To save the midterms, Trump is recharging the grievance politics that made him president

 https://edition.cnn.com/2026/10/21/politics/trump-midterms-racial-religious-rhetoric

Donald Trump is playing one of his final cards in the midterm election race: fear of an American civilizational collapse.

It’s that White, Christian culture could be destroyed unless his Republican monopoly on Washington power is preserved in the midterm elections.

In one of the most foreboding closing arguments of any of his political campaigns, Trump is flinging racially charged rhetoric; conjuring Islamophobic paranoia; and stirring up false visions of kids being mutilated in mass transgender surgeries without parental consent. He’s also acting as an arbiter of others’ faith and American identify.

At his most vulnerable political moment in nearly six years as president, Trump isn’t responding with compelling, innovative defenses of his record on affordability or foreign policy. He’s intensifying the scorched-earth imagery that made his name and seeking to replenish power by weaponizing painful national divides.