If you want to know why Republicans are (probably) about to get trounced in the midterms, look no further than the increasingly strange relationship between President Donald Trump and the various factions of voters who put him in office. The Trump coalition, like any political coalition, always had internal tensions; satisfying everyone was never going to be simple. But on issue after issue, Trump has gone to surprising — and in many cases, difficult to explain — lengths to infuriate his backers.
The Iran war was the biggest betrayal. This stunning non-sequitur alienated no less a prominent MAGA figure than Tucker Carlson — and was a thumb in the eye of the America First voters who assumed Trump would be the president to end the “forever wars,” not start a new one. The political fallout has been so toxic that two Republicans in close U.S. Senate races are urging the administration to stop the fighting.
The war, coupled with Trump’s affinity for tariffs, has created a scenario that now risks another integral part of his coalition: farmers. The full scope of their alienation won’t be known until November, when we see whether Democrats can win Senate seats in Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas. But it’s entirely possible that these heartland states — once considered safely red — will vote blue this year.
Meanwhile, Trump has been working overtime to offend Hispanic voters, many of whom only recently joined his coalition. For years, Republicans tried in vain to woo this group. Then, Trump miraculously made strides in 2024, winning 43% of the Hispanic vote. Now, by a margin of 78%-15%, Hispanic voters want Democrats to win the midterms. As Ron Burgundy might say, that escalated quickly.
One Hispanic Republican member of Congress is so worried that she has done the unthinkable: Criticize Trump. I’m talking about Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-Florida), who, in a straight-to-camera video released this month, said: “Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far. … The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.” (It’s worth asking whether Salazar should have seen this coming — did she miss the audience holding “MASS DEPORTATION NOW!” signs at the 2024 Republican convention? — but I digress.)
Next there is a collection of Trump voters who might uncharitably be called conspiracy theorists. In recent years, Trump has had a virtual monopoly on this bloc, but that wasn’t always the case. (Recall that RFK Jr., used to be a Democrat.) Since retaking office, Trump’s curious refusal to release the full Epstein files and his adamant support for data centers and AI have combined to redirect some of the paranoia concerning “elites” who run the “swamp” in the direction of the guy who, you know, lives in the White House.
That brings us to the alienation of many young voters who helped fuel Trump’s 2024 victory against Kamala Harris. As Newsweek summarized the current situation: “Polls from The New York Times, YouGov and Fox News show that Democrats are winning Gen Z voters by a much larger margin in the 2026 midterms, with the Times poll giving Democrats a 35-point lead among Gen Z voters.”
A rough job market for those entering the workforce is, no doubt, a contributing factor, but you also can’t discount the fact that so many podcast bros and “manosphere” comedians who helped persuade young men to vote for Trump — people like Joe Rogan, Andrew Schulz, Shane Gillis and Theo Von — have been bailing on the president.
Their slow turn started in the summer of 2025, when the Epstein files scandal became a major story. Schulz argued at the time that the Trump administration was “insulting our intelligence” on the issue while Gillis sarcastically said the Epstein trove “probably deleted itself, right?”
For his part, Rogan was no fan of Trump’s ICE raids. “It scares the shit out of me,” Rogan said this past June, “when you have a justification for militarized police with masks on that are just grabbing people.”
Nor did he, or Theo Von, like the Iran war. “I’m confused,” Rogan told Von in April. “I can’t believe we went to this war.” “It’s like, just fucking stop it,” Von told Rogan about Israeli attacks on Lebanon.
Last month, Rogan and Gillis publicly embraced free health care. And recently, during an interview with comedian Ron White, Rogan referred to Trump supporters as “nuts” and “rabid.”
Trump, Schulz declared in July 2025, is “doing the exact opposite of everything I voted for.” A lot of people these days would probably say the same. When you look at the sheer sweep of the constituencies that Trump has alienated, it’s all kind of remarkable. Some of these groups (Hispanic voters, for example) had long eluded Republican politicians, who spent decades pandering to them in vain. Trump was the one who finally won them over. And now — through a series of crazy decisions, all of which were essentially “wars” of choice — he’s on the verge of dismantling the whole thing.
Why Trump would so thoroughly sabotage his own governing coalition remains a mystery. Is he oblivious to what he’s done? Is he actually contemptuous of his own voters? Is he trying to prove his supporters are loyal to him as an individual, irrespective of his policies? Is he getting terrible strategic advice? Is this all deliberate, or the accidental result of a capricious mad king who doesn’t think through any consequences, preferring instead to act based on his gut and the advice of whomever he spoke to last?
Historians (and psychologists) will probably spend years trying to unravel these questions. But regardless of Trump’s motives, it’s safe to say that a normal and sane politician would have never let this winning coalition evaporate so quickly. A normal politician would have worked day and night to keep everyone on board and happy. Then again, a normal politician also couldn’t have attracted all these groups in the first place. Buy the ticket, take the ride.
Matt K. Lewis is a Washington Sun Perspectives columnist.
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