On Tuesday night, Darline Graham, sister of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, revealed somewhat awkwardly that she is entirely unprepared to be a U.S. senator.
At a South Carolina debate, she was asked a perfectly reasonable and straightforward question: “Are Taiwan and the South China Sea national security issues for the United States?” And, “If so, why?”
She sheepishly responded, “I’m just going to be honest here — I’m not on national security. I’m not that informed on national security, but I do support the military.”
That response — admitting there’s an entire and extremely important category of public policy and governing responsibility that she just doesn’t know — would be humiliating for any Senate candidate, but it was worse considering her brother’s personal interest and commitment to it.
It was also another reminder that President Trump, who has lent considerable support to her candidacy, doesn’t care about qualifications, expertise, or even electability when he backs candidates for public office. All that matters is loyalty.
This is not news. Whether it was his ill-fated support of scandal-ridden Senate candidates Herschel Walker and Roy Moore in 2022 and 2017 respectively, or of current scandal-ridden candidates Ken Paxton and Max Miller, Trump has endorsed some truly awful candidates, often betting that his word alone would be enough to push them across the finish line.
Walker and Moore excluded, he’s had a lot of success, to be sure, and in many cases his support was in fact what propelled otherwise lackluster or problematic candidates to victory. But this primary season has seen a mixed bag for Trump, begging the question of whether his golden touch has lost some of its shine — especially as his approval sinks to an abysmal 32%.
A string of recent losses show voters aren’t entirely sold on Trump’s vision for the next two years.
This week, scandal-ridden Rep. Cory Mills lost his primary in Florida, as did Catalina Lauf.
Megan Degenfelder lost her bid for governor in Wyoming, while election-denier Mike Lindell lost his primary for governor in Minnesota by 11 points.
Earlier this month, Trump-backed gubernatorial candidates in Iowa and Georgia also lost, as did his first pick for governor of South Carolina.
Altogether, 10 Trump-endorsed candidates have lost their primaries, which are as many losses as Trump saw in 2018, 2020, and 2024 combined. One more loss and he’ll tie his worst record for endorsements, in 2022.
With the fight over the majority at stake, it seems an odd year to be so capricious and reckless with his influence, but capricious and reckless he’s been.
In Texas, Trump endorsed Paxton, whose 20-year record of scandals, including a felony securities fraud indictment and an impeachment by his own party, baffles the mind when the well-liked incumbent John Cornyn was also on the ballot.
In Ohio, Miller has been accused by his ex-wife and father-in-law, Sen. Bernie Moreno, of spousal and child abuse, and yet Trump has not demanded he step down. The White House even reportedly pressured Ohio Republicans to lay off Miller.
In the hotly-watched races where Trump’s picks have lost, it means Republican primary voters in red states like Iowa, Florida, and Wyoming — in other words, Trump’s base — are either tuning Trump out or proactively voting against his candidates. Both scenarios are bad for Republicans, especially in the cases where his more controversial candidates, like Paxton and Miller, have to run in a general election.
We know Trump’s lost massive support among independents, young voters, Hispanics, and other coalitions from 2024. But if he can’t turn his base out for his candidates as reliably as he once did, well add it to the pile of reasons Democrats feel pretty good about these midterms — and hope he keeps backing all the bad contenders he wants.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.