Trump White House aides have started to cast about for a scapegoat to offer the president in the event of bad midterm election losses, as Republicans stare down brutal predictions in key House and Senate races, sources familiar with the matter say.
Republican political operatives say privately that the real blame lies with Trump for starting the Iran war in an election year, causing higher prices across the board and prompting a nationwide voter backlash, the sources say.
“Clearly it's the president's fault,” one operative tells Inner Loop.
But Trump aides also know, for obvious reasons, they cannot say publicly or tell the president behind closed doors that his own policy decisions are at fault as they contemplate losing not just the House majority, but possibly the Senate.
The result has been an unusually early effort to find a scapegoat, and sources say eyes have fallen on deputy chief of staff and political strategist James Blair, who organized the Trump 2024 campaign's turnout strategy and returned to the role for this midterm cycle.
Blair's efforts included a marquee plan for certain states to redraw congressional maps early, which looked likely—though not certain—to yield favorable House seats for Republicans, so long as the coalition that Trump turned out in 2024 came out to support Republicans in 2026.
Even accounting for the Iran war, the redistricting gambit was supposed to bring roughly 10 to 15 pickups for Republicans in the House. After Virginia's top court blocked Democrats from redrawing maps to keep pace in the redistricting battle, wrote on X: “Lord grant me humility.”
But in a remarkable backfire five months later, election forecasters have found that some of the redistricted seats now favor Democrats.
The redrawn map for Florida's 25th congressional district just south of Fort Lauderdale, for instance, is now characterized as "Lean Democrat," and the outlook is so bad that the Congressional Leadership Fund, the House Republican–aligned group, has pulled money out of the race.
Maps that were drawn for Republicans in ruby-red Texas are suddenly also vulnerable, even in seats where the party has incumbents. In Texas' 15th congressional district, GOP candidate Monica De La Cruz's race is now rated a "tossup" by the Cook Political Report.
Blair's allies inside and outside the West Wing say the criticism directed at him is grossly unfair because he could not have foreseen the effects of the Iran war and scandals involving Trump officials undoing his planning.
Blair is also viewed as retaining the confidence of Trump and the White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, and he traveled on Air Force One to two rallies within the past week, suggesting any blame that ultimately comes his way could be just symbolic.
After all, when Blair left the White House earlier this year to run Trump's midterm strategy from the outside, the president announced the move as only temporary and said that Blair would return after the election.
Responding to the reporting in this story, Blair said in a statement, “the President, our partners in the House and Senate, and I remain focused on winning in November. All Republicans should be spending themselves equally in our worthy cause.”
White House spokesperson Davis Ingle added in a statement: “These armchair experts peddling their baseless speculation to WIRED have no idea what they’re talking about. President Trump is laser-focused on maintaining Republican majorities in Congress this November.”
As for Wiles herself, despite reporting that she has been under fire, sources inside Trump's orbit are adamant that if Wiles leaves after the midterms, it will be purely of her own volition.
Trump aides acknowledge that much of the palace intrigue scapegoating is preemptive. Expectations are so low that if Republicans take some wins—like holding on to the Senate—Blair will be “seen as a savior,” one of the sources added.
But they also say that in many ways Blair has perhaps made it too easy for them to single him out. He explicitly owned the House midterm strategy, and now he may be walked to the gallows with that same rope.
This is an edition of Hugo Lowell’s Inner Loop newsletter. Read previous newsletters here.