Plainly, Trump Doesn't Really Care About The Midterms

This succeeded but despite America's“hot” economy is leading the country towards some sort of a debt crisis. The other has been his effort to gain federal control over the country's voting systems and rules, chiefly in order to suppress the votes of his opponents. This has largely failed.

Beyond those initiatives, Trump has mainly governed by writing executive orders and waiting for courts or Congress to block them, if they can. The courts have often done so, but both the Republican-majority houses of Congress have been too supine to stand in his way to any serious extent.

The virtue of the big beautiful bill, from his point of view, is that it appropriated sufficient funds to allow him to do what he likes, often by transferring funds from one pot to another, without bothering to ask Congress for permission.

Notably, this provided a huge pot of money for his anti-immigration militia, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), which, apart from Elon Musk and Russell Vought's project to destroy or disable large parts of the federal government, counts as his main governing initiative, if arresting, deporting and sometimes shooting people largely without due process can qualify as“governing.”

It also gave him access to enough money for his pet legacy-creation projects in Washington, DC, mainly by taking money away from the National Parks Service and using it for his ballroom, his reflecting pool debacle, his“arc de Trump” and other efforts to leave a permanent, vainglorious mark on America's capital city.

That has been his agenda, but his most common focus has been not on an agenda, per se, but on the accumulation and exercise of power. This has made him and his family hugely richer, for a start, in complete disregard of legal and constitutional constraints on the financial exploitation of office.

He has also used his power to pursue and punish his enemies, through Department of Justice indictments and FBI investigations. And in foreign policy he has used his power to extort investments and other monies from other countries, including allies in Europe and Asia, to try to intimidate and gain concessions from neighbors such as Canada and Mexico, and to exert military force where it pleases him to do so, whether by killing alleged drug-traffickers in international waters, by kidnapping the president of Venezuela or, most fatefully, by seeking to force a change of regime in Iran.

If, as it seems, he does not care very much about what happens to Republican control over the House of Representatives or the Senate in the mid-terms, the implication is that he thinks he will be able to carry on in his final two years acting pretty much in the same way as since January 2025.

Presidents always have wide latitude over foreign policy, which he will continue to exploit. But he will also continue to seek to enrich himself and his family, through corruption, insider trading and deals with foreign powers, and to seek to pursue his enemies inside America. And he will be planning to end his term of office by exercising his presidential power of pardon to try to protect his family and associates.

For a president with such a limited, highly personal conception of his role and opportunities, the prospect of spending his next two years in this way may well be quite attractive. Certainly, he understands that a Democrat-controlled Congress will pursue him with investigations and laws targeting his corruption and his abuse of power, and that he will very likely be impeached for a third time.

But he will know that he can veto laws, can brazen out investigations, can enjoy painting himself as a victim and can be confident again of avoiding being found guilty in a trial in the Senate, which requires a two-thirds majority.