He asked the country to pretend he is on the ballot. Dallas answered with an arena, a balloon net, and a two-night show where the midterms are the opening act.<\/p>\n
Associated Press reporting carried Tuesday is blunt: as the first-of-their-kind Republican midterm convention opens Wednesday in Dallas, President Donald Trump wants Election Day on Nov. 3<\/strong> to be a referendum on him \u2014 even though he is not on the ballot. He said it out loud at a South Carolina rally: \u201cPretend, please, that I\u2019m on the ballot.\u201d<\/strong> Then: \u201cJust come and vote.\u201d Imagination as turnout strategy. Soft power, if soft power is a dare.<\/p>\n He speaks both nights. JD Vance gets a keynote. The supporting cast includes some of the party\u2019s most vulnerable lawmakers, plus RFK Jr., Trump told Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick the convention would be \u201cvery important,\u201d then added the self-portrait: \u201cAnd I did it. I just came up with the idea.\u201d Control of the program was so tight that for weeks anyone asking for a schedule was told it wasn\u2019t ready because Trump was still choosing.<\/p>\n Here is the cardigan-left spreadsheet. Rick Tyler, a Republican strategist and Trump critic, told AP that if Trump is in the orbit, \u201ceverything gets swallowed up into a black hole.\u201d Tyler\u2019s darker line: Trump can turn out two bases \u2014 his and the Democrats\u2019 \u2014 and when he is not on the ballot, his base \u201cnever shows up.\u201d Networks have not committed to full primetime coverage. The NFL season opens into the same window. Some House members are skipping; others paid the reported $25,000<\/strong> ticket-and-lodging ask.<\/p>\n Scott Bessent, Karoline Leavitt, Donald Trump Jr., Ken Paxton, and Michigan\u2019s Mike Rogers. House Speaker Mike Johnson called the gathering Trump\u2019s idea and promised to \u201cparade our stars across the stage.\u201d The party is selling $16<\/strong> beer cozies that dress the president as a Marlboro Man with \u201cDallas\u201d under the red triangle. Cosplay with a tip jar.<\/p>\n Texas Tribune puts the map under the lights: American Airlines Center, \u201cTrumpapalooza,\u201d and a Texas Senate race that most analysts call a tossup \u2014 Democrat James Talarico against Trump-backed Attorney General Ken Paxton. MAGA Inc.\u2019s nearly $400 million<\/strong> war chest just made its first serious general-election buy: $10 million<\/strong> in Texas ads for Paxton.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dallas hangs balloons for a midterm cosplay candidacy \u2014 Trumpapalooza opens while he asks voters to pretend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":93,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-other-perspectives-family"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/theo-dallas-pretend-ballot.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=92"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94,"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92\/revisions\/94"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/93"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=92"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=92"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetheolowgen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=92"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}