By Asawin Suebsaeng & Andrew Perez|Zeteo
Photos: YouTube|Wikimedia Commons
DALLAS — The Republican Party’s “Trump-a-palooza” midterm convention in Texas concluded on Thursday night with the president of the United States playing a meme video about how “God gave us” Donald Trump and then leading the crowd in swearing a loyalty pledge to him, adding that they’d “go to Hell” for violating it. The crowd absolutely gobbled up the cultish Dear Leader performance artistry, and the president basked in the glow of a two-day party he threw for himself to feed his mammoth ego, not to aid his party in the high-stakes 2026 midterm elections.
But by nightfall on Thursday, members of Team Trump started feeling the gnaw of reality, rather than the good vibes that Trump and his party were trying to present to the public. After Trump’s Thursday speech wrapped, several administration officials, Trump advisers, and other longtime associates of the president’s – including some who were in Dallas for the GOP convention – privately relayed to Zeteo their concerns that Trump’s Iran war was further spiraling out of control.
Several of the sources said it was a terrible split-screen to have President Trump throwing a two-day, Trump-worshipping bash for himself in Dallas – where he defended launching his failed war in Iran, and dismissed voters’ complaints about higher gas prices – at the same time that the Iranian government and its allies were mounting a startling new level of attacks and operations in the regional war that Trump recklessly started.
“It looks bad, I am willing to admit it,” a Trump adviser told Zeteo late on Thursday.
One Trump administration official said they viewed recent days’ developments as Iran and the Houthis in Yemen launching a “Tet Offensive” on the world economy – the exact kind of assault that the U.S. government has claimed for months that Iran could no longer pull off – with the goal of causing as much economic pain to the Americans and others as they can muster. And right now, the offensive is working, as Americans already know or will soon find out at the gas pump.
The week’s events are the latest phase in a more than six-month-old war that President Trump and his administration claimed would be over quickly, and keep lying that America has already won. Numerous members of Trump’s administration did not want to wage this war, understanding that doing so would likely spell quagmire and disaster for the Americans. However, nearly all of them went along to get along and backed Trump to the hilt, despite their suspicions that they were all committing political suicide. Indeed, the war has thoroughly tanked Trump’s approval ratings, and greatly increased Democrats’ chances of winning both the House and Senate.
As the war has dragged on, Trump has repeatedly tried to save face and get out of it, seesawing wildly between threatening total destruction and genocide against Iran and escalating, and trying to force through peace deals that have quickly collapsed under the weight of Trump’s own incompetence and feral spite.
Since the start of the war, Iran has effectively shuttered the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial, narrow waterway, cutting off the flow of oil and throttling the global economy. Iran has continued to severely limit shipments through the strait, despite the Trump administration imposing a blockade and working to ramp up economic pressure against Iran.
But while gas prices have been uncomfortably high over the past six months, countries have managed, thus far, to stave off a full-blown energy crisis, by relying on oil reserves, shipments through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, and oil routed through Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline.
With less than two months before the U.S. midterm elections, Iran and its allies are working to eliminate these two safety valves.
After the U.S. attacked five Iranian tankers, as part of the administration’s new “tanker for tanker” policy, Iran responded by firing on 10 ships near the Strait of Hormuz and a U.S. airbase in Jordan on Wednesday. The Houthis, meanwhile, seized control of Yemen’s Red Sea Coast and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait on Thursday. And projectiles apparently launched from Iraq on Thursday have now shut down the Saudis’ East-West pipeline.
As this all occurred, President Trump was busy laughing and partying in an arena in Texas at his big, blustering, self-adulating event. Many in the upper crust of Trump’s party and administration simply did not want to put on or attend this convention, viewing it as a potentially counterproductive spectacle in a tough election year. And that was before Iran and its allies spent the convention time trying to set the world economy ablaze.
In response to a request for comment on this reporting, White House spokesperson Allison Schuster immediately replied: “President Trump is the ultimate turnout driver for the MAGA base, and [the] historic, sold-out crowd proved it. While Radical Left Democrats fail the American people with tax hikes, soft-on-crime policies, and defunding of federal law enforcement, hardworking Americans have a champion in President Trump and his commonsense agenda of lower taxes, safer streets, and secure borders.”
The White House did not address our reporting that some of Trump’s own officials and advisers thought it was a very bad idea for the U.S. commander in chief to be on live TV partying the week away, telling people that “God gave us Trump,” as his quagmire in the Middle East deepened.
And as Republicans started to pack up and leave Dallas, many of them put on a confident face for the public, insisting that Trump had revved up their 2026 engine and they could defy the crashing impact of political gravity. But some of their statements still carried a hint of apprehension.
“There is no doubt in my mind that this convention will help Republicans do better than if they had not had this gathering. Still, this race is going to be a nail-biter for Republicans and Democrats,” said Dallas megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress, an outside faith adviser to Trump who also spoke on the Dallas arena stage. “The convention came alive the first night after Trump spoke, and I felt as a speaker that energy carried over through [Thursday].”
On to November.
