President Donald Trump will be traveling weekly across the country to speak to voters ahead of the midterms.
Trump’s first stop will be on Tuesday in Iowa, where he will deliver a speech on the economy and energy, chief of staff Susie Wiles told reporters on the way to Davos, Switzerland. Cabinet officials will also increase their domestic travel in the coming months, she said.
The travel blitz beginning in January is much earlier than during his first term, when he began traveling aggressively to support candidates just after Labor Day.
The announcement comes as polling has regularly shown Trump’s popularity slipping and voters beginning to blame his policies for the high cost of living. In addition, some in his party have worried that Trump has been too focused on foreign affairs.
The White House did not immediately provide further information about his upcoming stops.
“President Trump is Republicans’ key to victory this November. No one energizes voters and drives turnout like he does,” Republican National Committee spokesperson Kiersten Pels said in a statement to POLITICO.
“As President Trump barnstorms the country to advance his America First agenda, Republicans are poised to defy history in the midterms.”
Trump’s attention has been intensely focused on foreign policy recently. In the past few weeks, he’s captured Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, has made increasing threats to acquire Greenland, has continued negotiating peace in Ukraine, and has created and begun appointing people to a controversial new “Board of Peace” for Gaza.
His domestic travel, especially focused on elections, has been limited in his first year so far. But the ramp-up in 2026 comes with the knowledge that his presence in states and personal endorsements have boosted candidates in prior elections.
Republicans don’t want to a repeat of the 2022 midterms, when Democrats swept unexpected seats and prevented a “red wave” the GOP was expecting. The president has also been suffering from low approval ratings amid concerns about affordability, with only 41 percent of Americans surveyed supporting his term so far in a recent CBS News poll.
Trump has struggled to articulate an affordability message that moves the needle with voters, and a purposeful tack back to domestic matters could help that perception.
“The spotlight of the Oval Office is bright, but it shines brighter closer to home. Bringing the White House caravan to a neighborhood near you shows the American people you care and amplifies the message even louder,” Harrison Fields, a former Trump White House spokesperson and senior vice president at the CGCN Group, told POLITICO.
“Boots on the ground and good old-fashioned stump speeches are every successful politician’s bread and butter, and there’s no one who does it better than President Trump,” he added.
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