By Jeffrey Blehar
Tuesday, September 15, 2026
Folks, time is now officially running out. The Republican
Party’s midterm convention in Dallas has come and gone, and I wish I could say
that the GOP has now emerged from the midsummer mire and is heading into
November with a fresh head of steam. Instead, the sinkhole grows ever deeper.
Donald Trump currently sits at a -16 percentage point approval rating in the RealClearPolitics polling averages, and things get
even grimmer once you poke beneath the hood. (Next time you fill the tank up at
the pump, you’ll understand that cool -38.6 percentage point approval rating he currently sports
on the issue of inflation. Don’t worry, Americans historically aren’t known to
vote on pocketbook issues . . .)
There’s no getting around blunt electoral realities here;
you can’t plead with the mechanical gears of electoral politics to stop
grinding. The hour is late. Voter attitudes about the economy, Trump’s various
foreign policy adventures, and his . . . ahem, “highly personal” way of
governing in his second term are now set and fixed: The cement has dried.
(Early voting in Virginia begins in three days.)
It’s the sort of desperate situation that absolutely
requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part, and
Trump is always the man for such things. So he went and did his typical Donald
Trump “thing,” rambling unscripted in Dallas through nearly two
hours of self-praise after publicly pledging to stroke a $5,000 check to
every adult voter in America if (and only if) they find it in their hearts to
ratify his last two years in office by returning his party — and he very much
wants you to know he thinks of it as his — to power. How would he do it
legally? How would the American economy respond to the instant injection of
$1.5 trillion? Don’t know!
And obviously I don’t have to know either, because — just
like those DOGE checks, and those tariff rebate checks — it will never happen,
nor was it meant to. It was the sort of wild gambit Trump has become infamous
for over the years — he didn’t even bother to warn top Republicans of it in advance
— and the sort of blarney you only offer because you know you’ll never have to
pay up on it.
In any event, Trump’s little shamanistic rain dance
failed to please the fickle electoral gods. Even Byron Donalds, running for
governor of Florida as Ron DeSantis’s anointed MAGA successor, had to pump the
brakes on the president’s inflation-inducing fantasy: “When it comes to
additional checks going out the door, I have concerns, I’m not sure how you’re
going to pay for that long-term.” (Don’t worry, we won’t have to.)
What cares Donald Trump for the “long term?” At this
point, it should be amply clear that the president’s true north star is a
mirror. He will never be on the ballot again and is seemingly indifferent to
the reality that his legacy will be. After his heroic convention peroration, he
sat down with Laura Ingraham for an interview where she
eagerly queried him on whether he realized that he needed to campaign hard
until Election Day.
“No,” he answered. “I’m a little bit tired of politics,”
he sighed. He knows. Instead, Trump is on semi-vacation in Ireland, making
casual comments about reunifying the island, capriciously suspending Irish
whiskey tariffs (which he imposed) to thank them for their hospitality, and
returning to what he enjoys best: playing king of a republic saddled with him
for two more years.
The midterm results remain an ugly little beaten package,
wrapped carefully and mailed with intent, for Republicans to unpack in
November. What’s in the box? Something many of us haven’t really come to grips
with yet, is my bet. (Maybe it’s a historic Senate loss in Kansas!) Either way,
nothing will really change the course of events now. So I understand the core
impulse behind the midterm convention: Maybe
partying will help.
Just Shut the Kennedy Center Down at This Point
Bad news! For all the world knows, today may be
officially be the day that the “Trump–Kennedy Center” closes for the
foreseeable future . . . that is, unless, those dastardly courts relent, and
allow the beleaguered, federally funded showcase for the arts to heal itself
financially by restoring Donald Trump’s glorious visage to the visible exterior
of the building.
Or so the pitch to the court goes, per the Washington Post. Yes, this particular phase
of this increasingly pathetic saga of Trump’s desperate attempt to co-opt the
Kennedy legacy is drawing to its close, as administration figures warned in a
court filing last week.
Leaders of the John F. Kennedy
Center for the Performing Arts, installed by President Donald Trump, say the
center is on the brink of bankruptcy and argue that putting the president’s
name on its facade — and thus ensuring his fundraising efforts — may be the
only way to avoid imminent and “certain fiscal collapse,” according to
documents obtained by The Washington Post.
It’s a bold pitch, for sure, given that the crisis is
entirely self-engineered, but there’s more!
The presentation makes clear that
Trump’s support hinges on getting public credit for his involvement. The
financial resolution says Trump has offered to “raise the necessary funds to
keep the Center from bankruptcy” while the building undergoes a sweeping
renovation. But it says Trump is unlikely to provide “fundamental oversight” of
that project or lead a financial rescue without “appropriate recognition” of
his role.
Read that paragraph again. The Kennedy Center is a public
trust, a federally owned (and statutorily named) venue. But now Trump frankly
acknowledges that he will hold it hostage, and even shutter it, unless his name
is attached to it.
The proper answer, of course, is for the courts to agree
with Donald Trump: Fine, shut it down. This is not mere jest: The
Kennedy Center is clearly not a viable institution so long as Trump remains
president. He refuses to disassociate himself with it, and nobody will agree to
perform — as a direct tribute to his ego — so long as he is around to
claim credit for it in any way. Once he is gone, reopen it under new management
— and make sure that management is independent of the administration. Then it
will flourish again, with or without refurbishing. As for now, the Kennedy
Center should be shuttered — and that will be the truest tribute to Trump’s ego
of all.
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