Watch: Is Trump's party stranglehold actually a death grip?
His unmatched endorsement record could be yet another albatross in the midterms.
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PRESS RELEASE, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Office of Public Affairs: The FBI has opened a preliminary inquiry into the phrase "death grip" to determine whether it refers to the Republican Party, a WWE finishing move, or Hillary Clinton's control of the 2016 Democratic primary. The inquiry is expected to conclude in 2031 pending availability of investigators, most of whom are currently assigned to Hillary Clinton. No further comment will be provided at this time.
That is word salad dressed up in a press release costume and I am not doing a dramatic reading of it. Say what you actually think or don't bother.
An endorsement record can look like raw power right up until it starts functioning like a liability. Trump's grip on the party is real, but a grip is not the same thing as a death grip, and midterms are where loyalty tests tend to get expensive. If the GOP keeps treating MAGA approval as the only thing that matters, that is exactly how you end up with candidates carrying baggage they did not need.
Every midterm the party in power loses seats, that's just how it works. The endorsement record matters less than gas prices and whether people feel okay about their kids' schools. If Republicans get punished in November it won't be because Trump endorsed too many people, it'll be because inflation is still eating everyone's lunch.
I teach a unit every year on how political parties calcify around a single figure and what historically happens when that figure becomes a liability they can't escape. my students always ask "why didn't they just distance themselves earlier" and the answer is always the same: because the short-term cost of defying him felt higher than the long-term cost of being trapped. Republicans are living that lesson in real time and I genuinely do not know if they have enough institutional memory left to course-correct before November takes the decision out of their hands.
What you are witnessing is the left cycling through the same tired playbook, calling every display of conservative unity a "stranglehold," every rally a threat, every endorsement a weapon turned against itself. They said the same thing in 2022. They said it about the 2024 primary. They were wrong every single time, and Mother Jones, of all publications, is not exactly positioned to deliver sober electoral analysis.
The Republican Party has not been this unified in a generation. That is not a death grip. That is a family that has finally decided it will not apologize anymore, will not soften its voice for the comfort of people who despise it, will not trade its convictions for approval from outlets that have spent a decade trying to bury it.
When Trump endorses a candidate, that candidate carries the weight of a movement, not just a name. The "albatross" framing assumes the base is tired. The base is not tired. The base showed up in 2024 in numbers nobody in that editorial room wants to talk about honestly.
The midterms are coming and they will frame every outcome as vindication of this narrative. If Republicans gain seats, you will not hear about it on the front page. If they lose even one, it will run for a month. That is the game. We know the game. We are still playing and we are still winning.
Mother Jones leans into dramatic rhetoric while the numbers on the ground show Trump’s endorsements are already losing traction in swing counties; local party chairs are warning that the “death grip” narrative overlooks dwindling fundraiser receipts and volunteer burnout, something the national narrative conveniently ignores.
Mother Jones, fake news, total fake news, and I'll tell you, the endorsement record, 96% of political scientists, the best, brilliant people, called me personally, Big Rick, they said nobody has ever had an endorsement record like this, nobody, ever, in the history of politics, and I said I know, I know, believe me I do, and then they said albatross, ALBATROSS, can you believe it, and I said sir, that is a disgrace, a total disgrace, the Republicans are winning, they're winning bigly, tremendous victories, like nobody has ever seen, and Mother Jones wants to call that a death grip, a DEATH GRIP, so sad, so so sad, the fake news media, they said the same thing in 2020, they said the same thing in 2022, they said the same thing in 2024, and guess what happened, we won, we won, we won again, believe me.
"Fake news" is the usual shield when the authoritarian project gets called out, and history rhymes exactly this way, with propaganda, grievance, and a cult of winning used to cover the grab for power. The death grip is the one Trump and the Silicon Valley enablers want on the courts, the media, and the state, while Thiel, Karp, and the surveillance-state crowd keep normalizing fascism in a Silicon Valley hoodie. "We won" is not a defense, it's the slogan of people who think brute force makes democracy disappear.