What is Donald Trump playing at? If it’s true that the best way of understanding the behaviour of an organisation is to assume it’s controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies, perhaps that same logic extends to the current conduct of the president of the United States. Maybe he secretly wants Republicans to lose the looming midterm elections that will decide the balance of power in the US for the next two years and for which the first postal ballots were sent out today.
That’s not as mad a theory as it sounds. Indeed, there are at least two reasons why Trump might either be unbothered by Republican defeat in November or even covertly desire it. We’ll come to those, but let’s start with a pattern of behaviour that is hard to explain as anything other than calculated self-sabotage.
At the centre of it is the single act that is already defining Trump’s second term: his reckless, failed war of choice against Iran. No matter how many times he declares mission accomplished or claims to have destroyed the Iranian military or to have reopened the strait of Hormuz, the facts keep telling a different story. In the past week, the two sides shifted from an economic standoff back to a shooting war, with the US firing on Iranian targets that included a wedding party, killing four, and Tehran striking out all over the neighbourhood, hitting Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan and Bahrain.
The impact on US voters is severe, felt most directly through rising petrol prices and grocery bills. But look at the graph measuring the cost the US government must pay to borrow money: it’s been a steep upward climb since 28 February, the day the war began, hitting a fresh high on Tuesday. For consumers, that rise translates into an expected jump in interest rates. It means that many of those casting ballots are likely to be doing so just as they start paying more on their credit card bills and mortgages. Given that Trump was elected in November 2024 on a promise to bring down inflation, it’s hard to think of a worse environment for a governing party about to face the voters’ verdict. And that’s before you consider the disenchantment of the Maga faithful, who thought the whole point of Trump was an end to forever wars in the Middle East.
And yet, Iran may not even be the most electorally damaging of Trump’s foreign adventures. He is, and it would once have been absurd to write this sentence, leading his country into a state of war with … Canada. It’s easy to laugh at the petty gestures, such as Trump’s renaming of Lake Ontario as Lake America, a move shamefully followed, and therefore endorsed, by Apple and Google in their map apps. But the economic confrontation is serious – and seriously damaging to Republicans’ electoral prospects.
For which US states are hit hardest by Canada’s “dollar-for-dollar” response to Trump’s tariffs? Why, it’s Michigan, Ohio, Maine, Iowa and Texas, all of which just happen to have key senate contests this year. Republican candidates in those states now have to explain why a crucial and previously friendly export market – Canada takes nearly a third of Iowa’s exports, for example – has suddenly turned icy.
What’s odd is that Trump’s trade wars are also wars of choice, and they are hurting especially badly what should be a reliable Republican constituency: farmers. Take Iowa: Democrats have not won a senate seat in that farming state for nearly 20 years, yet now, thanks to Trump’s tariffs, they have a genuine shot.
Still, perhaps the most egregious illustration of Trump’s apparent determination to ruin Republican chances in the midterms is his support for datacentres. Few issues have seen their salience rise so quickly and in such a clear direction: almost overnight, they have become objects of fear and loathing across the country and across the political spectrum, with seven in 10 Americans saying they would not want one anywhere near where they live. Even among Republicans, there is deep concern over their environmental impact, energy consumption and water use. For others, datacentres have become a lightning rod for a broader anxiety over AI and what it may do to our jobs and our lives. Either way, they are kryptonite to voters.
So where does Trump stand? “The only reason that communities throughout the USA should not want data centres is if they want to end up being backwards and poor,” the president posted on Monday. In that remark, he not only put himself at odds with most US voters, he insulted them too.
It’s almost a talent, this ability of Trump’s to land on the wrong side of so-called 80/20 issues, siding with one-fifth of the electorate against the rest. Likewise, strong majorities oppose his vanity projects, whether demolishing the East Wing of the White House to build a ballroom or putting his signature on the dollar bill, yet he persists not only in doing them but in talking about them constantly.
And all the while, he has hobbled his party by endorsing radioactively unpopular candidates. Few politicians in the US are more tainted than Ken Paxton, who as attorney general of Texas was impeached by his fellow Republicans on a long list of charges that included bribery and abuse of public trust. Yet who did Trump back as the Republicans’ senate choice in Texas? As a result, now even that red-state stronghold is shaky.
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Put it all together, and these look like the actions of a man who has no fear of the blue wave that seems to be coming and who could not care less if it sweeps away the Republicans’ current majorities in Congress. That’s curious, given how useful it has been for Trump to have Capitol Hill serve as a rubber stamp that, combined with a largely pliant supreme court, has allowed him to rule with the scarcely fettered power of a would-be autocrat. What could explain the insouciance?
One answer is that Congress’s most potent weapon – the power of subpoena and investigation – holds no terror for Trump because he knows that the House and Senate have no means to enforce their will. They have no police or troops at their command. They can issue their writs and summonses, and he will simply ignore them – comforted by the near-blanket immunity he has already been granted by the supreme court. If Congress goes after his aides and advisers, he will instruct them to follow his lead, on the promise of a comprehensive presidential pardon protecting them from any and all legal consequences. The only real weapon Congress has – impeachment and removal from office – he knows they will never use. If senate Republicans could acquit him after the 6 January insurrection, as they did, he knows they will never vote to convict him of anything, no matter how great the crime.
But that only goes so far. It explains why Trump does not fear Republican defeat in November, but not why he would actively seek it. For that, one has to look into the abyss that passes for the president’s soul. The bestselling new book Regime Change, by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, spells it out: “If Republicans were wiped out in the 2026 midterm elections, or in 2028, he could simply boast that they couldn’t win without him” on the ballot paper. Such is Trump’s narcissism, he will take an epic Republican defeat in two months’ time not as a repudiation, but as a compliment. And, it seems, he is doing all he can to earn it.
