Donald Trump has made a desperate plea to bypass upcoming midterm elections using an unsettling rationale.
The president—who has previously floated the idea of canceling November’s nationwide elections—appeared to acknowledge that Republicans are likely to suffer heavy losses, while offering a desperate workaround during an interview with Reuters.
“It’s some deep psychological thing, but when you win the presidency, you don’t win the midterms,” Trump said. The 79-year-old then suggested that he had accomplished so much as president that “when you think of it, we shouldn’t even have an election.”
Historically, the party in power almost always suffers losses in midterm elections. With the GOP holding a razor-thin majority in the House, Republicans already face an uphill battle to retain control of the chamber.
Trump’s weak approval ratings, combined with backlash over issues such as the handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files and ongoing economic concerns, further signal that Republicans nationwide could be headed for a grim November.
Earlier this month, Trump told a room full of House Republicans at the now MAGA-fied Kennedy Center that “they should cancel” the midterms, while warning of the consequences if the GOP loses.
“You gotta win the midterms,” Trump said. “Because if we don’t win the midterms, it’s just going to be—I mean, they’ll find a reason to impeach me. I’ll get impeached.”
The president has appeared increasingly resigned to the possibility that Republicans could lose their governing trifecta during the final two years of his term.
“If you go back a long way, the sitting president—whether it’s Democrat or Republican—always loses the midterm, even if they’ve done well. Almost always,” Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity last week.
“And, you know, you’d think it’d be like a 50/50 deal, even if the president’s done a great job. I think we’ve done a great job. We’ve done maybe the best job ever in the first year, but they always seem to lose the midterm,” he added.
Elsewhere in his Reuters interview, Trump once again dismissed concerns from millions of Americans grappling with a cost-of-living crisis, insisting instead that the economy is the strongest “in history.”
According to Reuters, during the 30-minute Oval Office interview, Trump held up a thick binder of papers that he claimed documented his achievements since returning to office. When asked about rising grocery prices, the president gestured to the binder and said he simply needed to do a better job of promoting his accomplishments.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
