Biographer Michael Wolff argued on Monday that President Donald Trump's political career has always rested more on performance than on actual accomplishments — and, he predicted, that ends on Tuesday, when voters head to the polls for the midterm elections.

In a post published on his Substack, Wolff wrote that Trump's singular talent has been dominating attention and casting himself as the central character in every political story. That ability, he said, has allowed the president to obscure weak results, including his 2020 election loss.

Wolff framed Trump's first year back in office through the lens of a book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, which portrays Trump's return to power as significantly redefining and expanding presidential authority.

According to Wolff, the fatal flaw in Trump's grip on power emerged when the president began believing his own spin.

"But, in fact, this performance came to rely so much on illusory accomplishments that Trump seemed to actually believe he had accomplished something," Wolff wrote. "Or, in that always fatal mistake, he came to believe his own bulls——. So much so that, by the second year, the accomplishments, or lack of, came to overshadow the performance. His power grab made him believe he was all powerful — but his performance kept highlighting what he had done, or failed to do, with his power."

Once the absence of results overshadows the showmanship, Wolff suggested, ramping up the showmanship cannot rescue Trump from disaster. The midterms, in his view, amount to a referendum on Trump's record rather than merely his persona — whether or not the president sees it that way. Because the essay appeared on the eve of the vote, its central claim — that the record now outweighs the performance — is one readers can measure against actual results once the ballots are counted.

Wolff pointed to a series of policy failures as the substance of that referendum, including economic pressures worsened by tariffs and war, an Iran conflict that has dragged on far longer than Trump promised, and a border policy that, he said, shifted into fear and intimidation directed at immigrants and Hispanic Americans.

At the same time, Wolff noted, Trump and his family are growing increasingly wealthy through his power and control over government contracts, as well as by putting his name and financial interests behind digital tokens while offering access or perks to people who buy and hold them. The issue has grown significant enough that "government corruption" now ranks among the top three issues of the 2026 election cycle. Ethics experts have said Trump's approach created a channel through which wealthy supporters and foreign investors can financially back the president while seeking proximity to him.

Wolff also criticized Trump for deploying the Justice Department to pursue his personal grievances. While some of those efforts have failed, Wolff wrote, the repeated attempts have only exposed the president's bitterness — and drawn still more attention to his failures.

Wolff's broader warning was that Republicans have bound their political fortunes so tightly to Trump that his failures have become theirs as well. The president's demand for obedience, he argued, has forced the GOP to shoulder the burden of Trump's incompetence, grudges, financial self-dealing and erratic behavior.

History, Wolff concluded, may be fascinated by Trump's ability to command attention — but that same attention will be on display when voters boo him "off the stage" on Election Day.

Wolff's full essay is available on Substack. This article was originally published by Alternet.