Axios last week highlighted that GOP candidates for U.S. Senate are trailing Donald Trump’s performance in states across the nation.

“Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and NRSC Chair Steve Daines are grappling with an uncomfortable reality: Republican Senate challengers are lagging well behind former President Trump in public surveys,” Axios reported.

To the millions of Americans paying attention, it really isn’t a surprise that Donald Trump is outperforming Republican candidates across the country.

This, of course, is puzzling to the D.C.-based strategists helping to run campaigns. Axios added: “The polling gap has baffled Republican candidates and strategists, who expected it to collapse as November neared.”

It isn’t baffling at all. Mitch McConnell has consistently failed to serve as a check on the Biden-Harris administration, just as he did during the Obama and Clinton administrations — aside from blocking Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court.

Despite its public rhetoric, the Republican wing of the uniparty has often acted as little more than a speed bump to the elites' true objectives: endless wars and the destruction of the fabric of America. Trump offers a different vision, emphasizing a return to the nation’s roots and putting America and its citizens first.

U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who never met a war he didn’t like, illustrated this point further. Amid one of the worst natural disasters the South has ever faced, Graham appeared on Fox News and delivered the following 36 words:

I’ve been going all over South Carolina; like most people, I haven’t slept much. But look what’s going on in Israel. We have to help our friends to keep the war over there from coming here.

In case you hadn’t heard, more than 200 people have died across the hurricane-stricken South. That number is likely to go much higher.

On the day Graham appeared on Fox News and uttered those words, more than 300,000 homes and businesses were still without power in his state, six days after the storm hit.

Transylvania County, North Carolina, sits about 25 miles from Graham’s Seneca, South Carolina, home. That county, along with others in Western North Carolina, has been nearly destroyed in the aftermath of Helene.

The list of examples could go on. Yet even in this situation, Graham briefly acknowledged his constituents' suffering before pivoting to advocate greater spending on overseas conflicts.

Yes, Israel has a right to defend itself, and it has been a reliable U.S. ally. However, there’s a time and place to argue for support of Israel — while your constituents are suffering and dying is not it.

This disconnect is why Republican Senate candidates trail Trump in polls across the nation. Graham exemplifies the entrenched mindset that led us into this predicament. After decades in the Senate, he has repeatedly sided with the D.C. elites.

His and McConnell’s support for the Ukraine war has drained untold treasure from United States citizens. They have consistently capitulated to the Biden-Harris regime by rubber-stamping continuing resolution after continuing resolution. This has funded the government without holding the regime to account for the invasion at our southern border.

We now hear that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admits FEMA lacks funding to help people in the path of the next storm because he spent all of FEMA’s money on those who have illegally invaded the nation.

That is as much Mitch and Lindsey’s fault as it is Mayorkas’.

To the millions of Americans paying attention, it really isn’t a surprise that former President Donald Trump is outperforming Republican candidates across the country. He puts America and Americans first, while the McConnell- and Graham-led GOP puts lobbyists from the military-industrial complex and illegal immigrants first.

Those 36 words uttered by Graham on Fox News strikingly prove that case.