DALLAS — President Donald Trump wants to make one thing clear: His name is not on the ballot in November, but his supporters need to vote like it is.
Republicans from across the country convened here Wednesday for their party’s first midterm convention, an event designed to put Trump front and center in the closing stages of the midterm election cycle.
“Pretend that I am on the ballot,” Trump said to loud cheers during his keynote address Wednesday night. “I’m on the ballot.”
Indeed, Trump was the star of the show. Speakers mentioned his name 155 times, and Trump invoked his own name 16 times, bringing the total mentions to 171. The only other word mentioned more was variations of “America.”
Trump’s approval ratings are at an all-time low, and the party is worried about MAGA voters not turning out in large numbers — historically a problem for Republicans when Trump is not running.
Trump tried to energize his base with a speech that was a hallmark of his presidential campaign — lengthy, winding and full of insults directed at his opponents.
Trump leaned into the headwinds his party faces, walking the audience through the long-running political dynamic that the party that controls the White House generally struggles during midterms.
“The midterms are not supposed to be won by the sitting president,” he said. “We are going to change that.”
For much of the first day of the convention, the crowd at American Airlines Center was sparse. Before Trump took the stage, however, the lower sections filled up, and there was noticeably more energy for his speech. The upper sections, however, remained largely empty.
Outside of persuading Republicans to vote during the midterms, much of Trump’s speech focused on issues that he regularly talks about at political rallies; he repeatedly mentioned closing the southern border, tax cuts and boosting domestic energy production.
“I gave you the biggest tax decreases in the history of our country,” Trump said to loud cheers. “We will have American energy independence. ... We will have energy dominance.”
Trump also promised that his administration would hand out $5,000 dividend checks to Americans if Republicans hold on to Congress.
“If Republicans win both the House and the Senate, because of our tremendous economic success, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States for $5,000,” he said, adding that the money would have to be spent in the U.S.
Trump did not specify where the money would come from or how he would enforce where it was spent.
Trump has floated similar proposals in the past that went unfulfilled.
Shortly after he returned to office, Trump said the so-called Department of Government Efficiency — which was led by billionaire Elon Musk and created chaos and job losses in the federal government — would pass its savings on to the public. Those checks never materialized.
He also floated giving Americans dividends from tariff revenue, which also has not happened.
NBC News reached out to the White House about where the administration would get the roughly $1.35 trillion Trump’s idea would cost — or how the requirement to spend it in the U.S. would be enforced.
The backdrop of the convention is an election cycle in which Republicans are trying to hold on to slim majorities in both the House and the Senate. Democrats have been optimistic that they can retake the House, and the next Senate majority will run through a handful of key states that have been flooded with money from both parties.
This week, a Trump-aligned super PAC spent nearly $50 million on ad buys in seven Senate races. The largest chunk, $14 million, went to back Republican former Rep. Mike Rogers, who is running in Michigan’s Senate race against Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, a young, progressive, Muslim candidate whom Republicans nationally have cast as a villain in their effort to paint Democratic candidates across the country as too far to the left.
“Mike Rogers, your candidate over there, is a wonderful man,” Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, said in his speech Wednesday night. “But he faces a dangerous, radical and weird Abdul El-Sayed.”
The comment drew the largest round of boos from the crowd in the early evening part of the event.
The Trump-aligned super PAC ad buy also included $12 million in Ohio, where Republican Sen. Jon Husted is running against Democratic former Sen. Sherrod Brown.
Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., said he thinks Republicans will hold the Senate but acknowledged that in states like Georgia, where Republican Rep. Mike Collins is trying to oust well-funded Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, the party faces some challenges.
“Mike Collins doesn’t have as much money, so it makes it harder,” Scott said. “It’s hard beating incumbents.”
Texas, the host state for the convention, also features a competitive race with scandal-plagued Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton running against Democratic state Rep. James Talarico.
Trump called Paxton the “greatest” attorney general in Texas history and urged people to make sure he gets elected — but not before he joked about how Paxton talks and dresses.
“You may not like the way he looks, but in the history of Texas, he is the single greatest attorney general you have ever had,” Trump said.
Trump also spent a chunk of time going after Talarico, claiming he is against eating meat — which Talarico has denied — and calling him “weird-looking.”
Trump said roughly 35 seats in both the House and the Senate are considered toss-ups, and he pledged to hold events in all of those races.
“The ones that are very close, they might be winning by a little or losing by a little or tied,” Trump said. “I am going to go to every one of those states.”
As the convention opened, floor operations staff members circulated placards for people to wave with the names of candidates who took the stage, bringing a broader purpose to an event designed mainly around Trump. When Texas congressional candidate Carlos De La Cruz and his sister, U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz, spoke, delegates from all states waved the signs bearing their names.
“We’re here to promote our party, and this brings attention to it,” said Charles Pritchard, an Arkansas delegate who sat alone in a largely empty last row during the program’s first hour. “You’re from NBC. You might not be here otherwise.”
Rachel Ruffer, an Ohio delegate, looked on the bright side of low attendance.
“It’s a smaller crowd, so it’s actually very nice and easy to get around and everything,” she said.
Some state Republican parties across the country grumbled about the hastily planned midterm convention, as NBC News reported last week. One of the biggest concerns was that it comes so close to Election Day, which forces candidates who want to attend to take precious time away from the campaign trail.
Several House members in competitive races are skipping the event to focus on their campaigns.
Organizers, though, said the timing was intentional, because so-called low-propensity voters, who do not regularly vote in midterm elections, really begin paying close attention to campaigns only after Labor Day.
Concerns also linger about Trump’s historically low approval ratings and whether it helps or hurts the party to make him the focus of its midterm strategy. The Iran war, now over six months old, remains highly unpopular, and the Trump administration has struggled to bring down rising costs, including an increase in the price of fuel that is directly related to the war.
“I’m kind of glad Trump is going against an NFL game,” said a Republican strategist in attendance, referring to the fact that the start of the midterm convention coincides with the start of the professional football season. “It means fewer people will be watching.”
Jack Etheridge, an alternate delegate from Ohio, acknowledged “challenges” in Trump’s second term but rated his performance highly overall.
“What I’m seeing is that President Trump is working in the toughest job in the world right now,” Etheridge said as he charged his phone in the arena’s concourse. “I’ve made some mistakes in my life, so I have to be careful about saying, ‘Well, he should have done this, should have done that.’ I feel like he’s rising to the occasion. You know, he’s indefatigable.”
The mood on the main stage was heavily positive, focusing on Trump’s first two years in office, as speakers said he has drastically reduced the flow of undocumented people through the southern border and touted his biggest legislative achievement, the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill, which included removing taxes on tips and Social Security. Those policies have become mainstays in Republicans’ midterm messaging. Democrats have regularly pointed out that the bill disproportionately benefited wealthy Americans.
The scaled-down convention did include traditional parties and political fundraisers, many of which dotted downtown Dallas on Tuesday evening. An event at the downtown eatery The Rustic was one of the main events, featuring a handful of Trump political aides, including Chris LaCivita, and Rep. Byron Donalds, the Trump-backed Florida gubernatorial candidate, hosted an event at the House of Blues.
Among the speakers at that event was Collins, the Georgia Senate candidate, who joked with the audience that he wanted to say “Go Dawgs,” a reference to the University of Georgia football team, a top rival of the University of Florida.
One day later on the convention’s main stage, Trump made sure that the reason for the unprecedented midterm GOP convention was crystal clear.
“When I’m on the ticket, Republicans always do very well,” he said. “We won it big, and we also won everything else.”
