Republicans are starting to freak out, again, as for yet another election cycle the Trump legal shitshow threatens to consume all attention from the (largely exaggerated) economic issues and other shit down-ballot GOP candidates want to run on, the Washington Post reports.

“There’s not a person who is running for any office who is not worried about the oxygen suck and the drama that could be next year,” said a GOP donor and candidate recruiter, anonymously for fear of reprisal from the Orange Warlord. “Instead of talking about jobs, inflation and the debt, candidates are going to be drawn in and forced to be in that vortex that is Donald Trump.”

Deputy Senate GOP Leader John Thune not-anonymously told reporters this week that “As you try and recruit candidates, they’re going to be looking at that political environment and saying, ‘Am I going to be running, you know, against the tide or with the tide, and there’s a big difference based on who you nominate [at the top of the ticket].” You almost want to feel sorry for them. Almost.

But not really. You might also want to more reasonably say this is a repeat of the 2022 midterms, however you’d be wrong about that too, because (A) Trump himself wasn’t actually on the ballot, even though he definitely tried by backing complete assholes fanatically loyal to him costing Republicans likely dozens of winnable races and (B) he was under criminal investigation and Mar-a-Lago had been raided by the FBI but had not been indicted yet. So it’s actually worse for the GOP.