Blair took a leave of absence last month from his position as Trump’s White House deputy chief of staff to run the president’s political operation through the conclusion of the 2026 election cycle. It’s essentially the same position he held in 2024, when, while serving as White House chief of staff Susie Wiles’s right-hand man, he helped orchestrate Trump’s political comeback and helped downballot Republicans win control of Congress.

Blair says that Tuesday night, when Trump-endorsed Ed Gallrein bested incumbent and frequent Trump critic Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), was the “main event” of the president’s revenge tour.

“The president may weigh into the Georgia Senate race. He’ll figure that out soon. Obviously, Texas will play itself out, but we’ve pretty much turned the corner to the general election now,” he told the Washington Examiner.

Even before the victory over Massie, Trump showed he’s still the undisputed kingmaker in the Republican Party. 

Last weekend, Rep. Julia Letlow (R-LA), the president’s chosen candidate, advanced to a late June runoff against state Treasurer John Fleming in the Louisiana Senate race, with incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) left on the outside looking in. Earlier in the month, Trump also successfully unseated five of the seven Republican Indiana state senators who bucked his mid-decade redistricting push. And just hours before Massie’s loss Tuesday night, Trump finally threw his weight behind state Attorney General Ken Paxton in the runoff for Texas’s U.S. Senate seat, all but ensuring the loss of incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX).

Beyond the redistricting loss in Indiana, Trump and allies are clearly the big winners in the most recent round of congressional map drawing. A recent Supreme Court ruling, coupled with a favorable decision from the Virginia Supreme Court, has Trump’s team thinking 214 congressional seats are leaning Republican heading into the summer, even while admitting that math will likely shift over the ensuing months given sticky inflation and the war in Iran. 

However, some Republicans have raised concerns that Trump’s vengeful challenges may have pushed some candidates through the primaries who are less likely to win in the general elections, at least compared to proven GOP incumbents. Furthermore, a growing number of Republicans are publicly grumbling that Trump is more focused on the construction of the White House ballroom and other projects than affordability, which consistently ranks as the top issue for voters ahead of November. The president frequently discounts those critiques.

“I know how to win,” he told reporters on Wednesday. “I think I’ve proven that, haven’t I?”

Ultimately, the toughest battle for Trump and Republicans will be making sure the midterm elections aren’t a referendum on Trump himself. As of Thursday, the RealClearPolitics polling aggregate showed the president’s job approval more than 19 points underwater, with less than 40% giving him a positive grade.

Trump’s team says their own polling shows the majority of the country still isn’t aware of the economic benefits coming their way from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the president’s landmark tax and spending bill from last summer. In part, by Trump’s own tacit admission, the name has made it difficult to message. That’s why the president and Republican candidates have begun referring to it instead as the “Working Families Tax Cuts,” according to one former Trump campaign official.

“We have to connect the positives to things that President Trump and Republican lawmakers have actually done. That’s the secret sauce,” that person assessed. “Maybe we over-messaged in 2024, but the reality is that Joe Biden destroyed the economy to the point where no one could come in and just fix everything overnight. We have to make sure people are thinking about all of the positives more than they’re dwelling on what hasn’t been sorted out yet.”

Luckily, for Republicans, they’re primed to outspend Democrats this cycle by perhaps the largest margin in midterm history.

Vice President JD Vance is serving as the Republican National Committee’s finance chairman this cycle and has been steadily fundraising since last year. Sources familiar tell the Washington Examiner the RNC will enter the summer with roughly $125 million cash on hand, on top of Trump’s own gargantuan political war chest. On the other hand, the Democratic National Committee is still saddled with lingering debts from former Vice President Kamala Harris’s failed 2024 presidential campaign.

The Trump team does recognize that one of the president’s most favored tactics — “just blame it all on [former President Joe] Biden” — is a strategy of diminishing returns. 

“That s*** only works to a point, and we’re way over the horizon there,” one former senior Trump White House official explained. “Like, inflation — sure, but when you’re waging a war with another country, which nobody asked for and the last guy had nothing to do with, you can’t just blame it all on ‘Sleepy Joe’ anymore. Voters won’t buy it.” 

Instead, Trump and Republicans plan on leaning into favorable issues, like immigration, crime, and the rule of law and order. They’ll also work to “individualize” Republican candidates, while “nationalizing” all of the Democratic opponents as too radically progressive.

WHITE HOUSE MEETING WITH GOP LEADERSHIP CANCELED OVER IMPASSE ON ‘ANTI-WEAPONIZATION’ FUND

Trump’s team plans on lifting up Texas state Rep. James Talarico, Democrats’ nominee in Texas’s Senate race, as a new face of the Democratic Party.

“Talarico is going to be a standard-bearer for how left-wing Democrats are, because of how much attention he’s gotten, how much he’s said on the record,” one person close to the president told the Washington Examiner. “They’re going to support him. They’re going to say they can play. OK, well, let’s play.”