Donald TrumpThe midterm reboot was considered a triumphant return for the political heavyweight. After Democrats saw impressive gains in off-year elections across the country in November, White House advisers promised The president will return to the campaign trail in 2024 to storm the 2026 midterms with the same “fire and dominance” — infamous weave and all. But if his Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, rally is any preview of what the GOP should expect, Trump’s pledge should be read as a threat. Far from a comeback, his comeback rally was a flop.
Trump’s team apparently hoped that the blue-collar community in one of the nation’s most important swing states would give him a friendly launchpad. While I expected a crowd of a few thousand with the melancholy sound of MAGA chants echoing off the metal bleachers, I found the president on Fox News Tuesday evening in a conference center ballroom inside a local casino that held, generously, 200 people. And even that small crowd seemed hesitant, almost resigned, as Trump raved for nearly an hour. Fox News, of course, dutifully avoided any broad shots. But the truth was clear on the screen: the MAGA magic was gone.
Trump marched on stage Emphasizing that he is ready to make America “affordable again.” A line meant to evoke the Reagan-era economic populism that led Jimmy Carter to call for personal austerity. Trump declared his predecessor Joe Biden had “no top priority” before launching into his usual misdirection, blaming the rising cost of living.
Even a local waitress who was brought on stage to support Trump lamented that her paychecks didn’t arrive for long. “Everything I make goes towards paying the bills,” she said. In response, Trump offered advice in the style of Marie Antoinette.
“Americans must learn to adjust to a lower standard of living,” he told the crowd Before suggesting a specific solution to the prices raised by his tariffs, which he has succeeded in continuing to insist. “You can give up certain products. You can give up pencils … You don’t need 37 dolls for your daughter. Two or three is fine.”
Half of all Americans are having trouble affording food, according to a new POLITICO poll. Even more damning for Trump, a majority (55%) blame his administration. therefore Democrats were quick to his absurd advice. Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona Posted in X“Trump needs a private jet and a gold-plated Oval Office, but your child only needs a pencil.”
And because the president is nothing if not predictable, his speech eventually strayed from economic gaslighting, quickly turning into angry tangents about alternative energy, immigrants and other odd grievances.
In a particularly shocking moment, Trump attacked The concept of energy storage though Pennsylvania Just secured hundreds of jobs With new zinc battery factory. “They want us to go to the batteries!” he teased. “We don’t have battery material. So let’s go to batteries according to these idiots in our country.”
Things got even more confusing when Trump seemed to forget that he had first nominated Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell. “I just heard that it might be all four commissioners at the Fed signed by Biden, including very late, I heard that Autopen might have signed those commissions. If they signed those commissions,” he said. said“You can’t use Autopen.”
Moments like these underscored growing concerns about Trump’s cognitive abilities, which are becoming a political issue. We’ve seen him sleep in meetings, cuss out speeches, walk off stages and misidentify world leaders. His right hand appears to be repeatedly bandaged and bruised. At least once, the side of his face was bent on national television. And a man who claims “S” cognitive tests, it’s curious that he can’t remember whether he sat for an MRI at his second “annual physical” this year. Even his own supporters whisper that age has caught up with him.
Maybe that’s why he got off the stage In True Social To boast of being able to “solo” his “many boring medical exams”:
Some have even said that they have never seen such strong results. I do these tests because I owe it to our country. Aside from medicine, I’ve done something no other president has done on three separate occasions, most recently, taking what’s known as a cognitive test, which few people, including those working at the New York Times, can do very well, and I ACED them all in front of a large number of doctors and experts, many of whom I don’t know. I’m told that few people are able to ‘S’ this test and, in fact, many do very poorly, so many other presidents have decided not to take it.
Trump complained about the New York Times’ coverage of “my election results” and said the country would be better off if the Times “stopped publishing.”
Several other media outlets quickly fact-checked or panned Trump’s performance at the casino.
“In first stop on his affordability tour, Trump mocks affordability,” Washington Post headlined his report.
“Trump has ‘fun’ but fails to feel Americans’ pain at cost,” CNN’s headline Read on.
“Trump’s speech to fight inflation turns to complaints about immigrants from ‘dirty’ countries,” The Associated Press reported.
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As the AP headline reflected, Trump’s racism overshadowed his entire message on affordability. The president channeled his frustration into familiar bile, returning to the xenophobic script that propelled him to political success in 2016. “We are taking people from hell like Afghanistan, Haiti, Somalia and many other countries,” he said. “Filthy, dirty, disgusting, full of crime.” So, as if time had turned back on itself, he resurrected the collar of “s**thole countries” that he had once refused to make. “Why should we only have people from big countries? Why can’t we have Norway, Sweden, just a few people?”
The rally reached its ugliest point when Trump attacked Rep. Consistently targeted Ilhan Omar, D-Minn. “I love this Ilhan Omar, whatever her name is, with the little turban,” he said, mocking her hijab. “She comes from her country, which, I mean, is supposed to be about the worst country in the world, right?”
Omar came to America as a refugee at the age of 12. He is an American citizen. He is an elected member of Congress. Trump, however, couldn’t resist diving deeper into racist machinations, making baseless accusations that he remarried his brother to gain citizenship — a lie long ignored but repeatedly weaponized to dehumanize him. “He’s got to get the hell out,” he said. “Throw the hell out of him.”
An anemic crowd of MAGA supporters obliged with the all-too-familiar chant: “Send him back!”
America has heard this before. In 2019, Trump Raised similar slogans against Omar and other women of color in Congress. At that time it shocked the nation. Now it’s just part of Trump’s stump speech. He’s run out of new ideas, so he’s recycling the dark.
CNN Faster broadcast footage Rejecting Trump’s denial of 2018 “s**thole” comments. MSNBC replayed his earlier comments attacking Omar. NPR highlighted the contradiction between Trump’s claims of power and the reality of a man who has failed to maintain unity. The mainstream press no longer treats Trump’s behavior as shocking — it frames it as dangerously accurate.
Meanwhile, the political world continues to turn against the president. Tuesday was Election Day in many states — and Democrats had a very good night. in miami, Democrats won the mayor’s race with an 80-point swing from 2021 for the first time in nearly three decades. In Georgia, Democrats flipped a state House seat that Republicans lost just two years ago.
Off-year results are often early indicators of the national political mood. This year, that mood has voters tired of the MAGA drama and telling struggling families they need to “drop the pencil” to make ends meet.
Republicans should be worried, and They are accepting more now. Trump lost the popular vote in 2016. He lost the White House in 2020. His endorsed candidates were face planted in 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2024. The GOP has not outperformed in a single national cycle since taking control of the party. The Mount Pocono Rally reaffirmed that truth. When Trump tried to make a show of power, he looked small and irrelevant. A billionaire president who tells supporters to buy fewer dolls ahead of Christmas clearly doesn’t know how to connect with voters.
The Trump of 2026 is not the Trump of 2024. President is clearly tiredAngry, confused and unable to adjust to a country in economic crisis. Even Fox News can’t spin it. The right-wing media ecosystem that once treated him like a god is now divided between whether he’s energetic or whether he’s quietly lurking. Meanwhile, Democrats are seeing a surge in energy as the party’s candidates overperform in special elections nationwide, a trend that is often a doomsday indicator for a party out of power.
Republicans insist that bringing Trump back into the midterm spotlight will strengthen the base. It might – but it also energizes everyone else.
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