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Earlier this month, Donald Trump, the least popular President in American history, promised to hit 35 competitive races in the final 30 days of the campaign.
You could hear the GOP candidates sucking in their breath and praying, “Not me not me not me not me…”
His opening acts are in places not typically considered purple states: Durant, Oklahoma, on Thursday and Mobile, Alabama, on Friday, two states he won by 34 and 30 points, where both the governor’s and Senate races should be safely Republican. The congressional districts hosting him aren’t exactly competitive, either.
Republican candidates are caught in a trap: they don’t want Trump within 1000 miles of their races, and they can’t tell him not to come.
When the principal is an asset, you put him where the votes are. When the principal is a man whose approval sits at roughly 30-33% in the polling averages, you put him somewhere the arena will be full, the crowd will be loud, and no candidate on the ballot is in any danger of losing.
Durant and Mobile are rally therapy for sad boy Donnie; Mobile in particular was one of his 2016 breakthroughs. The only thing on the line is Donald Trump’s mood, and he needs a trip to the Paramus Mall. He needs the noise from his fading and dying movement more than any candidate needs him. He needs to see the remaining Front Row Joes cheering him madly, while the sparse seats behind him fill with octogenarian Trump stans confused about why the memory care facility shuttle bus dropped them there.
The problems begin when he wanders into states where the races are real, and the first one on the list is mine.
Dinner with Hannibal
On Saturday, Trump announced two Florida rallies for Byron Donalds, which he promised would be “SOLD OUT!” He posted it in a fit of pique after reporting that Donalds had rolled out a new campaign website that dropped the prominent references to Trump’s endorsement, along with the photo of the two of them, from the homepage.
Trump, naturally, took it as a betrayal, a Judas move from a man who once called him “Daddy.” Trump wrote on Trash Social that if Florida believed Byron had dropped him, “he would lose the Election.”
Even slowcoach candidates like Donalds knew that his patron was threatening him. “Embarrass the boss again and the boss will make sure Florida MAGA voters hear about it.”
Donalds’ ludicrously weak-dick explanation was that the site was getting refurbished for the general anyway, and that his team “just got a little busy.” By Saturday morning in Miami Beach, he was telling reporters that “of course” he’d campaign with the president. That’s a full flip in about 72 hours, which is fast even by Byron’s notoriously flexible standards.
For the Donalds campaign, a Trump rally offer must feel a lot like a dinner invitation from Hannibal Lecter. The table will be beautiful, the wine excellent, and Byron will be the main course.
Donalds can’t afford mistakes now, and these rallies will be ETTD Hall of Fame moments.
We’ve been telling you for months that the illusion of Donald’s massive financial haul had papered over a deeply flawed and corrupt candidate, a man who couldn’t win the GOP primary with Trump’s endorsement and $35 million in primary spending against four nobodies.
Cook Political moved Florida governor from Solid Republican to Likely Republican in August. Last week, Inside Elections moved it again, from Likely Republican to Lean Republican, and Decision Desk HQ shifted it to a Toss-up. The St. Pete Polls survey for Florida Politics had it 44-43 among likely voters, with Jolly winning NPA voters by 12 points in a sample weighted 42% Republican. Change Research had Jolly up 48 to 46, and after $65 million in spending, Donalds sitting at 34 percent favorable and 46 percent unfavorable.
$65 million bought Byron Donalds a negative favorable rating in a state Trump won by 13. The last thing that campaign can afford is a guest star who reminds voters why they’re angry.
It’s a trap, and Donalds knows it.
If Donalds ducks the rallies, Trump destroys him. We got the preview on Saturday, and that was over a webpage. A skipped rally would get the full Trump Mean Girl treatment, nightly, on Truth Social.
If he says yes, he gets Trump on a Florida stage, live, reminding every voter in the state what the last year has cost them.
Florida gas hit a statewide average of $4.42 on Friday, the highest since May, and the average driver is now paying $65 to fill a tank that cost $44 a year ago. Diesel, which is how everything in this state gets from the farms to the port to the shelf, was at $6.07 on Monday. Truckers and farmers in this state do that arithmetic every morning, and they know Trump’s war and Trump’s tariffs (of which Donalds is an eager cheerleader for both) are why they’re getting financially hammered.
Trump’s visit also tears another wound into Data Center Donald’s campaign. President “Superintelligence” coming to Florida, where data centers are as popular with the voters as a drug-resistant STD bred in Roger Stone’s biolab will remind voters again that Donalds is funded by millions in Big Tech/AI money and that he’s definitely pro-data center. Trump will be unable to resist the issue.
Data centers are a fiery, political proxy for AI anxiety, economic inequality, overdevelopment and environmental damage; it’s getting worse for him by the week. Jolly has promised a one-year moratorium on new data centers, and his campaign’s ads tell viewers to “Say no to Data Center Donalds.” A July UNF survey found 68 percent of likely Florida voters opposed an AI data center in their own area, with just 28 percent in favor. Donalds has been backpedaling for weeks.
Trump is so far down into the greasy sluice of his mental decline that he can’t backpedal, even for political survival. He’s argued that communities rejecting data centers could end up “backwards and poor,” which is the kind of argument that MAGA influencers would have called elitist if a Democrat said it.
Put that man in front of a microphone in Florida for ninety minutes, and he will say it again, off the cuff, with Donalds standing behind him nodding like a stooge. The ads will have that clip cut, scored, and uploaded before Air Force One wheels up.
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If Trump is going to spend 30 days lighting Byron Donalds’ campaign on fire, the least you can do is not leave your file next to the fire.
Now, back to the trap.
The first Florida “help” is already on the way. The RNC says the Mobile rally is meant to reach voters in Florida’s Panhandle media market too. Enjoy the spillover, Byron.
Please, sir, may I have some more?
My fondest hope is that Trump looks at this schedule and decides it isn’t ambitious enough. I’d love to see him in Maine, where Inside Elections just moved Susan Collins’ race to Toss-up and Democrat Troy Jackson leads in most polling, especially given the recent revelations of Collins’ corruption.
I’d love a week of Trump in the Columbus suburbs talking about tariffs and the glory of the Iran War, followed by swings through Michigan and Texas. I will personally buy the gas for the motorcade, at whatever it costs that day. By all means, Donald, do a Mike Rogers rally in Oakland County, Michigan.
Down-ballot, the Florida and Texas dummymanders are coming due, and the GOP candidates in those redrawn seats will be washing their hair when Trump comes calling.
When you get clever with maps, you slice your safe voters thin to squeeze out an extra seat or two. That works beautifully in a neutral year and collapses into a wave, like some quantum-observational problem.
Florida, Texas, and Ohio carry 87 electoral votes between them. A 2028 Republican nominee who has to spend real money defending any of the three can’t spend it in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, or North Carolina. The governors matter for more than bragging rights, too. In Florida and Texas, the governor appoints the secretary of state who runs elections. In Ohio, the governor sits on the commission that draws the maps.
The maps after the 2030 census get drawn in 2031, by governors elected in 2030. A Democrat who wins in 2026 goes into that cycle as an incumbent with a veto pen. And since Republicans decided in 2025 that redistricting is now a year-round contact sport, any Democratic governor elected this November also stands in the way of the next round of mid-decade map rigging before 2028. In Florida, the legislature’s supermajority can override a veto, but every override costs votes and time, and a Governor Jolly would make them spend both.
ETTD
I wrote a book about this once, and it still holds: Everything Trump Touches Dies. The rally tour will be its living embodiment for GOP candidates this year. He’s going to show up in places where Republicans are fighting for their lives, talk about himself for ninety minutes, remind voters about the gas and the war and the data centers, and leave the candidate to clean up the mess.
These rallies are a poison pill, and the Republicans in real races are going to swallow it anyway, because the alternative is Trump turning on them in public. Byron Donalds will be on that stage grinning like it was his idea.
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Trump is a decaying relic clinging to power, a corrupt old fraud who spent a lifetime scamming, exploiting, and lying his way upward. he’s a hollow, desperate figure staggering through politics like a rotting carcass, dragging a country down with his deceit and incompetence. it’s obscene that someone so morally bankrupt still sits on a throne built from decades of bullshit.
Great piece. I just want to add that I think the Supreme Court is trying to undermine the election because they fear that a Democratic sweep will result in changing the structure of the Supreme Court. That's my feeling after 43 years practicing law in California.