Former Republican strategist Rick Wilson says Democrats should target Donald Trump in a very different way than they did during his first term if they win back both chambers of Congress in the 2026 midterm elections.
The president “absolutely deserves to be impeached and removed from office, and it’s not going to fucking happen” because Democrats are “still not going to have the votes in the Senate,” Wilson predicted on the latest episode of “The Lincoln Project” podcast.
Watch the full podcast episode on YouTube.
Instead, Wilson proposed a strategy he said would make the White House “more fearful,” “put them through more pain” and “weaken Trump more effectively” than impeachment — describing it as “a better way to torture Donald Trump’s White House.”
Bloomberg via Getty Images
The approach, Wilson argued, could “break the back of the MAGA enabler class in D.C.” and force 2028 GOP presidential hopefuls “to play defense for Trump in a way that’s going to […] put a stink on them politically” ahead of the next election.
Wilson said Democrats should “treat this like a mob prosecution,” starting with investigations into lower-level administration staffers and working their way up the chain.
“You want to start rolling these small ball people up first,” he said. “First off, Trump can’t pick them out of a lineup generally. They can’t afford to pay for their criminal defense. Is this lawfare? Yes. Yes, it is. But they will start to unravel.”
Wilson said he doubted those staffers could count on the White House to protect them. And amid the prospect of Democrats launching investigations, Wilson described the current atmosphere of fear in the White House as “delicious,” “palpable” and “growing by the minute.”
“I’m so here for it and you should be too,” he said. “These people are starting to worry and, yes, they’re going to bluster about executive privilege a lot. Steamroll it, Democrats. Just steamroll it. Start the investigations the minute the polls close and we know we’ve got a majority because all of them need to be held to account.”
The fear is “delicious,” Wilson said. “That fear needs to build. It needs to grow into raging terror.