Trump’s Texas rally showed exactly why Republicans are polling badly in the midterms
Por Holly Baxter — – World RSS Feed
Analysis Trump’s Texas rally showed exactly why Republicans are polling badly in the midterms
Trump’s insults and attack lines are getting tired, and he’s started to look delusional as he shouts about masculinity at the podium. The moment when he claimed Melania calls him ‘sir’ was a low point, writes Holly Baxter
Thursday 08 October 2026 15:22 BST
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W hen you’re a Republican president a month out from the midterms and you have to campaign in Texas, you know something’s gone awry. Or at least, you should. But it’s unclear what Donald Trump does and doesn’t know anymore.
At a rally in San Antonio on Wednesday night, the president tossed out the usual insults at James Talarico — the man who polls show might be about to become the first Democrat to win statewide in Texas in over 30 years — and then directly threatened the people who might vote for him. He also told some odd, meandering stories about veganism and his wife Melania, during which he (presumably) mistakenly said that Melania calls him “sir.”
After a long rant intended to attack Talarico’s masculinity — he doesn’t eat manly, manly meat! He’s not as masculine as Trump, a man who wants to kill people by firing squad! He’s a “weak, gutless, self-hating, transgender-promoting freak show”! — Trump added that his wife had corrected him on the pronunciation of vegan (central to his claims about Talarico are that he’s a closeted vegan who only talks about liking ribs to get votes.) “You know, my wife, she told me, ‘Sir, it’s not vay-gan, it’s vee-gan,’” he said. Because of course, someone like Donald is so masculine he wouldn’t even know how to say the word.
Puzzling, indeed, the idea that Melania might call her husband “sir.” And it was a small slip-up in the grand scheme of things — there were some stranger ones in the Oval Office the day before — but it was telling. Because Trump seems to be losing his train of thought halfway through a sentence a lot these days, and the fact that he didn’t seem to realize he’d mashed together an anecdote about his wife and one of his lackeys in the space of a few seconds isn’t encouraging. Then again, perhaps he just likes being called “sir” in all areas of his life.
Trump’s insults used to hit hard, but now they’re getting a little half-baked. His repeated assertions during the rally that Talarico goes behind a tent to throw up after eating barbecue during campaign events were silly and desperate. And even though the “you ain’t man enough” stuff in Texas is a favorite of Republicans, it hasn’t been doing much to move to polls in Republican Ken Paxton’s favor.
open image in galleryWhile the Paxton campaign has been running ads that claim Talarico is “too low-T for Texas” and promoting an old clip of Talarico saying God is non-binary, Talarico’s single-note response — that this is all just a distraction to cover up Republican “corruption” — seems to have been more convincing to Texans. He has shrugged off attacks, called his own past comments “cringey,” and witheringly said that people of his age don’t really worry about having low testosterone. Meanwhile, pretty much every poll — including Fox News — shows Talarico in the lead.
To make matters worse, Trump has been calling for a public debate between Talarico and Paxton. That might be a clever move, if Paxton wasn’t the least charismatic man who’s ever been seen at a podium.
If the rage-baity, chest-beating, Trump rally-style campaigning has run its course in red Texas, this is bad news for MAGA Republicans across the country. And indeed, the San Antonio rally had an unusual amount of protesters, noticeable enough to make Trump stand back from the mic at one point and numerous enough that police escorts had to be called on twelve occasions. That kind of regular interruption really puts a dampener on a rally.
San Antonio is a majority Hispanic city and a working-class city, and these are two intersecting demographics where Trump won big in 2024. But now his support is bottoming out among Hispanic voters, especially working-class ones, driven by concerns about the economy and immigration. Those concerns weren’t going to dissipate by seeing the president stand next to a bunch of flags and make jokes about Talarico barfing barbecue. Who cares about whether your candidate eats “a little bit of lettuce” when your gas prices are through the roof?
Trump’s attack line on the Democrats in general — that there’ll “be a depression” if they get in and they’ll “destroy the economy,” which relies on people entering into his delusion that the economy is doing just fine and attacking Iran was worth it — is also unfathomably weak. And his threatening claim at the San Antonio rally that he will “never forgive you” if you vote for Talarico doesn’t do much to move the needle, either.
Yes, we’ve watched Trump exact petty revenge against people in his social and political circles over the past few years, but what does “never forgiving” Texans even look like for a man in the final two years of his final presidential term? Nothing very consequential, that’s for sure.
open image in gallery
open image in galleryHalfway through Wednesday’s rally, the president also repeated his claim that he will give every American citizen $5,000 if the Republicans hold the House and the Senate after the midterms. He claimed that this is something he can do because the economy is doing so well, but of course, it’s really a tacit admission that people are suffering under untenable cost-of-living conditions right now. It’s also generally a bad look to brazenly offer bribes for votes at the podium. Ethics aside, and whether or not your supporters cheer the idea, it can’t help but make you look weak.
And yet Trump’s plan to personally campaign throughout the country — possibly every day until the midterms, according to what we’ve heard from Susie Wiles — is based on his idea that he is so popular he can turn the numbers around for some Republican candidates who are floundering. He’s told people to imagine it’s him on the ballot when they go vote. And he seems pathologically incapable of considering that that is what people are already imagining, and perhaps why Republicans across the country aren’t polling very well.
When you turn up to try and save the show as the most unpopular member of it, you really need to have something better to say than that you’ve just approved a firing squad execution. Even the most ardent supporter of Second Amendment rights isn’t going to change their vote based on that. You should consider that perhaps the people of Texas don’t care that much about veganism and they don’t actually even care that much about transgender scaremongering.
If you decide to go ahead with all of these because you simply can’t help yourself, then you really, really should at least remember, if you want to keep any of those female voters who quietly broke for you last time, that your wife doesn’t call you “sir”.
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Donald TrumpTexasSan AntonioMelania TrumpKen Paxton
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