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Donald Trump Is Bad at Politics

The president’s flailing midterms campaign underscores a truth we should be acknowledging more often: He kind of sucks at this.

Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the McMorran Place Sports & Entertainment Center in Port Huron, Michigan, on October 25, 2026.

President Donald Trump rounded off a hectic stretch of midterm barnstorming last week with an appearance in Sioux City, Iowa. There, after one completely unidentifiable noise and some desultory talk about extending a last-minute aid package to farmers throttled by sky-high diesel prices thanks to Trump’s feckless war in Iran, the proceedings turned to a Trump obsession: his eternal failure to land a Nobel Peace Prize. In typically cultish form, Joe Mitchell, a former GOP state representative now locked in a tight race for the state’s open second congressional district seat, proudly displayed a gold-framed certificate proclaiming Trump “Man of the Century” to make up for the long-standing Swedish snub.

Mitchell then launched into a groveling encomium worthy of a Trump cabinet meeting:

I wanted to say, Mr. President, for the last 10 years, you kept this country more safe than any other president, ever. And they’ve never given you the Nobel Peace Prize, by the way, which is a disgrace. So, what I came up with, Mr. President, is the new award. It’s called the “Man of the Century Award.” OK? It’s the “Man of the Century Award.” And I’m gonna hold this up for the artificial media to see. CNN, zoom in right here, CNN. OK? Because this man has done more for humanity and for America than any other president ever.

I wanted to say, Mr. President, for the last 10 years, you kept this country more safe than any other president, ever. And they’ve never given you the Nobel Peace Prize, by the way, which is a disgrace. So, what I came up with, Mr. President, is the new award. It’s called the “Man of the Century Award.” OK? It’s the “Man of the Century Award.” And I’m gonna hold this up for the artificial media to see. CNN, zoom in right here, CNN. OK? Because this man has done more for humanity and for America than any other president ever.

There may be more completely bizarre and off-base appeals to an electorate angered over the twin Trumpian scourges of escalating living costs and rampant elite corruption, but none leap immediately to mind. The voters of Iowa’s second district, like the hard-pressed residents in other traditionally deep-red, but suddenly-swingy, states such as Mississippi, South Carolina, and Kansas, are seeking reassurance that the Republican Party actively identifies with their daily struggles in a top-heavy, inflation-racked, and benefit-starved economic landscape turning their communities into dumping grounds for data centers. Instead, they’re being treated to parodic displays of ultra-elite Oval Office grievance—and a GOP nominee whose chief qualification appears to be maximum sycophancy before the party’s Caligulan overlord.

Mind you, Mitchell was only heeding the main takeaway from the previous evening’s Trump rally in Greenville, South Carolina, where the president largely neglected his reason for being there—to tout Darline Graham, his handpicked choice to replace Graham’s late brother Lindsey as senator who, like many GOP candidates in formerly safe statewide races, is embroiled in a much closer general-election fight than anyone expected. Instead, he launched into a long harangue about the international awards he’s been cruelly denied—not just the Nobel Peace Prize, but also the Pulitzer “for writing.” (The Pulitzer exists for books and journalism, so it’s not clear what Trump would have been nominated for, since his last book appeared more than a decade ago. Perhaps the laurel would be for fiction, a genre in which Trump has........

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