Billionaire Class Is Spending BIG To Help Trump Keep Skittish GOP Reps Behind His Unpopular Agenda

Support For Trump Is Going To Cost Republicans Many Seats Next Year

Trump’s dark money, national TV ad blitz— pure, unadulterated gaslighting— is meant to get his own congressional party behind his completely disjointed, half-baked, tax plan. Just watch this MAGA-oriented spot that they're going to sepnd millions of dollars on for two weeks:

But even while the ads are running, the Trump tax plan is shriveling in the GOP-controlled Congress. A trio of Politico reporters wrote that Republicans feel they are being forced “to take some of the shine off... Trump’s ‘big beautiful bill.’ GOP leaders on Capitol Hill signaled Thursday they are scaling back their tax-cutting ambitions after running into difficulty making deep spending cuts and facing stern warnings from Republican deficit hawks who are threatening to vote against Trump’s sprawling megabill. On the chopping block could be a litany of Trump demands, including a permanent extension of the tax cuts passed during his first term, as well as second-term campaign promises to provide tax relief to seniors while also exempting taxes on tips and overtime earnings. Those provisions could end up getting enacted only temporarily.”

I have a feeling MAGA Mike is being set up as the scapegoat for the failed budget. “Now that Johnson is planning on $500 billion less in tax cuts, tax writers on the committee will have to make some very difficult choices on what to prioritize… Under Johnson’s new $4 trillion tax plan, however, [Ways and Means Chair Jason] Smith may not be able to deliver on all of Trump’s requests. Many of the desired tax cuts might be in place for only a few years— forcing future Congresses to decide whether to keep them in place. Time is running out for Republicans to put the puzzle pieces together. Johnson is pushing to have three key committees vote on their portions of the bill next week. And with the committees on Ways and Means, Energy and Commerce and Agriculture all currently slated to convene on Tuesday, the window to make changes to the overall package is closing quickly… Even if House GOP leaders manage to pull the megabill together, the Senate is poised to revise many of the policies. Many GOP senators have balked at making deep cuts to Medicaid and pushing food aid costs onto the states, which could trim back the cuts further, and Senate tax writers are pushing back on the higher top-earner rate.”

Johnson ruled out one of the most controversial Medicaid cuts GOP leaders had been pursuing, slashing the federal cost share for the joint federal-state program, after meeting with moderates Tuesday evening. And House Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-KY) said a policy intended to lower drug prices in the program that the White House has pitched is likely off the table, too.

Another ambitious cost-cutting proposal— capping the federal payments for at least some Medicaid enrollees— remains an option, though it’s politically explosive.

Ultraconservatives are demanding those kinds of “structural” changes, but moderates are wary. In a report requested by Democrats, the Congressional Budget Office estimated Wednesday that a similar policy to what is being discussed could lead to 3.3 million people losing Medicaid coverage and 1.5 million people going uninsured. It would, however, generate $225 billion in savings.

“It’s a sensitive thing,” Johnson conceded Thursday.

House Republicans also still need to convince centrist holdouts to back a controversial proposal to shift some costs of food aid under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to states for the first time ahead of the scheduled House Agriculture Committee meeting.

While the pared-down tax cuts might represent a setback for the Trump agenda, some in the White House have been relieved that Congress has stepped back from the most far-reaching proposals for safety-net cuts, according to two people granted anonymity to describe the private reactions, and are privately rooting for the swing-district moderates to win out over hard-liners.

Trump has promised the “largest tax cuts in history,” but he’s also repeatedly pledged not to cut Americans’ government benefits— and he’s recently grown uncomfortable with proposals for far-reaching Medicaid cuts.

This is all taking place within the context of the rapidly approaching midterms. The massive pot of money financing the ad campaign we started with— which includes another $100 million from Musk— is what Trump intends to use to combat the 2026 blue wave, which is, despite the lack of anything the Democratic establishment is doing, threatening to turn into a blue tsunami. Elliott Morris sees what’s coming… and where the blame will rest. “43.5% of Americans approve of the job Donald Trump is doing as president today,” he wrote, “while 51.8% disapprove— for a net rating of -8 (when rounding). We know this is a bad rating because we have historical benchmarks to compare Trump to. -8 is, in fact, the worst approval rating for a president in their first(-ish) term since 1935— other than the president's rating in his initial 2017 term… To put the impact of a -8 rating in concrete terms, we can look at what a rating this early in the typical presidential term says about the president's performance in their first midterm elections. The chart below shows each president's approval rating in May of the year they were inaugurated, with the number of seats their party lost in the U.S. House of Representatives in the next year's midterms:

“Generally speaking,” he wrote, “the lower a president's approval rating is in May of the year before a midterm, the more House seats their party tends to lose in that election. If we look back at recent history, a significantly negative approval rating has often preceded substantial midterm losses. For instance, in the lead-up to the 2018 midterms during Trump's first term, his approval was also in negative territory (hovering between -10 and -12 points by May 2017 in various averages), and the Republican party lost 43 House seats, flipping control to the Democrats. A net approval of -8 is indeed on the lower end of the historical spectrum, putting President Trump's party in a potentially precarious position for 2026— equal to or worse than their position in 2018. While every election cycle is unique, and many other factors will come into play, a net approval of -8 points this far out suggests that the conditions could be pointing towards significant losses for the president's party, potentially echoing the ‘blue wave’ of his first cycle… Low public support can have political consequences, too. Presidential power is often exercised through the strategy of ‘going public,’ in which the president appeals directly to the people to pressure lawmakers to support his agenda. [Exactly what we’re seeing with that ad campaign up top.] However, when a president is unpopular, this strategy loses its teeth. Members of Congress, particularly those in competitive districts or from the opposing party, feel less compelled to align with an unpopular president. In fact, association with a low-approval president can become a liability, making them more resistant to the president's agenda to safeguard their own electoral future… While legislators are not necessarily keenly aware of their constituents' views on specific policies, they understand when they are angry. A president with a -8 net approval rating simply doesn't have good leverage.”