More Epstein, a Maxwell pardon, another election (maybe): what Trump will bring us in 2026

Well, thank God that’s over, huh?

Yep, that’s the good thing about years. Even the worst ones finally end. As you read these words, this one has only hours to go. No sentient being should mourn its loss.

On the other hand, few will ever accuse 2025 of being uneventful. An utter catastrophe, yes, but never dull.

What does 2026 have in store? Since it’s an election year (fingers crossed that actually happens), the odds are good that there will be no shortage of plots, subplots, plot twists, and, of course, continued threats to our way of life.

In other words, 2026 unfortunately may look more than a bit like 2025, though hopefully with a whole lot more of the good guys winning in the end.

With that in mind, let’s peer together into the crystal ball and look to predict Things Positively Guaranteed to Happen in 2026:

• The midterms will be described as “the most important election of our lifetime” despite the fact this was also said to have been true in 2024, 2022, 2020, 2018, 2016, 2014, 2012, and in every election going back to Lincoln. (Apparently, democracy has the lifespan of an iPhone battery.)
• No Republican will admit he or she was wrong about anything, especially the things they were clearly wrong about.
• All politicians will claim, “The stakes have never been higher.”
• A politician will say, “This isn’t about left vs. right – it’s about right vs. wrong,” just before launching into the most partisan speech imaginable.
• Trump will spend at least half his time obsessed with polls. When they look good, they’ll be “proof.” When they look bad, they’ll be “fake,” “rigged,” “a scam” or all three.
• Every midterm House seat will be “too close to call” – especially the ones that aren’t.
• Every politician will run as “an outsider,” including the incumbents.
• Republicans will promise to fix problems they actively block from being fixed. They will attack liberal “elites” while being funded by billionaires who own yachts with staff.
• Trump will call every Democrat a “radical socialist” or “radical left scum” while expending significant energy making the world safer for pedophiles.
• All news that Trump doesn’t agree with will be dismissed as “a hoax.”
• The story of endless families being booted off health insurance, unable to pay soaring premiums, will dominate several news cycles … except at Fox News and in the MAGA echo chamber, where the issue won’t exist.
• Any Republican who questions anything Trump says or does will be branded a “RINO,” a “traitor,” a “backstabber,” or “disloyal” – or all four. Trump will be loyal to no one.
• Speaking of which, more “missing” Epstein documents will be uncovered in an FBI evidence closet labeled, “Do Not Open Until 2125.” They will be “discovered” after a clerk is bribed with a dozen bagels w/cream cheese.
• House Speaker Mike Johnson will declare every question about Epstein “a witch hunt.”
• Evidence of Trump’s diminished mental capacity will expand exponentially.
• A major health crisis will befall Trump but every effort will be made to cover it up and brand it as “fake.”
• Everyone who is brown or Black will continue to be targeted by ICE and tossed into detention centers or shipped off to a god-forsaken hellhole without anything resembling due process, because that’s the new American way.
• Trump will quietly begin to scale back tariffs but claim nothing of the sort is happening, blaming it on more media fakery.
• MAGA supporters will scream about free speech while demanding bans, boycotts, and punishment.
• The administration will treat expertise as corruption and ignorance as authenticity. It will treat conspiracy theories as research and research as treason.
• Later in the year, Trump will pardon convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. People will express their revulsion for a few weeks before it blows over.
• Every other person whom Trump pardons will have a similarly horrible criminal past. These are the people with whom our president relates best.
• Many more “drug boats” will be blown up in the Caribbean and people killed, yet there will be no actual evidence of either drugs or criminality.
• Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will accuse all people who support vaccines of suffering from vaccine-induced autism.
• The right will run an ad that is literally just ominous music, a blurry photo, and the word RADICAL in caps.
• Trump will ask Congress to introduce a bill declaring January 6 a national holiday: Patriots Day.
• Fox polls will find that the top issue for a majority of the electorate is stamping out “drag queens and trans teens.”
• As infrastructure projects kick in, Trump and Republicans will claim credit for progress put into place entirely by Joe Biden, that they vehemently opposed.
• A Fox panel will include one person yelling, one person shaking their head, one person asking, “But what about the optics?”, and a chyron in all caps misspelling DEMOCRACY as “DEMOCRISY.”
• A Trump supporter will refer to this being “a doggy dog world.”
• A scandal will break that should end a MAGA bootlicker’s career but will instead lead to a podcast, a book deal, and an ambassadorship.
• There will be endless calls for unity, healing, and civility, immediately followed by fundraising emails titled, ‘THEY’RE COMING FOR YOU!”
• Every losing Republican will scream “Fraud!” and suddenly care deeply about election integrity.
• Trump will declare most races where polls show candidates behind as “rigged” before the first ballot is cast.
• Every winning Republican will marvel at how fraud-free their election was.
• A Republican will win a race by less than a point and declare a mandate.
• A TV pundit will say, “Voters sent a clear message,” and then spend the next half-hour explaining why it’s impossible to read what voters were thinking.
• The 2028 presidential race will begin approximately 11 minutes after the final 2026 race is called.

Ray Richmond is a longtime journalist/author and an adjunct professor at Chapman University in Orange, CA.