Just a few months ago, the Republican Party was busy measuring the drapes in the Capitol and preparing for a permanent majority. Donald Trump was back, the “Golden Age” had supposedly dawned, and the midterm elections looked like a mere formality. Oh, how the confetti has settled.
As we barrel toward November 2026, a delicious aroma is wafting through the corridors of the GOP: the unmistakable scent of panic. It turns out that running a government like a daytime game show replete with surprise hockey teams might impress the boisterous “USA” crowd, but it does little for the 61% of voters who think the President’s policies are steering the country into a ditch . The Republican ship is taking on water, and it’s coming from three distinct holes: a catastrophic polling collapse, a cover-up scandal of Epsteinian proportions, and the small matter of the President of the United States potentially being blackmailed by a foreign power.
The Numbers Don’t Lie (Even If the Trade Rep Does)
Let us begin with the math problem, because for a party that claims to be the bastion of fiscal responsibility, they seem terrible at counting votes.
Anthony Scaramucci, who briefly served as Trump’s communications director during what historians will surely refer to as “The Eleven-Day Panic Attack,” has issued a warning so dire it should have Republicans reaching for the smelling salts. According to “The Mooch,” the GOP is heading for a midterm “destroying” . And the numbers back him up.
The CNN polling is, to put it charitably, a five-alarm dumpster fire. Trump’s approval among Latino voters has cratered from 41% to 22%. Voters under 45? Down from 45% to 27%. Independents—you know, the people who actually decide elections—have fled from 41% to 26% . These aren’t just bad numbers; these are “maybe we should have let the guy who naps through Cabinet meetings stay at Mar-a-Lago” numbers.
The administration’s response to this polling catastrophe has been… creative. US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer recently dismissed the data by suggesting that the polls are merely filled out by people who “hate the president anyway” . This is the political equivalent of a child covering their ears and screaming “I can’t hear you!” It’s also eerily reminiscent of how the Democrats used to insist the economy was great while everyone else was struggling to buy groceries—a tactic that worked out so well for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2024 .
The special elections are telling an even more humiliating story. Democrats are outperforming Kamala Harris’s 2024 numbers by an average of 10.5 points in state legislative races . In North Texas, a Democrat won a state Senate seat by 14 points in a district Trump carried by 17 . In Louisiana, the margins were even worse. A GOP operative summed it up with the kind of frankness that usually gets you fired: Democrats are fired up, and the GOP base is taking a nap . Perhaps they’re just following the example set by their leader during briefings.
The Epstein Files: A Cover-Up Wrapped in a Redaction
But bad polling is the least of the GOP’s worries, because the Jeffrey Epstein files have returned like a ghost that refuses to stay buried. And this time, the ghost is pointing a very bony finger at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
In a twist that surprises absolutely no one who has been conscious since 1992, the Justice Department appears to have “lost” some rather important documents. According to NPR’s investigation, the DOJ withheld more than 50 pages of FBI interviews, including notes from a woman who accused Trump of sexually assaulting her when she was 13 years old in the 1980s . The woman claimed Epstein introduced her to Trump, and the encounter ended with the President allegedly punching her and kicking her out after she bit him . It is, to put it mildly, not the kind of anecdote you want read aloud at the Republican National Convention.
Congressman Robert Garcia, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, has reviewed the unredacted evidence logs and declared this “the largest government cover-up in modern history” . The Justice Department, for its part, insists that nothing has been deleted—the files were merely “temporarily pulled” for redactions . It’s the digital equivalent of a mobster saying, “That money isn’t missing, it’s just… resting in my pocket.”
The timing is exquisitely bad for Trump. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche has already signaled that no new charges will be brought in the Epstein investigation . What a remarkable coincidence! And just to add a layer of perfume to this particular pig, Ghislaine Maxwell’s lawyer has reportedly suggested that if Trump grants his old pal Ghislaine clemency, she would be happy to clear his name . It’s the oldest bargain in the book: you free the convicted sex trafficker, and she’ll say you’re definitely not a sex trafficker. Watertight.
The Israeli Blackmail Theory: When “Deep State” Meets “Deep Mossad”
Just when you thought the scandal couldn’t get more international or more absurd, along comes the blackmail angle.
Newly released Epstein files contain allegations from a “credible” FBI confidential human source that Donald Trump has been “compromised by Israel” . The documents suggest that Jeffrey Epstein himself was an intelligence asset for the Mossad, and that his entire operation—the island, the jets, the underage girls—may have been a massive intelligence-gathering enterprise .
Enter Ari Ben-Menashe, a former senior Israeli military intelligence officer, who has dropped a bomb that should be shaking Washington to its foundations. According to Ben-Menashe, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is currently holding a very sharp knife to Trump’s back. Netanyahu, he claims, possesses the unredacted Epstein files—the ones the DOJ is supposedly redacting—and is prepared to release them unless Trump agrees to attack Iran .
Let that sink in. The Prime Minister of Israel is allegedly blackmailing the President of the United States with documents proving Trump’s involvement with a pedophile ring to force a war in the Middle East. It reads like the plot of a Tom Clancy novel written by someone who has given up on plausibility.
The files also implicate Jared Kushner, who allegedly exerted “outsized control” over the Trump Organization and the presidency while being influenced by Alan Dershowitz, Epstein’s lawyer, who reportedly told a source he would have loved to be a Mossad agent wielding a stun gun . There are allegations of money laundering, Russian investment funds, and a Beverly Hills mansion sale that raised “red flags” . The entire Trump ecosystem, according to these documents, looks less like a family business and more like a franchise operation for various international intelligence services.
Immigration: The Boomerang Issue
Remember when immigration was Trump’s magic bullet, the issue that was going to deliver the working class permanently to the GOP? Well, the bullet has apparently circled back and hit the shooter in the foot.
The administration’s crackdown has gone so poorly that only 39% of Americans now approve of Trump’s handling of immigration—his lowest rating since taking office . The problem isn’t the theory; it’s the practice. When federal agents started shooting people in Minneapolis—killing a mother of three and a nurse—voters began to suspect that “draining the swamp” might involve a lot more blood than they’d signed up for .
Even Republicans are getting nervous. A fifth of GOP respondents think the agents have gone “too far.” A Republican candidate for Minnesota governor quit the race over the tactics . A state senator wrote to the FBI to complain about immigrants being labeled “domestic terrorists” . And strategists are quietly begging the administration to stop going after “gardeners and taco truck ladies” and focus on actual criminals . It turns out that voters like the idea of “law and order” until it involves tear gas at the local park.
The Comfort of the Cocoon
The truly tragicomic element in all of this is that Donald Trump appears to have no idea any of it is happening. His State of the Union address was a “daytime game show” filled with “USA” chants and self-congratulation, delivered to a crowd of loyalists while Democrats boycotted en masse . He is, according to multiple reports, insulated in a cocoon of his own making, shielded from the unpleasant reality that Americans are deeply unhappy .
House Speaker Mike Johnson, ever the eager-to-please sidekick, refuses to contradict him. When Trump claimed that “congressional action will not be necessary” for his tariffs, Johnson weakly muttered that “it’s in the statute” . It’s the political equivalent of watching a friend’s toddler draw on the wall and just smiling weakly while whispering, “We have paint.”
Trump himself offered a theory for his sinking polls: “I think it’s silent. I think that’s how I won” . It is the eternal hope of the unpopular: that there is a vast army of people who support you but are just too shy to tell pollsters. These “silent” supporters are presumably the same people who will emerge from the shadows in November to vote, having spent the entire year perfecting the art of not expressing an opinion.
Conclusion: The Perfect Storm of Self-Destruction
So here we stand, mere months from the midterms, with the Republican Party staring into an abyss of their own creation. They have a President whom voters believe is ignoring the country’s real problems. They have a cover-up scandal involving child sexual abuse that gets more damaging with every missing document. They have credible allegations that their leader is compromised by a foreign power. They have an immigration policy that has turned their signature issue into a liability. And they have a base that, apparently, is taking a nap.
The Democrats, for their part, smell blood. Survivors of Epstein’s crimes sat in the audience during the State of the Union as Trump avoided mentioning the name of the man whose island he visited . Robert Garcia is promising that the investigation is “just getting started” . And the special election results suggest that the anti-Trump energy that faded in 2024 is back with a vengeance.
As one Republican strategist put it, the president’s number one advantage has become a “political liability” . The catapult enthusiast who once promised to drain the swamp now finds himself up to his neck in it, with Netanyahu holding the hose and the GOP base snoring gently in the background.
The midterms are going to be spectacular. Pass the popcorn.