David Axelrod Says Trump’s Approach to Midterms ‘Hasn’t Worked in a Thousand Years’ 

Democratic strategist David Axelrod used a bit of hyperbole on Thursday to emphasize that the kind of approach that President Donald Trump is taking regarding November’s midterms virtually never works.

Axelrod was reacting to Trump’s remarks to Michael Cohen, the president’s former fixer who ultimately turned against him. Cohen was convicted of several felonies and was sentenced to three years in prison, but was released early in 2020.

The two have seemingly reconciled despite Cohen testifying against Trump in the 2024 New York hush money case, where Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal payments. (Cohen now says he “felt coerced” to testify.) During the interview, Trump predicted that despite all available polling to the contrary, Democrats will “be wiped out” in the midterms.

“You have lunatics that would destroy the country,” Trump said in the interview on WABC-AM in New York, which aired on Thursday. “And they’re being put in the democrat party. I think they’ll be wiped out in the election because the people are too smart to allow that to happen. It’s never worked in a thousand years. That stuff has never worked and it’s not going to work now.”

Shortly after the interview, CNN’s Kate Bolduan aired those comments and asked Sarah Matthews, Trump’s former deputy press secretary

“Do you think Trump is right to have this kind of optimism?” Bolduan asked.

“No, he definitely shouldn’t have this type of optimism,” Matthews replied. “I think that when you don’t have any accomplishments to tout or to run on, you have to fear-monger. And that is exactly what Trump and Republicans are going to do and we’ve already seen them do in the lead-up to the midterm elections. They’re out there talking about communism and this threat that Democrats are going to ruin America as you know it. And the thing is that voters, I don’t think, are going to be buying it. I think that they gave Trump a chance in 2024 because they thought that he was going to bring prices down and get a handle on the economy. And guess what? That hasn’t happened.”

Later, Axelrod said Trump’s attempt to make the midterms a referendum on Democrats instead will likely fail:

The president says, “not in a thousand years,” whatever he said has gone on. You know what hasn’t worked in a thousand years? Presidents trying to make the midterm elections about something other than themselves.

Only twice since World War II has a party won seats when an incumbent party in the White House. [In] those two, the president was very popular. This president’s very unpopular. I mean, he’s spinning, but he’s spinning against the history and the reality of what midterm elections are all about.

The only two midterm years in which the incumbent president’s party gained seats in the House after World War II were 1998 and 2002.

Watch above via CNN.

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