President Donald Trump is underscoring his “Trump accounts” program as he shifts into election mode and works to preserve Republican control of Congress in the 2026 midterm elections.
Trump’s announcement Tuesday that Michael and Susan Dell will donate $6.25 billion to fund investment accounts for at least 25 million American children, excluded from the president’s program implemented through his One Big Beautiful Bill Act, comes as he and Republicans have problems promoting that signature legislative achievement.
“Trump accounts will be the first, I guess you could say, real trust funds for every American child, allowing family members, employers, corporations, and generous donors to contribute money that will be invested and grow over the course of a child’s life to be used for their benefit after they turn 18,” Trump said Tuesday during an event at the White House alongside the Dells.
Although the Trump accounts program is poised to be transformative, it is that lengthy implementation process that could complicate the president and Republicans’ public relations strategy before the 2026 elections.
The White House downplayed that complication, telling the Washington Examiner that Trump accounts “are going to have an immediate impact on millions of working-class parents across the country who will have confidence knowing that their children have a better shot at realizing the American Dream.”
“The only guiding factor behind President Trump’s decision-making is what’s best for the American people,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said.
More broadly, Trump and Republicans’ issues publicizing the president’s policy and political accomplishments are evidenced by his rebranding of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act as the Working Families Tax Cut Act, in addition to the 90 minutes he and his Cabinet secretaries spent during Tuesday’s earlier Cabinet meeting emphasizing their record since the start of his second administration.
Despite those and other endeavors, Democrats have an average 6 percentage point advantage over Republicans before the midterm elections, according to RealClearPolitics. That is exacerbated by 57% of polling respondents, on average, telling pollsters that the country is on the wrong track compared to the 36% who consider it to be headed in the right direction.
The polling reflects respondents‘ concerns regarding the economy, according to Tim Malloy, a Quinnipiac University Poll analyst.
“With a nearly 20-point gap between approval and disapproval on President Trump’s handling of the economy, it’s a low water mark for a president who promised a vibrant and muscular economy,” Malloy told the Washington Examiner.
Pennsylvania-based Franklin & Marshall College Center for Opinion Research director Berwood Yost agreed.
Two of the 12 Republican-held toss-up House races next year are in Pennsylvania, according to the Cook Political Report.
“Sending money to people is one way to ease their concerns about the economy and the cost of living, but the problem with the Trump accounts is that they won’t do much to ease those concerns,” Yost told the Washington Examiner. “First, the accounts are complex, and I believe details are still being worked out, but perhaps more important to this political moment is that they are a long-term investment and not a payment that can be put to use immediately.”
“Until the president starts delivering on the campaign promises he made to reduce the cost of living and increase the wages of Americans, I doubt his public relations efforts will persuade many people,” the pollster added. “His job approval ratings continue to slide and people seem to be deeply concerned about the economy and the way he is handling his job. Pennsylvanians need to start feeling the positive effects of his policies if he wants to improve the Republicans’ chances in 2026, but voters keep telling us that hasn’t happened yet.”
On the other hand, the delayed implementation of some provisions related to Medicaid under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act may work to the political advantage of Republicans, as polling indicates that this component is unpopular.
Trump spoke on Tuesday about how the Trump accounts would be part of his legacy after he leaves office in 2028.
“I do think so, and I think it’s a big part of [the legacy of] everybody up here today,” the president told reporters. “This was a group that was very instrumental, and in particular, obviously, Michael and Susan, it’s a big part of their legacy. They’ve got a big legacy anyway, but this is maybe going to be as important, or more important, than anything they’ve done thus far. Looking back in 100 years from now, I think you’re going to see some things that are going to, they’ll be talking about this very day.”
Trump is not the only president to face difficulties conveying his policy and political wins; his predecessor, former President Joe Biden, experienced a similar challenge during his administration.
Biden repeatedly referred to former President Barack Obama’s failure to take a “victory lap” after Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009, following lawmakers’ passing Biden’s own stimulus measure, the COVID-19 pandemic-centric American Rescue Plan Act, in 2021.
“We didn’t adequately explain what we had done. Barack was so modest, he didn’t want to take, as he said, a ‘victory lap,’” Biden told House Democrats in 2021. “I kept saying, ‘Tell people what we did.’ He said, ‘We don’t have time. I’m not going to take a victory lap.’ And we paid a price for it, ironically, for that humility.”
Obama described the Democrats’ losses in the 2010 elections as a “shellacking,” as the party lost a net total of 63 seats in the House, the largest midterm loss since 1938, and a net loss of six seats in the Senate.
Democrats went on to lose a net total of nine seats in the House in 2022 under Biden, but the party did gain one seat in the Senate, thereby securing a majority in the chamber. Biden, however, struggled to change the narrative regarding his economic policies amid 40-year-high inflation.
Meanwhile, Trump has been undermining his own marketing strategy, creating distractions with his heavy-handed and ultimately unsuccessful effort to prevent Congress from compelling the federal government to release the entirety of its Jeffrey Epstein investigation files to now congressional inquiries into a September double-tap strike against alleged narco-terrorists in the Caribbean Sea off of Venezuela, killing two survivors already in water after an original strike destroyed their boat — a potential violation of international law.
“President Trump clearly recognizes that continuing Washington’s long-standing inattention to our hemisphere is not only a major political risk but an existential threat for the American people,” Heritage Foundation Latin America senior policy analyst Andres Martinez-Fernandez told the Washington Examiner in defense of Trump’s foreign policy toward Venezuela.
To that end, Trump has been criticized for prioritizing foreign policy, from the Russia-Ukraine war to the Israel-Hamas conflict, even, in the words of a former Biden White House National Security Council official, commenting, “on other countries’ domestic politics and particularly elections, breaking a long-running U.S. practice of not endorsing specific candidates in other countries’ elections.”
“That would have been unfathomable in prior administrations,” Sean Savett, the official, told the Washington Examiner.
Nevertheless, one year is a long time in politics, with Trump White House officials promising to devote resources to ensure the public is aware of, for example, the president’s accounts program.
TUG-OF-WAR: TRUMP’S ESCALATION AGAINST VENEZUELA SPLITS REPUBLICANS
Trump accounts are tax-deferred savings accounts, similar to a traditional IRA, for U.S. citizen children under 18 who have a valid Social Security number. Starting next July, the parent or guardian of a child born between 2025 and 2028 may accept a one-time $1,000 contribution from the Treasury into the child’s account.
“Funds may not be withdrawn before the child turns 18, except for a rollover of the entire account to a Trump account with another brokerage (trustee-to-trustee transfer), certain rollovers to an ABLE account in the year the child turns 17, or distribution upon death,” according to the White House.
