One of President Donald Trump’s most trusted advisers says he will turn back the clock on his political strategy and “campaign like it’s 2024.”
White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, who played a key part in Trump’s election victory last year, said the president is hoping to avoid a congressional blue wave by going back to the once-winning strategy.
“Typically, in the midterms, it’s not about who’s sitting at the White House. You localize the election, and you keep the federal officials out of it. We’re actually gonna turn that on its head and put him on the ballot because so many of those low propensity voters are Trump voters,” Wiles said in an interview with The Mom View.
“We saw a week ago Tuesday what happens when he’s not on the ballot and not active,” she continued. “I haven’t quite broken it to him yet, but he’s going to campaign like it’s 2024 again.”
The direct impact of Wiles’s comment is unclear. Her comment suggests Trump will travel the United States and hold the same large rallies in battleground areas that he did during the 2024 election. But it’s unknown what that looks like in the context of midterm elections.
In the 2024 election, Trump was on the ballot. When voters peered over their voting sheet, they saw Trump’s recognizable and polarizing name along with their choices for Congress. That year, it appeared to benefit the Republican Party, which kept the House and won back the Senate.
Next year, voters won’t see the president’s name, and won’t have a presidential race to turn out for. But Wiles wants to remind them of Trump anyway, to an unknown effect. The president’s approval rating is underwater by 16 points, per a recent Reuters-Ipsos poll.
Early midterm election signals from this year were also poor for the Republican Party.
Republicans lost gubernatorial races and state legislative seats in competitive states this year, including Virginia and New Jersey. Democrats kept a Tennessee congressional race unexpectedly close in a decisive Trump district as new Rep. Matt Van Epps (R-TN) won by around 7 points against Democratic state Rep. Aftyn Behn.
With the new strategy, Wiles hopes Republicans can dodge a repeat of the 2018 House losses during the president’s first term in office. That year, Republicans lost 41 seats in the House. Former President Joe Biden also lost the House during his term in office as the GOP recaptured the House.
Trump won a landslide Electoral College victory over Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election after holding rallies across the nation. He was also buoyed by the attempt on his life in July of that year at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
MAGA GOES KNIVES OUT ON WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF SUSIE WILES
With Trump on the ballot in 2024, Republicans flipped a number of House seats but maintained their 220-member majority.
Election analysts believe the GOP will lose the House to Democrats in 2026 as things stand. Without Trump on the ballot, Wiles is hoping the president can still motivate voters to the polls.
