The Midterms Are Being Sold Before They're Voted

The doctored post that wouldn't die

It arrived in feeds just as Donald Trump was moving from rally to rally ahead of the November 2026 midterms. A screenshot of Truth Social showed the president thanking Elon Musk for making every Republican vote count as three votes. The yellow-highlighted line read: THANKS TO THE GREAT ELON MUSK EVERY REPUBLICAN VOTE COUNTS AS 3 VOTES. The image spread while Trump was drumming up support for Republican candidates nationwide.

Snopes traced the picture back to a real post. On Oct. 3, 2026, Trump had written on Truth Social: Republicans must WIN the 2026 Midterm Elections, and we must use every appropriate tool — Whether you vote early, absentee, by mail, or in-person, we must “swamp” the Radical Left Dumocrats with massive turnout! SO IMPORTANT — PLEASE GET OUT AND VOTE. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! The fake version inserted a Musk thank-you after the swamp line and garbled Dumocrats into Dummods. An archive search of Trump’s Truth posts showed no evidence of a Musk thank-you. The claim was rated fake.

The episode is instructive because it is so clean. A doctored Truth Social post, a familiar rally rhythm, a familiar villain, and a claim that feels plausible to anyone already primed to hear that the system is rigged. The post is a product, not a policy, and it travels faster than a correction.

Ads that rewrite what Democrats voted for

In congressional races around the country Democrats are being hit with political ads that say they oppose popular tax cuts for tips, overtime and Social Security. The ads point to Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law by President Donald Trump on July 4, 2025, which cut though did not completely eliminate taxes on tips, overtime pay and Social Security through 2028.

FactCheck.org found that not a single Democrat in either chamber voted for the OBBBA. Many of the candidates facing the attacks say they support the specific tip, overtime and Social Security provisions and some have said they would work to make them permanent. Opposition, they say, was to the overall shape of the bill — tax cuts skewed to the wealthy and cuts to Medicaid and federal food benefits.

Then Vice President Kamala Harris said in August 2024 she supported eliminating taxes on tips for hospitality and service workers. The No Tax on Tips legislation folded into the OBBBA enjoyed bipartisan support and passed the Senate 100-0. Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego called the no tax on tips provision in the OBBBA “shamefully short term.” Democrats have also proposed legislation that would permanently eliminate federal taxes on Social Security and pay for it by expanding the Social Security payroll tax to earnings above $250,000 a year.

In Texas, an ad from Republican Ken Paxton’s campaign claims his Democratic opponent, James Talarico, “backs higher taxes on working families, $3,000 a year. Taxes on your tips, your overtime, even Social Security.” Talarico was not in Congress when the OBBBA passed in July 2025. He opposed it, saying its tax cuts disproportionately benefited billionaires. In a campaign event in Arlington in August he said, “It’s time to repeal the big ugly bill’s tax breaks for the top 1% and give that $1 trillion to the middle class in the form of a cost of living tax cut.” The ad’s footnotes reference a Tax Foundation estimate that taxpayers would see a nearly $2,300 average tax cut due to the OBBBA in 2026. The ad assumes Talarico opposes all of the tax cuts in the OBBBA. He does not.

The messaging works because it isolates a popular provision and reframes opposition to the whole bill as opposition to the provision. Voters hear “higher taxes on tips” and stop listening.

Taxpayer-funded commercials in the final stretch

The White House has defended three taxpayer-funded advertisements featuring President Donald Trump by comparing them to ads paid for by past administrations. Legal experts say the commercials are political messages intended to influence the 2026 midterms and may violate U.S. laws, including a prohibition against using federal funds for propaganda.

In a Sept. 25 press release the White House described the spots as “public service announcements.” It said the announcements are very clearly not campaign ads; President Trump is not on the ballot and there is no call to action. Instead, the announcements are a reminder for Americans to love their country and know why it’s worth defending — at home, at the border, and abroad. The release cited examples from the George W. Bush, Obama and Biden administrations.

Richard Painter, a corporate law professor and former White House ethics lawyer for George W. Bush, told FactCheck.org, “I just think you’re not going to find any comparison at all.” He said the Trump White House ads are “so clearly propaganda.” John G. Geer, a professor of political science at Vanderbilt University, said his perception is that the Trump White House ads are more political. He said, “We’ll see what the courts say,” if a lawsuit brings the matter to the judiciary.

The first message to air includes images of Trump saying, “Together we will defeat communism, socialism, and Marxism in America. America will never be a communist country.” Viewers repeatedly hear the words “love me,” lyrics from a JMSN song. Near the end, Dana White, UFC CEO, compliments Trump and talks about him “fighting so hard for the country he loves.”

The third ad, in black and white, shows Trump walking and staring into the camera as he says in a voiceover, “we will demolish the deep state,” “expel the warmongers from our government,” “drive out the globalists,” and “cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists.” The ad ends with: “We will rout the fake news media, and we will liberate America from these villains once and for all.” The video is almost identical to an ad from Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.

The second ad, a minute long, features video and audio from Trump’s July 3 speech from a site near Mount Rushmore, as the president says, “We are the freest people on Earth, and by the grace of God, the United States of America is the most successful, most accomplished, most exceptional nation ever to exist in human history.” The ad ends with him saying, “This is only the beginning of the golden age of America.”

All three ads were released on or after Sept. 23 and include a “Paid for by the U.S. Government” disclaimer. They have aired on broadcast and streaming platforms, including during Sunday political talk shows and college and NFL football games.

In a Sept. 28 piece in the Contrarian, Painter and three other ethics experts wrote, “These videos are not ‘public service announcements’ as the White House claims. They are clear attempts to boost Republicans’ chances in the impending midterm elections given their sagging poll numbers. The timing, content, and format of the videos all suggest they are covert attempts directed at the success of the Republican party.”

The White House said “Trump is not on the ballot” this November, but the president has told wavering Republican voters to pretend he is. Two of the ads highlight references to defeating communism or communists, which is what Trump regularly calls democratic socialists running for Congress.

Ranchers, doubt, and the stories they tell themselves

In Nebraska the midterms feel less like a slogan and more like a bill. Yvette Mannon bought her ranch in 2002. In April a wildfire destroyed 1,600 grazing acres and 13 miles of fence. Steel prices were at their highest levels in years, heavily affected by tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump, and she spent $4.89 a foot, for a total exceeding $300,000. Diesel prices, spiking due to the Iran War, were up more than 40% from the previous year. Then in August the Trump administration announced it would import 300,000 metric tons of duty-free foreign beef to lower consumer prices. The news hit right before the September-November window when most U.S. calves are weaned and sold. The cattle market tanked immediately.

“I just felt like a betrayal,” Mannon said. She voted for Trump. “So we’re ‘Buy American,’ ‘Let’s Make America Great,’” she said. “But for you guys over here, sorry.”

Many farmers and ranchers across the U.S. say they are being hit from all sides. Drought has affected crops and cattle herds are historically low. Government policies have added to the strain. That has left some in Nebraska, which overwhelmingly backed President Trump during the last election, reassessing their political allegiances. Dan Osborn, an independent candidate running against Trump-backed Republican Pete Ricketts, is performing surprisingly well in polls ahead of November’s Senate race.

The Iran War has sent diesel and fertiliser prices skyrocketing. Tariffs have affected machinery costs and repairs, as well as steel and lumber prices. Decisions by the Trump administration — whether importing foreign beef or opening the southern border to Mexican cattle — have sent already-volatile markets into overdrive. Many producers are losing hundreds of dollars per head.

Jake Wolfinger, 45, runs a feedlot near Lexington, Nebraska. He and his wife bought a dilapidated feedlot in 2010 and turned it into an operation with 5,500 cattle. “Things were just chumming along pretty good,” he said, selling cattle for $240 per hundredweight — but that’s dropped to $225. That may not seem like much, but it means a loss of potentially hundreds of dollars a head. He is also contending with sky-high diesel costs, with some equipment going through 400-gallon tanks a day. “It really makes a guy think,” he said.

A Trump supporter, Wolfinger said he voted for the president because “we needed his spirit in this country.” He expressed frustration with what he called “woke DEI” policies on the left. But he is unhappy with the way the president has intervened in the beef market. “People need to stay the hell out of farmers’ business, because it’s harvest time,” Wolfinger said.

Forty miles northwest, near Callaway, Duane Kimball stands in his shed surrounded by machinery and a huge Trump banner. “The daily upcharge… is kind of painful,” he said. “I know a lot of people have had to go back to their banks and increase their lines of credit.” Kimball believed the Iran War would have ended long ago. He does not blame Trump for all his economic challenges. “To pin that on this administration, I don’t think is a fair assessment,” he said.

Testing the machines while the narrative fractures

Midterm election season culminates on Election Day, but voting is already underway in many states. For local officials who run elections, the work started even earlier.

In Davis County, Utah, workers run stacks of pre-marked test ballots through machines. Some are marked wrong on purpose. It’s called logic and accuracy testing, and it confirms the machines count ballots correctly and catch errors like a voter picking too many candidates. Utah votes mostly by mail. Every envelope carries its own bar code. If a voter needs a replacement ballot, the old code is canceled. Return ballots are picked up by at least two election workers, logged and brought in under around-the-clock video surveillance. Each envelope is scanned, date-stamped and photographed. Workers compare the signature to as many as five on file before a machine even opens the envelope.

Nothing is wireless. Nothing is Web-based. It’s all physical, manual process to transfer data from one place to another. The county clerk, elected in 2022, says the job has gotten a lot more public. This year that focus included a fight in Washington over voting by mail, which President Trump has tried to curtail. At his direction, the United States Postal Service announced new rules to regulate mail ballots before the Supreme Court stepped in last month to block it. Uncertainty had his team drawing up backup plans. He says the big risk is always change that comes too close to an election.

In Bartow County, Georgia, election supervisor Joseph Kirk is readying machines that will go out to polling places. He says the bigger danger may not be someone changing votes. “There are so many ways to cast doubt on the election through that process, and I think that’s the true danger. I don’t know that anybody is going to try to, like, hack the voting system and change the votes. But they might try to convince people it’s not worth voting, that there’s no need to participate, it’s just a show game.”

Kirk says some of the federal help his office once relied on has all but evaporated since the Trump administration scaled back the agency that oversees election security. “Maybe the easiest way to describe the need is, it takes a nation-state to fight a nation-state. I have a great I.T. director, but he can’t fight China or any other country, and he shouldn’t be expected to.”

Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan says Democrats must “win by massive numbers” during November’s federal midterm elections because Donald Trump and his Republican allies are bound to try to sow doubt about the integrity of the results. Trump has long baselessly maintained that the 2020 presidential election he lost was stolen by fraudsters. He also gave a primetime speech in July in which he made unverified claims about Chinese interference in the election, and he fired members of an independent federal election commission. When asked whether the president might declare a national security emergency pertaining to elections for the midterms, Trump replied, “Let me just say, stranger things have happened, OK?”

On NBC’s Meet the Press, El-Sayed said, “Donald Trump has already threatened to do what he did in 2020, which is deny the outcomes of an election. So, yes, we have to win by massive numbers.”

In Pennsylvania, Trump has openly encouraged Democratic Sen. John Fetterman to switch parties. “I’d love to see him as a Republican,” the president told reporters at Joint Base Andrews. “He does better as a Republican than he does as a Democrat.” Fetterman has repeatedly rejected the notion of becoming a Republican, writing in the Washington Post in May that he would be a “terrible Republican who still votes overwhelmingly with Democrats.” In September he recorded a video for the Republican midterm convention praising fellow Pennsylvania senator Republican Dave McCormick, suggesting there were extremists in his party.

The midterms are being sold in ads, in doctored posts, in taxpayer-funded spots, and in the stories voters tell themselves about whether the count will be believed. The machines are being tested. The narratives are being weaponized. Both will arrive on the same November night.