The fact that Donald Trump was in Kansas at all said more about a looming electoral disaster facing his Republican party next month than anything contained in his dark and discursive 98-minute stump speech.
On Monday, amid raucous chants of “USA! USA!”, the president held his first campaign rally in Kansas for eight years. No Democrat has won a US Senate seat in this ruby-red state since 1932, the year Herbert Hoover was president, Amelia Earhart was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, and the Nazis became the biggest party in the German Reichstag.
Since then, Republicans in the state have built one of the longest winning streaks in Senate history. However, such is the collapse in public esteem for the president that the upcoming midterms on November 3 could mark the night that a blue wave engulfs the very heart of Trump country.
“You’re really sort of — I hate to say it — you’re sort of tending toward the purple,” the president told about 5,000 supporters gathered in a multipurpose arena outside Wichita, acknowledging that Kansas already operates under a Democratic governor, Laura Kelly. “That’s why I have to be sure that we get this guy.”
The “guy” in question was Roger Marshall, a first-term Republican senator currently facing an unexpectedly fierce challenge from Democrat Adam Hamilton, a Methodist megachurch pastor. Recent opinion polls show the two candidates running neck and neck. Financial disclosures from the third quarter indicate that Hamilton managed an impressive $11m fundraising haul, while Marshall lagged significantly behind, managing just $800,000.
Marshall, 66, is an obstetrician-gynaecologist and former congressman who has proven to be a staunch ally of the president, including by embracing his thoroughly debunked claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. By contrast, Hamilton, 62, founded the 24,000-member Church of the Resurrection, which stands as the largest United Methodist congregation in the country. Hamilton has publicly opposed Trump’s tariff agenda and what he characterizes as the president’s erratic leadership.
Despite Hamilton’s background as a pastor and his history as a former Republican, Marshall insisted on Monday that his opponent was “too woke for Kansas.” Accompanied by the classic chords of Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” as he walked onto the stage, Marshall delivered a sharp warning to the electorate.
“This is a guy that participates in protests against police. He supports drag shows. He tells us to apologise for the colour of our skin. And in a state with more cattle than people, he tells you to stop eating beef,” Marshall said, drawing jeers from the crowd at each point.
Trump, now 80 years old, has been barnstorming the country in what detractors have labeled a “desperation tour” aimed at rescuing Republican candidates from a political hole of his own making. Critics suggest that his heavy-handed involvement might actually be counterproductive, nationalizing races that local candidates would desperately prefer to keep focused on localized, domestic issues.
By aggressively inserting himself into the political landscape of Kansas—at a rally that was notably disrupted by several vocal protesters—Trump has underlined the midterm elections as an explicit referendum on his presidency. The outcome carries the very real potential to strip Republicans of control over both the Senate and the House of Representatives, reversing the sweeping gains they achieved just two years prior.
Farmers across Kansas, a heavily agricultural state, have absorbed heavy blows from the macroeconomic consequences of the Iran war, with the price of diesel climbing to nearly $6 a gallon. Furthermore, the president has alienated local cattle ranchers with proposals to reduce import tariffs in an effort to lower soaring beef prices, alongside aggressive immigration enforcement raids that have caused many agricultural workers to stay home out of fear. Seeking to mitigate the damage, Trump used his Monday appearance to announce a new federal program designed to provide farmers with $8bn in financial support to offset surging diesel costs during the ongoing harvest season.
The upcoming election will serve as a definitive test of whether the old playbooks that powered Trump’s previous presidential campaigns—relying heavily on personal insults, stoking cultural grievances, and pushing falsehoods—can still resonate with an electorate increasingly weary of high living costs, foreign entanglements, and government corruption.
During his speech, Trump launched a blistering tirade against Hamilton, dismissing him as a “radical left lunatic” and a “phoneme who’s pretending to be a moderate.” Trump claimed that the Democrat supports flooding Kansas with refugees who “go around killing people,” alleged that Hamilton used church funds to finance “transgender crap,” asserted that he “openly mocks Jesus,” and claimed that Hamilton believes America is systemically racist.
“He wants you to repent for being born white,” Trump told the roaring crowd.
The president also sought to weaponize recent social upheaval in Europe, pushing the baseless nativist claim that the ongoing violence in France is being spearheaded by immigrants.
“We’re not going to let that happen to this country,” Trump declared. “When you see burning steeples and raging fires in France, just remember that is what the radical Democrats want to do to America.”
Trump further unleashed bitter verbal attacks against three prominent Muslim politicians: Abdul El-Sayed, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib. When Tlaib’s name was mentioned from the stage, members of the audience immediately erupted into chants of “Deport her!” Trump falsely claimed that both El-Sayed and his sister maintain active memberships in the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist opposition group in Egypt, and mockingly warned that if El-Sayed were elected and secured a seat on the Senate intelligence committee, he would leak classified information to the nation’s enemies.
Supporters roared their approval, thrilled by what they interpreted as Trump’s transgressive political daring. The president, who successfully carried Kansas by a 16-percentage-point margin against Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race, demonstrated that he still possesses the undeniable ability to draw a massive crowd in one of the most unexpected battleground states in the country.
Earlier in the day, under warm sunshine, a long line of attendees snaked through the open fields surrounding the arena, showcasing sights that have become intimately familiar over more than a decade of modern American politics: giant Trump flags, folding tables laden with red “Make America Great Again” caps, spangly “DJT” and “Trump the Golden Age” jackets, “Alligator Alcatraz” merchandise, “We are all Charlie Kirk now” sweaters, and T-shirts bearing slogans such as “Stand for the flag, kneel for the cross.”
One woman walked the grounds wearing a sweater emblazoned with the words “0% liberal.” A male attendee sported a T-shirt declaring, “I love Trump because he pisses off all the people I can’t stand.”
For these dedicated supporters, Trump rallies remain deeply galvanizing events and arguably the most effective mechanism for driving out the Republican base. Justin Nelsen, a 44-year-old cybersecurity worker, captured the prevailing mood among the faithful.
“It fires us up, it gets us all excited for the cause and allows us to put out there what we want here as the state of Kansas. That’s why I’m here,” Nelsen said.
Attendees were keenly aware of the very real threat posed by Hamilton’s surging campaign. Brittany Jones, a 33-year-old lawyer wearing a Stars and Stripes sweater while holding a friend’s three-month-old baby, Hannah, under one arm, expressed deep skepticism regarding the Democratic challenger.
“If you know Adam Hamilton at all you know that he’s a problem and a chameleon and good at saying what he thinks people want to hear, even if he doesn’t believe it,” Jones said. “He has shown himself to be not only a turncoat to things that matter to Christians, he has wholly given himself to the local agenda. Even though he claims to be a moderate, there’s nothing moderate about him.”
Jones acknowledged that a Democratic victory in the Senate race would represent a profound political earthquake.
“It’s seismic. It would be sad for most Kansans when they realise what happened, and some people just aren’t thinking through the consequences, but he has a built-in audience of people who are highly motivated,” she said.
Despite her concerns, Jones noted that she largely welcomed Trump’s second term. “Overall I care about the social issues and he’s done a lot to protect girls’ sports, he’s done a lot to protect kids from being put through harmful gender transition procedures. Those things matter to me, they matter to the future of girls all across Kansas and America, and so I’m excited about those things.”
Other attendees remained outwardly confident despite the tight numbers shown in recent polling. Thad Snider, a 42-year-old construction worker who attended the rally alongside his mother while wearing a red MAGA T-shirt, argued that the media was overstating the strength of the Democratic challenger.
“I don’t think Adam’s as strong a candidate as what the media is trying to sell him as,” Snider said, pointing to Hamilton’s history of past political donations to Democrats like Hillary Clinton. “I don’t think it’s going to happen but, if it did happen, it would be very shocking.”
Snider framed the election as a stark choice between two fundamentally opposed political philosophies, describing the Republican party as the “least bad” option available because “at least they’re not socialists or communists.” While he noted that he personally disagreed with foreign military entanglements and wished the administration had taken more aggressive action regarding election integrity, his loyalty to the president remained firm.
“Any time you turn around a battleship, it takes time,” he noted.
That resilient sentiment was echoed by Darrell Claphan, a 72-year-old retired sales worker.
“He’s doing fantastic. He’ll go down in history being the number one president at what he’s done for the country in my lifetime,” Claphan said of the president.
Dismissing the public opinion polls showing a dead-heat race in the traditionally safe state, Claphan added, “Polls have been wrong ever since I’ve been alive.”
Asked how he would personally react if the night resulted in a historic Democratic Senate victory in Kansas, Claphan did not hesitate. “I’d be shocked. But I don’t think it’s going to happen.”
