Good morning. It’s Friday, September 11, 2026. May the memories of those who lost their lives in the attacks of 25 years ago — in the Twin Towers, at the Pentagon, in Shanksville, Pennsylvania — be a blessing.
In this morning’s newsletter, for paid subscribers: I offer my takeaways on this week’s Republican convention and my read on where the party — and the midterms — stand right now.
The most revealing moment of President Trump’s (first) speech to the Republican Party’s midterm convention in Dallas came at about the halfway mark.
“You know, I decided to do this,” Trump said during his 105-minute address on Wednesday. He was referring to the Iran war.
He went on:
We had the best reports that our country has ever had. And I went to [Treasury Secretary] Scott Bessent, I went to [Commerce Secretary] Howard [Lutnick], I went to all our guys, I said, “You know, I’m sorry to do this to you.” We just announced records, our stock market hit records. By the way, our stock market’s much higher today than it was when I first did the attack, just so you know.
But our stock market hit records. We were doing great, and oil was low. I was in Iowa. The oil was at $1.85 a gallon for cars. There was another one, $1.95, but I saw that last one, $1.85. We were doing great. I called them all into the office. I said, “Fellas, I hate to do this to you. We have the best records we’ve ever had, but we have a country that’s two, maybe three weeks away from having a nuclear weapon, and it’s the state sponsor of terror all over the world, considered just about the most evil country. We cannot let them have a nuclear weapon.”
And a couple of them, including Scott, who’s a great financial guy, [said] “Sir, is there any time we could do it later, maybe, sir? You think you could hold off in this a little bit, sir?”
Trump decided not to hold off.
You have to wonder how many vulnerable Republican lawmakers — either those in the room at the American Airlines Center, or the dozens of others who decided to skip the entire confab — sorely wish that Oval Office conversation had gone differently. They must wonder where their prospects might be now had Trump taken the advice of his Cabinet secretaries and declined to attack Iran.
Six and a half months into the war, not only has the conflict sunk into a military quagmire, but it is also a political crisis of Trump’s own making. Gas prices remain mired above $4 per gallon, more than a dollar higher than the national average before the war. U.S. diesel prices hit $6 per gallon this morning, an all-time record that will ricochet across the economy, making it more expensive to transport food and other goods.
These cost increases have made Trump the least popular second-term president at this stage in his term since Richard Nixon, and have suddenly put not just the House, but also the Senate, in play this year, a possibility most Democrats once dismissed, considering the political geography of the cycle. Polling averages now show the opposition party teetering on the edge of the impossible, with Democratic candidates currently ahead in Texas, Ohio, and Alaska, a key trio of Republican-leaning states, as well as in North Carolina and Maine, enough to clinch a Senate majority.
So, naturally, Trump decided that the best thing for his party was a two-day festival with himself firmly at the center.
The rare midterm convention revealed what the Republican Party, or at least those in attendance, are still united around (fealty to Trump, opposition to the Democratic Party’s cultural stances) and what it is divided on (almost everything else).
First and foremost, the party has been riven by the war. Trump mostly shrugged off these concerns in his two speeches at the party event; if anything, he likely exacerbated them, saying that the war — which he once said would be a four-week endeavor — will likely last until after the November elections. According to the Wall Street Journal, White House advisers have privately told Trump that the conflict might last the entirety of his second term.
Then, there are his tariffs (including the latest round in Canada, particularly damaging in Michigan and Maine, two key Senate states). “Tariff is my favorite word in the whole dictionary,” Trump said on Wednesday (not for the first time). Meanwhile, in their own speeches, battleground Republican candidates who addressed the convention steered clear of mentioning the import taxes, just as they ignored the war.
Isolationist or interventionist? Economically populist or fiscally conservative? These divides reveal a GOP — not unlike its competitors — that has been stretched in unsustainable ways. Even the signature proposal of the convention, Trump’s promise of a $5,000 check for every American adult if Republicans keep control of Congress, quickly split a party wrestling with whether to move towards a Reaganesque economic direction or one somewhat closer to the democratic socialism that they spent the convention jeering.
“I am hugely in favor of winning the midterms, and love much about this admin, but am strongly against bread and circus bribes,” billionaire Silicon Valley investor Joe Lonsdale, a top Republican donor who co-hosted a fundraising event at the Dallas convention, wrote on X in response to Trump’s proposal. Republican lawmakers were reportedly blindsided by the idea; many quickly poured cold water on it.
The most surprising moment of the convention was probably the presence (via video) of Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, who praised Trump in a message introducing his home-state colleague, Republican Sen. Dave McCormick. This was a rare example of the GOP using the convention to broaden its tent, rather than just trying to rile up the faithful — but even this pull could come with an equal-and-opposite push. Fetterman’s main point of alignment with the GOP (and the issue he has said he would consider switching parties over) is support for Israel, yet another stance that divides the GOP.
One issue that Trump neglected to mention on either night of the convention was perhaps the one that will be most important in the years to come.