Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the new chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, says President-elect Trump is on-board to help the senator in his mission to protect and expand the newly won GOP majority in the Senate.
Scott, who last week was elected by his Republican colleagues as chair of the Senate GOP campaign committee, met with the former and future president at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
“Just had a great meeting with President @realDonaldTrump! He’s all in to help the @NRSC keep a Republican majority for his entire four years AND create a generation of opportunity!” Scott wrote in a social media post on Thursday night.
After losing the Senate majority in the 2020 elections, the GOP flipped four Democrat-held seats earlier this month, and will control the chamber 53-47 when the next Congress convenes at the beginning of the new year.
In his first interview following his election as NRSC chair, Scott told Fox News Digital last week that “what we’re going to do is defend the seats that we have and expand the map so that we can increase the majority brought to us by the Trump victory.”
In this month’s elections, unlike in 2016 and 2020, Trump outperformed many of the GOP’s Senate candidates.
Scott told Fox News Digital that he wants Trump to participate as much as he can in the 2026 Senate contests.
“Every day and every way, President Trump, I know you have a full-time job. I’m going to ask you to have two full-time jobs. Let’s expand this map,” Scott emphasized.
He said “that means that every single day we need President Trump on the campaign trail, doing fundraisers, talking to folks, because this is President Donald J. Trump’s party, and we need to make sure we expand it, from the man to the movement. We need him to do it.”
Scott last year unsuccessfully ran for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, before ending his bid and endorsing Trump. The senator was a high-profile surrogate for Trump on the campaign trail this year.
While not as favorable as the 2024 Senate map, the 2026 electoral landscape does give the Republicans some opportunities to flip seats.
Democratic Sens. Jon Ossoff of Georgia and Gary Peters of Michigan are up for re-election in two years in key battleground states Trump flipped last week.
And Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire will be up for re-election in a perennial swing state that Trump lost but over-performed from his 2020 showing. In Virginia, where Trump lost by just five points last week, Democratic Sen. Mark Warner will be up for re-election.
“How do you expand the map?” Scott asked. “You look at Georgia and Michigan and New Hampshire and Virginia. And if you’re stretching – take a look at New Mexico and Minnesota. President Trump was very competitive in those states.”
But Republicans will also have to play defense. GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine is up for re-election in a reliably blue state. And Sen. Thom Tills of North Carolina is also up in 2026, in a battleground state that Trump narrowly won.
Scott emphasized that “the good news is as long as Susan Collins is running, I think we have a shot to win. Last time, she won by several points. This time, she’ll win by several points. Thom Tillis staying in North Carolina is good for our party.”
In the 2022 election cycle, when the Republicans blew a chance to win back the majority, NRSC chair Sen. Rick Scott of Florida was criticized for a hands-off approach in the GOP Senate primaries.
This past cycle, now-former NRSC chair Sen. Steve Daines of Montana got involved in Senate Republican nomination battles.
Asked whether the NRSC will take sides in competitive Republican Senate primaries during his tenure the next two years, Scott told Fox News, “I think the best thing for us to do is have a family conversation next year about what we’re looking at. How we’re going to defend that map and then make the best decisions we can as it relates to making sure that we end up with more seats than we currently have.”
“Thank God we’re at 53. I’d like to see 55,” Scott added.
Asked whether holding 55 seats was his goal, Scott joked, “if it were up to me, we’d have 100 seats.”
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who easily won re-election earlier this month in blue-state New York, is expected to take over as chair of the rival Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Senate Democrats will hold their leadership elections later this year.
David Bergstein, the DSCC communications director for the past couple of election cycles, told Fox News that “in a challenging political environment, Democrats made history. We won multiple races in states won by Trump. We dramatically over-performed the presidential results. And for the first time in over a decade, Senate Democrats have won multiple races in states won by the opposite party’s presidential nominee.”
“The outcome of this cycle puts Senate Democrats in the strongest possible position to reclaim the majority in 2026,” Bergstein touted.
