The Trump Agenda and the 54 Days Left: Jim Pfaff Live from the RNC Midterm Convention | Sep 9, 2026
Published: September 9, 2026
Network: TCC Live — RNC Midterm Convention coverage, Dallas
Analysis: Conservative Caucus President Jim Pfaff
The chairman of the party had just come off the stage in Dallas when Jim Pfaff opened The Conservative Caucus coverage of day one of the RNC Midterm Convention on September 9, 2026. He was watching the floor from the TCC media suite, and his first reading was about energy: if that kind of energy is going to be part of what this event is about, he said, he thinks you can really see some positive beginnings going into the next 54 days until the election. The rest of the segment was the case he wants made from that stage — the Trump agenda record item by item, the betting markets that have already written Republicans off, the enthusiasm numbers running against the party, and the one weak link he has been naming for nearly two years. This was the opening commentary of TCC’s live convention broadcast, and it set the frame for the coverage that followed.
Topics Covered
- Polymarket, Kalshi, and the Odds Against the House
- The Trump Agenda Record: Immigration, Inflation, Crime
- Why Pfaff Can Broadcast This at All
- Congress Is the Weak Part of the Trump Agenda
- 57 to 53: The Enthusiasm Gap and the Democrat Collapse
- What to Watch: The Keynote and TCC’s Live Coverage
- Key Takeaways
Polymarket, Kalshi, and the Odds Against the House
Pfaff started with the number everyone in the hall was working against. The prediction markets have priced this election, and they have priced it against Republicans.
“If you look at the betting sites, Polymarket and Kalshi, they would say there’s no way that Republicans can keep the House.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus
Some of them have the Senate at risk too. Pfaff did not argue with the math as it stands. If the election happened today, he said, that might be the case. What he disputes is that a market price on September 9 is a result on election day, and he put the window plainly: this is a key time, and if we don’t get this right, it’s going to be a real challenge. But we can get it right. There is an opportunity to absolutely beat all the odds that you’re seeing right now.
His explanation for why the party is down is not about the people in the building. They are excited and they want to do good things, he said of the delegates on the floor. The problem is upstream of them, and he said the party has been let down by some of its leaders in Washington, D.C., John Thune in particular. That diagnosis is consistent with what TCC has argued through convention week, including in our preview of the RNC Midterm Convention in Dallas.
The Trump Agenda Record: Immigration, Inflation, Crime
The bulk of the commentary was Pfaff reading through a list — the accomplishments he wants candidates to carry into their own districts. He started with the border.
The illegal immigration crisis is over, he said, for the moment. He expects to be called a liar for saying it, and said so directly: we get a lot of liars that say that this isn’t happening. His counterfactual is a number. If Donald Trump weren’t president, he said, the country would have ten million more people, and the estimated twenty million already here — or whatever the number actually is, he allowed — would have become thirty million, probably done faster in one year than Joe Biden managed in four. Downstream of that, he said, is a dramatic reduction in human trafficking, including young women, some of them in their early and mid-teens, trafficked for sex, and other types of trafficking that he said may in some cases have been literally slave labor, because those involved were intimidated into doing the work people wanted done.
“The real news is the American people want an absolute change.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus
On the economy, Pfaff’s complaint is that the coverage and the data point in opposite directions. Everyone tells you inflation is bad and that you can’t afford to live, he said, but inflation rose more than 20% during the Biden administration and has since leveled off and in some areas decreased. He does not claim the problem is solved permanently: there is always a risk of it, because Congress needs to cut government spending, which he calls the greatest driver of real inflation. The one place he concedes the pain is real is the gas pump, and he said Trump really does need to keep addressing gas prices.
The Numbers Pfaff Read Off the List
210,000 jobs created in the last month, in what Pfaff called a killer jobs report. A study finding that the average person without a college degree has had some of the highest income growth ever recorded in the United States, with the number of six-figure earners without degrees at one of the highest levels ever. A murder rate at a 70-year low and crime rates at their lowest in decades. The lowest level of government bureaucrats since 1966. A national debt of $40 trillion — the one number on the list that is not a win.
He gave credit for the wage story to more than policy. Mike Rowe, the Dirty Jobs host, has been telling people for years to get into the trades where they can make a good living and take care of a family, and Pfaff said Trump totally stands for that. He tied the take-home pay directly to the one big beautiful bill: in years past, overtime almost was not worth working because the extra income moved you into worse tax brackets, and now those overtime hours are not taxed. On crime, he credited getting illegal criminals off the streets and an FBI under Kash Patel that he says is doing its job — getting crime off the streets instead of censoring Americans.
On energy, Pfaff rejected the explanation most often offered. Energy prices are higher not because of data centers, he said; that is something that has to be dealt with, but it is not your problem with energy prices. The cause he names is what he called the climate debacle — 25 to 30 years of climate alarmism theater built on Al Gore lies, as he put it, that were never true, pressed hard enough in the media that politicians in both parties gave in. Trump has stripped regulations, but blue states that will not give up their climate rules are still driving prices up. Abroad, he pointed to Syria, Venezuela and Cuba changing radically, pro-business free-market candidates winning across Latin America, and the Ukraine situation looking like it may be winding down.
Why Pfaff Can Broadcast This at All
One item on the list was the broadcast itself. Pfaff argued that the convention coverage viewers were watching would not exist under a different administration, and traced the mechanism rather than the mood.
Without Trump in office, he said, they would have shut down X after Elon Musk opened it back up; Facebook would have nothing to do with this; YouTube, forget it; they’d probably shut down Rumble too, where TCC also broadcasts. His point is that the restoration was not only legal but competitive. Musk led the change, and the market now makes a closed social media platform impossible to sustain, because, in his words, X is going to totally kick their butts if they try to do something different. That is the part of the Trump agenda Pfaff says makes every other part of the argument sayable in public.
He extended the same reasoning to his critics on the right. It frustrates him to see people who are not in the hall attacking the president — he named Tucker Carlson saying we have got to get rid of him, and Candace Owens among others. Pfaff’s reply was not about motives but about results: what Tucker Carlson’s talking about is not winning at all, and is not close to what the American people desire. He allowed that spiritual criticisms can be made of anyone, and that some listeners hold faults against Trump. His test is the record. Look at the Trump agenda, he said, and it is impossible to see all the wins and conclude he has not delivered what was asked of him.
Congress Is the Weak Part of the Trump Agenda
The turn in the commentary comes when Pfaff moves from the executive branch to the legislative one. Apart from the one big beautiful bill and a few other things, he said, Congress has done nothing to stop the bleeding that has led to a $40 trillion debt. That is what he says this election is about.
“The weak part of the Trump agenda is Republicans in Congress. That’s been our real problem.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus
He has been saying it for nearly two years, and the reason he raised it in Dallas is that he thinks it is finally fixable. There are people not in Congress right now running for Congress, and his condition on them is specific and sequential: tag on to the Trump agenda, go tell the people in their districts that they will support what Trump stands for, campaign on that, and then go do it. Meet those conditions and, in his words, we could really have some massive changes that are very positive in this nation. Your frustrations with Congress can go away with a big win.
The Caucus is putting money behind that condition. Pfaff said TCC will be putting millions of dollars into independent expenditures to support candidates who will do the very things he was describing and who will stand for Trump — the same approach behind the independent expenditure work TCC has been building for these midterm races.
“Don’t listen to the doomsayers, because even though it is true that the candidates have got to go out and win, you’re the one that controls that outcome.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus
That line answers a criticism Pfaff raised himself. What viewers would hear at this convention, he said, is Donald Trump making a case for himself, and a lot of people were saying that if Trump comes to Dallas and makes a case for himself rather than focusing on congressional races, it will not help and people are going to lose. Pfaff’s response grants the premise about candidates and then moves the responsibility: it is up to voters to make sure the candidates do what they are demanded to do. In his model the convention does not close the sale. It supplies the argument, and the enforcement happens district by district.
57 to 53: The Enthusiasm Gap and the Democrat Collapse
Pfaff’s read on where the race actually stands rests on two sets of polling, and he hedged on both before using them — you know what we think about polls sometimes, he said; they tell you something, but they may not be very accurate. What they tell him is that Democrats are carrying a bit more energy into this election than Republicans.
“Numbers I’ve seen are 57% of Democrats polled are really excited about the election, but I also see that 53% of Republicans are. We’re not out of that game if we’re just willing to pick it back up.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus
Four points is the whole gap, which is why Pfaff calls energizing the base the purpose of the event rather than a side benefit. The second number is the opening he wants Republicans to run at. Democrats are despised right now in this country, he said: their favorability is at its lowest level in the era of modern polling, hovering around single digits and low double digits consistently over recent months.
His instruction for using that is a pairing, not an attack. Play off their weaknesses and show what those weaknesses are, then counter with strength — continuing the Trump agenda, expanding it, and being thankful for what is coming out of the administration: the bureaucrat reduction, the other cuts, the fraud, waste and abuse being addressed around the country. Pfaff’s phrase for who supplies that strength is the one he keeps returning to. A new stream of candidates can change this around quickly, if they can just be gotten over the line in November.
He also put the movement itself ahead of any one figure. It is the people that win and that do things worthwhile, he said — voters did it in 2024 when they elected Trump, and in 2016, in what he called a real grassroots movement, a real movement of the people. On 2020 his line was blunter: he still does not know how Joe Biden got 85 million votes.
What to Watch: The Keynote and TCC’s Live Coverage
Pfaff closed the opening segment with the night’s schedule and what he was listening for. Trump had committed to campaigning for the remaining 53 or 54 days, and Pfaff said that if the president treats this stretch like a campaign, it can really help. Byron Donalds was speaking that night, along with Brandon Gill and others, and Pfaff said the messaging viewers would hear over the two days was that the American dream has not been lost — it is only something that can be given up.
“He could really change the game with a knockout speech, and we’re going to be covering that live.”
— Jim Pfaff, President, The Conservative Caucus
The Caucus plan for the evening was to break around dinner time and return at about 7 o’clock Eastern to carry the keynote live, with updates, interviews with people involved in the convention, and hallway conversations through the night. Pfaff pointed viewers to theconservativecaucus.com, where a banner marks when the stream is running, and told them to tell their friends. More was coming the following night on what he called a really exciting agenda.
His last word before switching to the live feed was the same argument compressed: this is a time for us to potentially shine, and let’s make sure that we make this happen. That is the whole Trump agenda case as Pfaff framed it on opening night — a record worth running on, a Congress that has not matched it, and 54 days in which voters decide which of those two facts governs the next two years.
Key Takeaways
- The betting markets have written off the House – Polymarket and Kalshi say there is no way Republicans keep it, and some have the Senate at risk. Pfaff grants the election might go that way if held today, and says there is an opportunity to beat all of those odds in the 54 days remaining.
- The Trump agenda record is the convention’s product – The illegal immigration crisis is over for the moment, human trafficking is down sharply, inflation that rose more than 20% under Biden has leveled off, 210,000 jobs came in the last report, the murder rate is at a 70-year low, and federal bureaucrats are at their lowest level since 1966.
- Congress is the weak link, not the White House – Apart from the one big beautiful bill and a few other things, Pfaff says Congress has done nothing to stop the bleeding behind a $40 trillion debt, and he has been saying for nearly two years that Republicans in Congress are the weak part of the Trump agenda.
- The enthusiasm gap is four points – 57% of Democrats polled are really excited about the election against 53% of Republicans, while Democrat favorability sits at its lowest level in the era of modern polling, in single digits and low double digits.
- TCC is spending to enforce the condition – The Caucus is putting millions of dollars into independent expenditures for candidates who tie themselves to the Trump agenda, campaign on it in their own districts, and then govern that way.
- The outcome belongs to voters, not to doomsayers – Pfaff’s answer to critics who say a Trump keynote about Trump will not help congressional races is that candidates still have to win, but voters control whether they do what is demanded of them.
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The Conservative Caucus is a grassroots public policy action organization, formed in 1974. Headed by President Jim Pfaff, the Caucus is committed to advancing free enterprise, limited government, and traditional values.
Originally broadcast Sep 9, 2026 live from The Conservative Caucus media suite at the 2026 RNC Midterm Convention, Dallas.
Peter J. Thomas is a veteran conservative political strategist and seasoned policy expert dedicated to upholding the principles of the Constitution and democracy. As a founder and the chairman of the Conservative Caucus, he has played a pivotal role in promoting and shaping the conservative agenda across the nation for over half a century.