Instead he threw himself into the midterm election campaign with unprecedented gusto, staking his kingmaker reputation on a slew of controversial candidates in key primary races.
His US Senate picks in open races — mostly anti-abortion hardliners, backers of his election fraud conspiracy theories or out-of-towners with tenuous local ties — have been struggling however.
And with exactly a month to go until Election Day, many Republicans are laying the blame at the gates of Mar-a-Lago.
“Donald Trump is not on any ballot in 2022, but his political future is,” John Hudak, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, wrote in a recent blog post.
Trump’s project to reshape the Republican Party in his image via the midterms will likely “either make Donald Trump an…
