President Trump promised Wednesday to personally campaign across roughly 35 competitive House and Senate races in the final 30 days before the 2026 midterm elections, vowing to replicate the relentless campaign schedule he used in his 2024 presidential run to protect and expand Republican majorities in both chambers.
Mr. Trump, speaking to GOP congressional lawmakers at a White House dinner in the Rose Garden, said he plans to focus his efforts in the final 30 days before the election, explaining that campaigning too early causes voters to forget.
“I’m going to take the final 30 days, maybe a little bit more than that because it’s all about 35 races… I’m going to go to every one of those 35 places and we’re going to see if we can get everyone elected,” Mr. Trump said.
Mr. Trump said the tele-town halls are also a “fantastic” way to reach voters, and that he plans to do seven to ten a night with GOP congressional campaigns..”I’ll be with you 100% all the way to November… We’re going to do something like I did for myself in the last presidential election. Four months out, I said, ‘okay, no days off.’”
Mr. Trump’s campaign trail announcement comes days before Republicans are expected to gather in Dallas at the GOP’s midterm election convention to officially kick off the general election campaign season.
Earlier in the day, he pledged to campaign in Alaska for Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan within the last 30 days of the election and that he will be making a “lot of stops” there.
The president called on Republicans to inform him about races that are tight or if the Republican candidate is trailing by a wide margin, so he and his team can step in “and we’ll bring you over the line.”
The president said he is determined to break the pattern of the party in the White House usually losing seats in the midterm elections.
“In theory and over the years, the one thing we have against us, for some reason, presidents, whether they’re Democrat or Republican, when they win, they never win the midterms,” he said, noting that it has only not happened that way twice in the last 50 years.
“We’re going to turn that around because there’s no reason for it,” he said.
In 1978, when Democratic President Jimmy Carter was in the White House, Democrats kept their House majority despite minor losses, and in 2002, when Republican President George W. Bush was in the White House, Republicans actually gained House seats in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
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