As President-elect Trump begins his second expression in the White House, his days as a member are numbered. However, Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley claims Trump may play a” important” role in supporting GOP candidates in the 2026 congressional elections even though his name is limited and his name will no longer be on the poll. Whatley emphasized in a new interview with Fox News Digital at the RNC office in the world’s capital that” President Trump is going to be a really important part of this because at the end of the day, what we need to do is hold on to the House and hold on to the Senate but that we can accomplish his expression and his agenda.” Republicans won significant victories in the elections of last month, with Trump taking over vice president Kamala Harris to regain control of the Senate and Republicans holding onto their razor-thin majority in the House. VANCE TO LIKELY BE 2028 GOP PRESIDENTIAL FRONT-RUNNER, BUT RNC CHAIR ALSO LIKES PARTY’S ‘ BENCH’ Whatley argued that” as we go forward into this next election cycle, the fundamentals are going to remain the same”. When those candidates are defeated in the 2016 presidential election, he emphasized that we must ensure that we are building our ground games, that we are building our election integrity apparatus, and that we are able to take them all the way to the finish line. The Republican Party in power has historically experienced setbacks in the ensuing midterm elections. And Trump, who was a magnet for voter turnout in this year’s elections, won’t be on the ballot in 2026. Whatley predicted,” Donald Trump will be very active on the campaign trail for Republicans. And because he has the right to run on, his agenda is the one that we’re going to be focusing on. The Harris campaign and the RNC were defeated by the Trump campaign and RNC in the previous cycle, but Whatley is confident that Republicans will be even more competitive in the midterms campaign cash race. He said,” We’re pretty excited about where we are in terms of the fundraising we did throughout this cycle and what we’re going to do next.” Senate Republican Committee Chairman Scott Spills Out HIS 2026 MissionWhatley said in his statement to donors was,” We were successful in putting Donald Trump in the White House, and we need to carry forward with his agenda by keeping these House majorities and Senate majorities.” ” We focused very much on voters with low propensity,” he said. Over the course of this election cycle, we implemented a completely new system. It worked very, very well”, he touted. And looking ahead, he said,” In a midterm election cycle, low propensity voters are going to, again, be very, very important for us. Therefore, we’re going to keep putting a lot of effort into developing that kind of a program.” Whatley highlighted that” we also focused on outreach to communities that the Republican Party has traditionally not reached out to – Black voters, Hispanic voters, and Asian American voters.” In order to compare where those blocs had been in 2016 and 2020, we were able to see such seismic shifts toward Donald Trump. Because we spoke to every single voter in America, we also observed seismic shifts in both young and female voters. Our ground game was very important,” he said in an interview earlier this month. In March, as he clinched the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, Trump named Whatley to succeed Ronna McDaniel as RNC chair. Whatley had previously served as the North Carolina Republican Party’s general counsel and chair of the RNC general counsel. She had been a long-time ally of the former president and a major supporter of Trump’s efforts to win over the election integrity. Paul Steinhauser is a journalist covering politics in New Hampshire.