In his role as the titular head of the Republican Party, the wins are stacking up for President Trump. Going into this week’s primaries, nearly every Indiana state senator who defied Trump’s push to redraw congressional districts in the Hoosier State found themselves without their own seat. On Saturday, Trump settled another score when Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy – who’d sided with the Democrats on impeachment – lost his primary election. Tuesday’s elections notched yet more payback.
“I want to thank President Trump for his support, his endorsement, and his counsel as I navigated this campaign, which is a journey of unto itself, and for his courageous leadership of our nation at this critical time,” is how Ed Gallrein opened his Tuesday night victory speech after ousting Trump nemesis Thomas Massie.
A former Navy SEAL, Gallrein had little previous name recognition in the state, no experience in public office, and ran in what became the most expensive congressional primary in the country to date. He credited his win to one not-so-secret weapon: “Thank you, Mr. President.”
In the past week, Trump endorsed 34 candidates. He deployed Vice President JD Vance to Iowa earlier this month to stump for candidates and sent Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to Kentucky to promote Gallrein over Massie, a seven-term incumbent. Gallrein won by nearly 10 percentage points.
White House communications director Steven Cheung summed up the mood in the West Wing.
“Do not ever doubt President Trump and his political power,” Cheung wrote in a post on X. “F*** around, find out.”
Mark Weaver, a Republican political consultant based in Ohio, said the White House has earned its victory lap. “Donald Trump continues to show his strengths among the Republican base,” Weaver told RCP. “The rumors of his political death are exaggerated.”
Traditionally, a second-term president hits a so-called lame duck period after the midterm elections heading into the final two years of his term. That’s because most majority parties lose congressional seats in the midterm and the balance of power is split between the Capitol and the White House. Republicans hope to buck convention this year.
“These recent primary victories for President Trump shows that even if he is a lame duck, he’s got a strong right wing,” Weaver said. “And a duck with a strong right wing can still get a lot done.”
But it remains to be seen whether primary victories for the president will translate to stemming an expected blue wave in November – or whether Trump’s machinations have made things even more difficult for the Republican Party. The ongoing war in Iran and rising gas prices are contributing to Trump’s sinking approval polls. According the RCP Average, 55% of Americans disapprove of military action in Iran. Trump fielded questions about the ongoing operation Wednesday.
“We’d have to open the Strait [of Hormuz], that would open immediately. So we’re going to give this one shot. I’m in no hurry. You never think, ‘oh, the midterms,’” he told reporters.
Now all eyes turn to Texas where Trump again has again weighed into a contentious Senate primary between incumbent John Cornyn, a member of the GOP Senate leadership, and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, MAGA firebrand and Trump loyalist. On Tuesday, without notifying congressional leadership, Trump came out for Paxton. Senate Republicans, like the rest of the world, found out on Truth Social.
“Cornyn is a principled conservative. He is a very effective senator for the state of Texas,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said during his weekly news conference at the Capitol. “None of us can control what the president does. That doesn’t change the way I feel, I will continue to be supportive of Sen. Cornyn in his reelection.”
The winner of the May 26 runoff will face Democratic candidate and state Rep. James Talarico. Although mock matchups featuring a Cornyn-Talarico contest and a Paxton-Talarico race don’t show much difference, it has been widely assumed by establishment Republicans (and prominent Democrats) that Cornyn would be a stronger general election candidate.
“I don’t understand it. He is an ethically challenged individual,” Maine Sen. Susan Collins told reporters about Paxton on Tuesday. “John Cornyn is an outstanding senator and deserved, in my judgment, the president’s support, obviously it’s the president’s call, but I’m disappointed that he did it.”
Mark Weaver counters that Trump’s winning streak in the 2026 primary season shows that he’s in touch with the Republican base – and that in a midterm election year, motivating that base is crucial.
“We saw this in 2006 where Republicans just were not all that eager to go out and vote,” Weaver said. “These victories for Donald Trump show that the Republican base can still be energized by him. If that’s true, then the fall midterms are less likely to be a 40-seat wipeout in the House and loss of control in the Senate.”
Trump repeatedly said that he opposed Sen. Bill Cassidy because of his vote in 2021 to impeach him. Massie has long been a thorn in the Trump administration’s side as well, often siding with Democrats on economic and foreign policy legislation. In his endorsement of Ken Paxton, Trump said incumbent Cornyn “was not supportive of me when times were tough.”
“He is aware that the base loves him,” Advancing American Freedom President Tim Chapman told RCP. AAF is a Washington think tank founded by former Vice President Mike Pence. Chapman said Trump’s endorsing power is tilting the primary scales not necessarily toward high-quality candidates but towards ones who appear to be loyal fighters.
“Only a political cynic would call a demand for party unity an insistence on loyalty,” Weaver argued. “Donald Trump is the leader of the Republican Party. So calling on other Republicans to join him so that they might be able to expand their coalition… that’s Politics 101.”
More important than the primary candidates, for Chapman, is what the endorsements say about the direction of the party once Trump leaves office.
“I think the real big question is what kind of movement Trump going to leave behind, and is it durable?” Chapman said. “I am not convinced that the kinds of people he’s endorsing are actually going to be part of a durable movement, because this movement is based around Donald Trump himself.”
Some Republican lawmakers shared similar concerns about the direction of the party. At the Freedom Conservatism conference in Washington on Wednesday, Republican Sen. Rand Paul, who supported fellow Kentuckian Thomas Massie, never mentioned Trump by name. But his closing remarks suggested unease with the leader of his party.
“I always thought we believed in something, and I thought many of those beliefs were shared by other people, including our nominees and our presidents, which is great,” Paul said. “We can have disagreements, but we can’t have this monolithic cult of … absolute and utter loyalty to one person or else. I thought the loyalty should be to ideas, to the Constitution. I still believe that.”
Carolina Lumetta is White House correspondent for RealClearPolitics. Follow her on X @CarolinaLumetta.
