
I mean, the truth is, the president still has an upside-down approval in these red states. He has an upside-down approval in Texas, Iowa, Kansas. And, you know, I think we can all kind of sugarcoat this, but the truth is, it's not a good headline for anyone to have rallies canceled. That sounds like a deflating balloon on a campaign. And so I think the truth is that the president is probably hurting a lot of these candidates. And people recognize that. And perhaps he doesn't want to be seen with people who are about to lose.
I think a really telling fact over the last several weeks is places he's gone. He hasn't actually juiced Republican, and he's been to Texas many times. They still are lagging considerably in Republican and rural counties. And so I think the fact of the matter is that in the world, and maybe the White House is finally recognizing that Donald Trump is hurting Republicans more than helping them. He's probably juicing Democratic turnout in these states.
That he's going to be the best person to push Republicans to vote is the president. And he does that when he is live and in person. And we're in an attention economy. The clips of him, whether he's saying ridiculous things or not, go far and wide. So I wonder the strategy of this, of what feels like a Zoom meeting. Look, we've all done Zoom meetings at home. We're a little bit more distracted than when we are in person. And the base that he needs that comes out to these rallies also are motivated. And they go tell their friends and neighbors, and then they door knock, because that's also what you need. You need people within the community knocking on doors, canvassing, doing those phone calls. And I really think that his advisers and his administration is really robbing him of that, of that base that he does so well with.
Let's talk about that base, because we are, as you know, five days out. There's new CNN polling that shows that Democrats are leading in key Senate races. Republicans, though, consistently argue these polls undercount the president's true base of support. I mean, you're in the trenches, Kristen. You're looking at these issues all the time. I mean, you talk to voters, do these polls reflect what you're actually seeing and hearing?
Kristen Soltis Anderson
9:15 ↗
So what my polls are showing is only a slightly better environment for Republicans nationally, but still not a good one. It's still predicting a very poor election night coming up. I think the big question, and this is one that pollsters can't answer ahead of time, much as people want us to, is in elections when Donald Trump is on the ballot, there is a type of voter who turns out the pollsters find very difficult to poll. But in the midterms, those voters typically stay home, and their absence in polls is not as big a deal because they're also absent at the ballot box. So the question is, does that continue this time around? Those polls may be missing a slice of the Trump base, but it may be the exact same slice of the Trump base that is planning to participate in the midterm anyways. And that's the unknowable question that is going to determine are the polls right, or is there some kind of polling error that misses by undercounting Republicans? But bear in mind, polling error can go both ways, and there have been instances within the last calendar year of polls in states like Virginia saying, you know, we think Abigail Spanberger is going to win, but we're not so sure about the AG's race. And in the end, Democrats overperformed in polling. Error can happen, and you can't necessarily predict ahead of time exactly what way it's going to go.
So you think about that strategically. I mean, you don't want to be overconfident, but you also don't want to be canceling rallies, maybe reflecting defeat. So how do you play that?
