President Trump is set to headline the Republican midterm convention in Dallas next week — an unusual, made-for-TV play to grab the spotlight ahead of the midterms. Fox News contributor Liz Peek joined the network to assess whether the convention can turn Trump voters into midterm voters — and the economic headwinds Republicans are fighting.
Peek called the convention one of Trump’s “great political gestures or inspirations” — a chance to talk directly to the American people at a moment when the mainstream media give him almost no positive coverage. Trump, she argued, wants the midterms to be about himself, because an awful lot of his 2016 and 2024 voters — many of them people who had never voted before — will not show up on Election Day unless his name is on the ballot. Special elections over the past year and a half have proven that, she said. The one poll she calls “really worrisome”: Trump’s likability number has fallen to about 29 percent — a sharp drop from 2024, when moments like serving French fries at McDonald’s and driving a garbage truck made people like him.
The segment also aired Senator John Kennedy’s warning that “the economy is solid, but inflation sucks” — and that voters are angry over the cost of living, the war in Iran, and more. Peek pushed back on the gloom: entrepreneurship and new business formations are at an all-time high, unemployment is extremely low, and the economy is growing. She expects Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to be in Dallas to tell that story. She conceded record-high gas prices over Labor Day weekend are a real problem for the administration, but noted other prices are not higher than they used to be — and pinned the lingering inflation on the Biden administration’s spending spree that pushed prices up more than 9 percent.
The race, she stressed, is very close: the Cook Political Report has House races nearly tied, with Democrats up two, and Democrats up six on the generic ballot. But Democrats are carrying heavy baggage — socialist candidates and anti-Israel protests — and their approval rating is about the same as Trump’s. “We’re going to see which party can get its voters out, and which one can appeal to the broad middle of American politics,” Peek said.
Source: Fox News
