There possibly can’t be anything more terrifying to a Republican candidate facing brutal electoral headwinds this November than the prospect of President Donald Trump hitting the campaign trail on their behalf.

Just these past few weeks, he’s delivered winning gems like this:

“For you to pay a tiny little bit more for your gasoline, just remember you’re doing that a very evil country … we don’t want to have them have a nuclear weapon,” he said. “Remember that when you have to pay a little bit more, you’re at $4—it’s okay. I mean, it’s—I’m not, I’m not, I’ll never apologize. I did the right thing.”

During the campaign, Trump promised gas below $2 per gallon. Now he won’t apologize for $4, and “it’s okay.”

Of course, it’s okay for him. He doesn’t have to worry about paying for gas.

Consider also his bizarre insistence that Democrats somehow invented the word “affordability” after he took office.

On July 26, at a rally in Marietta, Georgia, he whined:

“First day, first press conference, nice, friendly press con. You know they treat me so nicely. ‘What are you going to do about the prices?’ And they used the word, first time I heard it, it was a word made up by the Democrats, affordability. They said affordability. I said, ‘I’ve been here one day. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.’ And we’re taking care of it. We’re taking good care of it.”

He cried about it again on August 5.

“Our costs are coming way down,” he claimed. “You know, they talk about affordability. I took over the country. The prices were through the roof. In my first day, the press said, ‘What are you going to do about affordability?’ It was a word they devised—affordability. They never used that word before.”

There’s just one problem: “Affordability” was a mainstay of Trump’s own 2024 campaign.

“Starting on Day 1, we will end inflation and make America affordable again,” he said in Montana in August 2024.

See that word? “Affordable.”

Here he was again in Pennsylvania, on Aug. 17, 2024:

“Starting the day I take the oath of office, I will rapidly drive prices down, and we will make America affordable again. We’re going to make it affordable again.”

Not just one “affordable,” but two!

Of course, Trump had heard the word. Democrats didn’t invent it. The press didn’t invent it. And Democrats certainly weren’t eager to make affordability the defining issue of the 2024 election when they were the ones taking the blame for inflation.

Trump made that promise himself—over and over and over again. Americans heard him loud and clear, and too many of them voted for him believing he would deliver on it. Now he wants everyone to forget.

So yes, please, Donnie: Hit the campaign trail. Have your stupid September “convention.” Force Republican candidates to share a stage with a president sporting dismal job approval ratings. Make them sit there while Trump mocks the very idea of “affordability” after campaigning on it relentlessly. Let him tell Americans struggling with their bills that $4 gas is “okay.” And let him do it while defending a war the public hates and that he insists they should be happy to pay more to support.

Republicans have to spend the next three months trying to convince voters that everything is going great. Meanwhile, Trump apparently wants to spend those same three months reminding them that it isn’t.

The more he keeps this up, the more November could look like this:

Markos Moulitsas is founder and editor of the blogging website Daily Kos and author of three books.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos