Trump’s first midterm ads are heavy on ‘me’

(CNN) — President Donald Trump’s extremely well-heeled political operation has begun an advertising campaign ahead of the 2026 midterm elections that Republicans have been eagerly awaiting.

But the first offerings focus on something decidedly unpopular: Trump himself.

The new ads from Securing American Greatness, the nonprofit arm of the pro-Trump super PAC MAGA Inc., seem to confirm reporting from the Atlantic and Trump’s recent comments suggesting the campaign will largely focus on Trump rather than the Republicans in Congress who will be on the ballot this fall.

One of the spots, titled “Toughest Guy,” looks exactly like an ad that could be run for one of Trump’s campaigns. It features UFC President Dana White praising Trump’s toughness, followed by Trump delivering high-minded lines about the primacy of America.

“We will be prosperous. We will be proud. We will be strong, and we will win like never before,” he says.

The ad doesn’t even allude to Congress or the Republican Party.

The second ad, “Tax Cut Prices,” is a little more conventional in that it focuses on things Republicans in Washington have done — at least some of which congressional Republicans were involved in.

“We gave you no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on Social Security, the largest tax cuts in American history,” Trump says in the ad. “The price of eggs is down 60%. I took prescription drugs from the highest price in the entire world to the lowest. We’re telling the major tech companies that they have the obligation to provide for their own power needs so that no one’s prices will go up.”

The narrator then concludes: “He’s fighting for you every day. Help him finish the job.”

Several of the claims in the ad are false or misleading, including on Social Security taxes, prescription drug prices and making data centers provide their own power.

But it’s also worth noting that some of them — including the latter two — didn’t even involve legislation from Congress. They were executive actions.

The ad also concludes on a very Trump-centric note.

Per data from tracking firm AdImpact, the spots have begun running in major media markets like New York, Washington, DC, Chicago and Philadelphia, and have about $1 million behind them — a tiny portion of the hundreds of millions of dollars in Trump’s political operation.

Republicans hope the Trump team will unleash that money to help the party in the midterms, but the spending has been slow to start. And focusing on Trump personally is a dicey strategy.

There is some legitimate strategic reason for these ads to invoke Trump. The last decade has shown that his voters are inordinately less likely to vote in elections when he’s not on the ballot.

(As a nonprofit, this group also faces some restrictions on directly telling viewers to vote for or against specific candidates. But it could still promote their work and praise them.)

So making Trump’s supporters believe these races are important for the president could help turn out the base voters that some Republicans believe will be key to their midterm hopes.

Trump recently told Fox News that he was going “to campaign like I did for myself. And I’m going to hope that people think that I’m on” the ballot.

But he’s also said the campaign needs to focus on him because people like him better than other Republicans. And that’s just not true.

In fact, given Trump’s approval rating is historically low — often in the 30s and sometimes the low 30s — making the election more focused on him could backfire on Republicans, who in many cases might seek distance from the president and his policies.

But this is apparently the course that Trump’s political operation has chosen. And now we see how it plays.

The-CNN-Wire
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