Steve Schmidt takes Trump's Ohio rally apart: "MAGA Won't Survive the Midterms"
The same rally fills the day's episode of Dead Air with Dean Blundell, but the solo commentary drew more viewers in ten hours than his videos usually gather in a full day.
The Warning with Steve SchmidtStory of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 109,824 views a day, 7.7 times a normal first day on this channel (14,312).
MAGA Won't Survive the Midterms | Steve Schmidt
Steve Schmidt has spent the past week on a run of fast starts, and his latest goes to Ohio. In "MAGA Won't Survive the Midterms | Steve Schmidt," the former Republican strategist works through Donald Trump's stump speech in the state. The description calls the speech disgraceful and says the movement has never looked more desperate. It also says Ohio is on the verge of electing its first Democratic governor in 20 years. The last Democrat to win that office was Ted Strickland, in 2006.
Ten hours after it went up, the video had about 66,000 views. A new talk video on The Warning usually ends its whole first day near 14,000. The comment section kept pace: more than 600 people had already written in, well past the roughly 400 a regular upload collects in its first day.
Ohio was the story of Schmidt's day. On Dead Air, the show he records with the Canadian broadcaster Dean Blundell, the two covered the same rally, including Trump's "shove it up" line to the crowd, the nearly 1,400 layoffs at a nearby truck plant, and Pete Hegseth's "State of the Force" address at Quantico. That episode is also doing well, at around 37,000 views. The shorter clips posted the same Monday stayed in the thousands.
Under the solo video, the talk is mostly about the calendar. Commenters count the days to the midterms, and several see Ohio as the test of the whole argument. Others pick up a promised check from the speech and doubt it will ever arrive. This is the second Schmidt commentary in a week to open far ahead of his usual pace, after his video on taxpayer-funded ads, as we reported here.
Published on Trari
Read next
Is this your channel?
Share the story with your audience: in a community post, in your channel's description or on your socials. The text and the badge are ready.
You may use the picture, the badge, and link it to this story.
- Subscribers
- 530,000
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 1,090,529
- Channel views, pace per day
- 129,623 (on a normal day: 148,500)
- Video published
- October 5, 2026
- Video views so far
- 66,449 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 109,824
The numbers
The figures below show how far the Ohio video pulled ahead of a typical first day on The Warning.
💡 Test your knowledge
Steve Schmidt's role in the 2008 McCain campaign was dramatized in HBO's 2012 film Game Change. Which actor played him?
Woody Harrelson played Schmidt in Game Change, opposite Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin and Ed Harris as John McCain.
