“Those who want the convention can find it on C-SPAN or whatever.”
 

SEPTEMBER 3, 2026

 

THE INDUSTRY

A Republican Midterm Convention? News Networks Shrug. “Those who want the convention can find it on C-SPAN or whatever.”

By Daniel Strauss 

Photo: Daniel Delgado Jr./Disney

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The Trump administration is hoping their upcoming and unprecedented midterm election convention in Dallas will play out just like your typical presidential nominating convention: a celebrity-packed and raucous building, lawmakers at every level of government frothing to get as close to the headliners as possible, and wall-to-wall coverage by all the major news networks resulting in tens of millions of eyeballs.

But judging by the lead-up to the event, that’s not what’s going to happen. Realistically, the Dallas convention is unlikely to get the same level of national attention a presidential-year convention would, according to the major news networks Vulture spoke with this week. For Donald Trump and his Republican loyalists, the goal was to produce a glitzy, splashy must-watch show serving the GOP’s most alluring arguments and figures to a wide audience. Instead the indicators are that the news networks — the venues that Trump obsesses over and are essential for any major political event to break through — will treat this more like a normal Trump rally.

And they have good reason to. 

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