The black-and-white video has a menacing-looking Trump walking alone toward the camera as disembodied audio plays of him declaring, “This is the final battle.”
He launches into a familiar tirade about communists, Marxists, and fascists, says we will “throw off the sick political class that hates our country,” and “rout the fake news media… liberate America from these villains once and for all.”
The bellicose imagery is repurposed from an online ad that ran during his 2024 campaign, when he was fighting like hell to get back into the White House. With this new version, however, taxpayers picked up the tab—which CNN reported cost at least $2.5 million.
We don’t have to guess what the president means about his “final battle.” And no, it’s not with the cankles. He has told us in so many words and actions that the future of the Republican Party is at stake in the midterms, and there will never be another Republican president elected if mail-in voting isn’t banned and the SAVE Act isn’t passed.
The Supreme Court, meanwhile, has bowed to Trump again with its decision to allow states to access Social Security numbers and data compiled by Elon Musk’s DOGE bros to screen for illegal voting. This could push governors of red states to decline to certify election results if “voter fraud” is identified, an outcome Democrats fear and are preparing to counter should it occur.
“Trump calls it ‘the final battle’ and he’s right,” says Democrat and former House leader Dick Gephardt, co-founder of the nonpartisan advocacy group KOR (Keep Our Republic). “This is for all the marbles.” With Democrats poised for a blowout in the midterms, KOR and other pro-democracy groups are ‘wargaming’ scenarios as to how Trump can bring to pass on January 3, 2027, what he came close to making happen on January 6, 2021. The result could be a “blown election,” and we could be in constitutional crisis, says Gephardt.
(KOR is among dozens of pro-democracy groups—like Democracy Forward and the Brennan Center—that are geared for legal action should it be needed. )
“We need Mike Pences at the state, local and federal level,” Gephardt told the Daily Beast, referring to former Vice President Pence’s refusal to bow to Trump’s bidding and allowing for the certification of Biden as the 2020 presidential election’s winner.
It is not hard to imagine Trump claiming fraud in any election that doesn’t go his way. That’s the script he followed in 2021, asking election officials in Georgia to “find him” the votes he needed. It’s the script he’s kept to ever since. Gephardt takes it a step or two further, suggesting that Speaker Mike Johnson could fire the Clerk of the House—which is his prerogative—and install a sycophant who would then refuse to add the names of Members-elect whose status has been questioned.
“If that happens, we’re prepared to file lawsuits, and if they don’t succeed, then all that’s left is to hit the bricks,” Gephardt said. “If you look at his behavior and actions for the last ten years, you have to conclude he is unwilling to lose an election he actually lost. You can’t stand around and assume the best; you’ve got to assume the worst,” he continued of Trump, “and everything I’ve seen this year makes me believe the worst.”
Gephardt is not given to histrionics. He served in Congress for almost thirty years and was House Majority Leader when Democrats held a majority in the chamber between 1989 and 1995. (He remained as House Minority Leader through 2003.) He ran for president twice unsuccessfully in 1988 and 2004; after retiring from Çongress in 2005, he founded a labor relations consulting firm, and is now taking a lead role in trying to alert a polarized political system to the danger he is convinced that Trump uniquely poses to democracy.
For now, even after all that Trump has done to disrupt our institutions, they are still standing. Brookings scholar Bill Galston responded to a query about Trump possibly hijacking the results by asking: “Have you ever seen the three little pigs?”
“I’m not saying Democrats have built a brick house, but it’s a lot better than the twigs and brush on the other side,” he said. “I’ve never seen the Democratic Party as well prepared to resist election interference as it is today.”
While Republican governors could enable pro-Trump mischief, they are not operating in a law-free zone, Galston noted, adding that of the 65 court cases filed over the 2020 election, Democrats won 64.
With the midterms just over a month away, we’ll know soon enough—whether for Trump this is the final battle. War Secretary Pete Hegseth, as he identifies himself, has signed a memorandum directing the U.S. military to defend the 2026 elections from foreign influence, easing the way for Trump to call in the military should there be protests. Whatever happens, it’s his last stand politically regardless. He appears reconciled to leaving the White House in 2029. He could settle into lame-duck status and devote even more time to his legacy projects and vanity projects, rewriting the history of his presidency in real time. Can a man who has never delivered a concession speech make himself believe that whatever happens on November 3rd, he won. (Yes, yes he can.)
