He’s promising to pay you $5,000. He’s asking you to swear an oath. He’s telling you you’ll “go to hell” if you don’t vote November 3.
President Donald Trump spent the last two days in Dallas trying every which way to convince his GOP base to turn out for the midterms and re-elect a Republican Congress.
We’ll know in 53 days if it worked.
Republicans who attended the party’s midterm convention said they hope it drives Americans to the polls this November. House Majority Whip Tom Emmer said in an interview he’s confident the GOP holds the House majority but acknowledged it’ll come down to Republican voter turnout.
“Do we have some headwinds? Absolutely. Is this the greatest environment we’ve ever run in? No,” Emmer said. “If our people show up, we’ll do just fine. If they sit back at home, we’re going to have some bumps that we got to deal with.”
Trump began the convention by surprising even senior Republicans with a pledge to distribute $5,000 checks to Americans if they re-elect a GOP House and Senate majority. Republicans are now left grappling with the practicality of the proposal and whether to make promises to voters on the campaign trail.
Then the president ended evening No. 2 leading the crowd in swearing an oath that they would bring their family and friends to the polls to vote for Republicans in November.
“You know what happens if you don’t vote? You go to hell,” Trump told Dallas’ American Airlines Center. “Go out and vote, go out and vote!”
Republicans’ messaging heavily focused on painting Democrats as a socialist party the country can not afford to elect into power. It was reminiscent of Democrats’ message going into the 2024 election warning Americans they couldn’t afford to elect Trump again, rather than leaning into specific policy agendas.
Obviously, that didn’t prove to be a winning strategy — and Republicans are hoping they don’t make the same mistake.
“That’s a good question,” Rep. Dan Meuser of Pennsylvania said at the convention when asked if he’s worried the party is too focused on its opponents. But he was confident GOP policies on taxes, regulations and education that were enacted in the past two-years are drastically different from what Democrats are proposing.
“We’ll see, but I do think you got to do all the above,” Rep. Jim Jordan responded to the same question. “We did what we said we would do.”
Read also: How Republicans are privately talking about their Senate map at the convention
What else we’re watching:
— GOP LEADERS CAVE TO DATA CENTER VOTE: House GOP leaders will put legislation on the floor next week marking Congress’ most significant step yet to regulate data center infrastructure that’s driving bipartisan outrage nationwide. Leaders had been weighing whether or not to move forward with the measure — known as the Ratepayer Protection Act — on the floor, with Majority Leader Steve Scalise’s office claiming late last month that some of his members had problems with the proposal that still needed to be worked out. That Scalise and others have now caved is a sign of the political pressure the party is feeling on the matter as Election Day draws near.
— RAND PAUL’S PRICEY FLIGHT — One of the Senate’s biggest fiscal hawks has spent tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars on private jets. Six staffers for Sen. Rand Paul traveled by private jet as part of a bipartisan congressional investigation over several months in 2024 into the attempted assassination of then-presidential candidate Trump — costing taxpayers nearly $18,000, according to Senate expenditure records reviewed by POLITICO. The expense is not illegal or against Senate rules, but it fits a pattern Paul has shown over the years of spending lavishly on travel while simultaneously crusading against out-of-control federal spending.
Meredith Lee Hill, Jason Beeferman, Kelsey Brugger and Chris Marquette contributed to this report.
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