President is drafting Cabinet members and top aides â at least those who havent been fired or about to be let go â for a targeted new strategy aimed squarely at the midterms.
Key members will be criss-crossing the country, particularly in , trying to minimize the partys losses in November.Â
In: The more popular parts of the Trump agenda.
Out: The more controversial aspects of the Trump agenda that have suddenly become politically inconvenient.
Its an uphill climb. Trump has acknowledged that the presidents party usually gets shellacked in its sixth year. Some Trump loyalists privately acknowledge that the GOP will definitely lose control of the House, and possibly even the Senate.Â
If Hakeem Jeffries becomes speaker, that will trigger endless investigations that are certain to make Trump seem even more of a lame duck than he is under the Constitution.   Â
Health and Human Services Secretary is the classic example. He has spent most of the last year crusading against vaccines, in keeping with his lifelong anti-vax campaign that is not supported by scientific evidence. Kennedy has branded his movement Make America Healthy Again.
He has fired the CDC director (who said RFK ordered her to rubber-stamp his policies without evidence), ousted other agency officials, and still hasnt come up with a permanent director.
But as Politico reports, Kennedy has “been told by the White House to stay away from some of the more polarizing parts of the MAHA agenda, like vaccine skepticism, and focus instead on issues like nutrition.”
The campaign must reengage the roughly half of MAHA supporters who say that Trump and Kennedy havent done enough to make America healthier, the website says. RFK is a lifelong Democrat, and his party sees a chance to influence voters interested in goals long identified with the left, such as battling unprocessed foods and shrinking chemicals in the environment.
Trump is hardly the first president to utilize his Cabinet in the runup to the midterms. Jimmy Carter, in 1979, fired his health secretary, treasury secretary, energy secretary, transportation secretary and attorney general. It didnt help. And when Iran seized 52 American hostages later that year, he was toast.
“Cabinet members will be urged to focus on several things Trump has done since taking office,” including tax cuts, Axios reports.
He is also considering removing FBI Director Kash Patel and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, according to media reports, but has dropped plans to dump national intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard after discussing it with aides.
The president took a hard shot at one of our longtime allies yesterday:
“We rebuilt Germany. telling us, Germany telling that, well, its not their war. We had nothing to do with it. They wanted me to go and tell them everything I was doing. We didnt know anything about it. Well, if I would have told them, they would have leaked it, and we wouldnt have been nearly as successful, possibly, right?”
He also blamed the media for disclosing the disclosing there was a second crew member missing from the F-15 that Iran shot down, though that seemed to come out almost immediately.
“We didnt talk about the first one for an hour. And then somebody leaked something, which well hopefully find â that leaker. Were looking very hard to find that leaker. And talked about theres somebody missing. They basically said that we have one and theres someone missing. Well, they didnt know there was somebody missing until this leaker gave the information. So whoever it was, we think well be able to find it out, because were going to go to the media company that released it, and were gonna say national security â give it up or go to jail. And we know who â and you know who were talking about.”
Amit Segal, a
