EXCLUSIVE: President-elect Trump received’t be at the poll within the 2026 midterms, however Republican National Committee chair Michael Whatley says that Trump will play games a “significant” position in supporting GOP applicants.
Republicans loved main victories in utmost time’s elections, with Trump defeating Vice President Kamala Harris to win the White Space, the GOP flipping keep an eye on of the Senate from the Democrats, and keeping directly to their razor-thin majority within the Space.
Whatley argued that “as we go forward into this next election cycle, the fundamentals are going to remain the same” throughout an unique interview with Fox Information Virtual.
“We want to build certain that we’re construction our environment events, that we’re construction our grassland recreation, we’re construction our election integrity equipment to be in park to build certain that after we get the ones applicants thru the ones primaries in ‘26, that we’re going to be in a position to take them all the way to the finish line,” he emphasized.
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Republican Nationwide Committee chair Michael Whatley gavels in and yells the conference to line at the first while of the Republican Nationwide Conference on the Fiserv Discussion board on July 15, 2024 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Pictures)
However the birthday party in energy historically suffers setbacks in please see midterm elections. And Trump, who was once a multi-millionaire for voter turnout, received’t be at the poll in 2026.
Whatley stated that even if he received’t be a candidate, “President Trump is going to be a very significant part of this because at the end of the day, what we need to do is hold on to the House, hold on to the Senate so that we can finish his term and his agenda.”
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And Whatley predicted that “Donald Trump will be very active on the campaign trail for Republicans. And his agenda is the agenda that we’re going to be running on.”

President Donald Trump arrives to talk throughout an election night time tournament on the Palm Seaside Conference Middle on November 6, 2024 in West Palm Seaside, Florida. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Pictures)
The Harris marketing campaign and the Democratic Nationwide Committee outraised the Trump marketing campaign and the RNC this occasion cycle, however Whatley is assured that with the birthday party quickly to keep an eye on the White Space, Republicans will likely be much more aggressive within the marketing campaign money race within the midterms.
“We’re pretty excited about where we are in terms of the fundraising that we did throughout the course of this cycle and what we’re going to do going forward,” he stated.
Whatley stated that his message to donors will likely be “we were successful in putting Donald Trump into the White House, and we need to carry forward with his agenda by keeping these House majorities and Senate majorities.”
He additionally driven again at the power wondering of the RNC and Trump marketing campaign’s grassland recreation efforts throughout the overall election.
“We focused very hard on low propensity voters. This was an entirely new system that we put in place over the course of this election cycle. It worked very, very well,” he touted.
And having a look forward, he stated “in a midterm election cycle, low propensity voters are going to, again, be very, very important for us. So, we’re going to continue to focus on building that type of a program.”
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Whatley spotlighted that ‘we additionally interested in outreach to communities that the Republican Birthday party has historically now not reached out to – Dull citizens, Hispanic citizens, Asian American citizens. That’s why we had been in a position to peer such seismic shifts in opposition to Donald Trump as opposed to the place the ones blocks were in 2016 and 2020. We additionally noticed seismic shifts amongst younger citizens and girls citizens as a result of we had been speaking to each unmarried American voter. Our grassland recreation was once very vital.”
Whatley was interviewed a week after Trump asked him to continue as RNC chair moving forward.
In March, as he clinched the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, Trump named Whatley to succeed Ronna McDaniel as RNC chair. Whatley, a longtime ally of the former president and a major supporter of Trump’s election integrity efforts, had served as RNC general counsel and chair of the North Carolina Republican Party.
Trump is term-limited and won’t be able to seek election again in 2028. Vice President-elect Sen. JD Vance will likely be considered the front-runner for the 2028 GOP nomination.

Vice President-elect Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio (left) and President-elect Donald Trump during an election night event at the Palm Beach Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Fla., US, on Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024. (Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
But asked if the RNC will hold to its traditional role of staying neutral in an open and contested presidential primary, Whatley said “we can.”
And he added that “I’m very desirous about the bench that we have got within the Republican Birthday party presently. You take into accounts all of the Republican governors, you take into accounts all of the Republican senators, the contributors of the Space that we have got, the leaders around the nation which have been i’m busy on this marketing campaign are taking to be a part of the president’s cupboard.”
Whatley argued that the president-elect’s “The united states First motion is greater than Donald Trump. He’s the top of the spear. He’s the leading edge of this motion. However. This can be a very weighty motion presently.”
The chairman also emphasized that “Donald Trump has utterly remade the Republican Birthday party. We’re now the working-class birthday party. We’re now a birthday party this is speaking and dealing with each unmarried voter, chatting with each unmarried voter in regards to the problems that they serve about. So, as we proceed into 2028, we’re in a stunning place in an effort to proceed the momentum of this time table and this motion.”

The sign outside the New Hampshire capitol in Concord honors the state’s cherished century-old tradition of holding the nation’s first presidential primary in the race for the White House. (Fox News )
Unlike the DNC, which in the 2024 cycle upended the traditional presidential nominating calendar, the RNC made no major changes to their primary lineup, and kept the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary as their first two contests.
Asked about the 2028 calendar, Whatley said “I’ve now not had any conversations with any one who desires to modify the calendar on our facet. I do know the Democrats did throughout the process this election cycle, now not certain that it truly helped all of them that a lot.”
“We’re very happy with the calendar as it’s. However as we go in opposition to 2028, we’ll have the ones conversations,” he added.