Donald Trump is being forced to face a rather brutal political reality. His popularity and approval ratings are reaching new lows, even among his fellow Republicans. This is evidenced by his first big foray into the midterm campaign season. What is pretty obvious from the announced stops on his campaign tour is that few Republicans in close races want their own president to campaign for them. This is actually a common thing to happen to a president whose approval ratings have headed south. Instead of boosting the chances of a candidate from your own party, all of a sudden a presidential appearance at a rally tends to do the opposite. Which seems to be what Trump is now having to cope with.

A few weeks ago, Trump proudly promised to visit every battleground district in the country, to help out Republican candidates. "It's all about 35 races," he said, and "I'm going to go to every one of those 35 places and we're going to see if we can get everyone elected." Since then, he has only made one campaign appearance, in North Carolina. The election is a little under five weeks away. To reach his goal, Trump is going to have to up his game significantly, but the White House just announced his next campaign stops, and half of them don't even qualify, since they're far from being battleground states or districts:

Trump will begin with a visit to Durant, Oklahoma, Thursday evening, followed by a rally in Mobile, Alabama, on Friday. He won Oklahoma by 34 percentage points in 2024 and Alabama by 31 points.

After a Saturday trip to Ohio, which does have a competitive Senate race, Trump will hit Nebraska on Monday, another state he won by a blowout, 21-point margin two years ago.

. . .

Durant is a solid 350 miles, a five-and-a-half-hour drive, from the closest "toss-up" House seat, neighboring Texas' 15th Congressional District, said J. Miles Coleman, an analyst with the University of Virginia's Center for Politics.

Similarly, the closest toss-up seat to Mobile, Alabama, is the 11th District of North Carolina, Coleman said, a good 450 miles to the northeast.

Ohio does have competitive races, for both the Senate and the House. Nebraska's Senate race is somewhat competitive as well, with an Independent taking on a sitting Republican senator. But Oklahoma? Alabama?

More than anything else, this shows the reality that Trump has become a drag on the Republican ticket in many places across the country. If you are a GOP candidate in a close race, you have the choice of having Trump appear in your district and appearing alongside him, having Trump appear but staying away from the rally, or telling the White House scheduling people not to send Trump to your district under any circumstances. Which more than a few of them seem to be doing. The first two choices are really lose-lose for a candidate in a tight race. If you appear with Trump at a rally in your district (or state, for Senate candidates), then you risk losing support among independent voters and disgruntled Republicans. If you choose not to appear, you risk losing support among the diehard MAGA base. Either one probably hurts your chances of being elected (or re-elected).

Trump has been pleading with the voters to "pretend I'm on the ballot." Democrats are actually delighted at this formulation, since it reminds many voters of how unpopular Trump is right now. His approval ratings can only be described as "dismal," with some polls showing disapproval of Trump at twice the level of approval. Having Trump appear at a rally for a House candidate in a tight race just reminds everyone of how unpopular Trump's second term in office has truly been. It might fire up what's left of the faithful GOP base, but that's not going to be enough to win the election.

So Trump is heading out to some of the reddest states out there, where at least he won't tank local candidates' chances. Some Republicans are even now running ads where they openly disagree with Trump, on both the Iran war (and the sky-high gasoline and diesel prices it has caused) and on immigration enforcement. I don't expect any of those candidates to welcome a Trump visit with open arms, to put it mildly.

It was never very believable that Trump was actually going to hold rallies in 35 districts. He just isn't that active anymore. Maybe if he had started back at the beginning of this month when he made that pledge, he might have at least come close to his goal. But he'd almost certainly have to have redefined it to mean any state or district he appeared in, because the GOP candidates in swing races aren't exactly lining up to beg Trump to travel to their home districts.

This isn't unprecedented, of course. Unpopular presidents facing midterm elections that don't look good for their party are commonly shunned by candidates trying to win enough voters to their side. It would be shocking to see Trump being welcomed to Maine by Senator Susan Collins right now, to state the baldly obvious (and she's certainly not the only one).

As for House races, the only real question at this point is how badly Republicans are going to lose. Things are so bad for the Republican Party right now that JD Vance just visited a Texas House district that was specifically redistricted to guarantee a Republican victory. That's a big sign of weakness, obviously. Many Republicans are in a defensive crouch right now, hoping that somehow they will win even with all the political winds blowing against them. Having Trump show up isn't going to help their chances out one bit, and they know it.

What will be interesting is whether the White House gets so desperate to get Trump out on the hustings that they start scheduling appearances where the GOP candidates don't want to see him. Trump rallying for a candidate who refuses to share a stage with him might make Trump feel better, but it's probably not going to help that candidate on Election Day.

My guess is that Trump will just keep to a very light schedule of appearances for the next five weeks. He'll hold some rallies here and there -- probably including a few very red states that aren't even competitive (like Oklahoma and Alabama) -- but nowhere near enough to even get close to his promise of 35 appearances.

Or maybe Trump will manufacture some crisis in an attempt to distract everyone and suddenly "be too busy" to campaign any more. Trump's pretty good at creating crises out of thin air, so it wouldn't surprise me one bit if he did so out of desperation.

One way or another, though, it'll likely to get more and more obvious that Trump just isn't welcome in a lot of battleground districts and states. Republican candidates in tough races will read his approval ratings and when the White House calls up to suggest a presidential visit, most of them will probably respond: "Thanks... but no thanks."

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant