With less than a month to go before voters offer their midterm verdict on his presidency, Donald Trump has finally taken to the campaign trail ostensibly to help beleaguered Republican candidates in electoral battlegrounds all over the country.

By the time he stopped talking on Saturday night, many of them may have wished he had stayed at home, or even wondered if he was a fifth columnist secretly trying to boost turnout for their Democratic Party opponents.

Trump’s crudeness and lack of rhetorical discipline – unequalled in modern American electoral history – was on full display as he made a series of speeches that were mostly about himself, and sometimes openly dismissive of the candidates he was allegedly on hand to assist.

The president’s most unhinged campaign trail performance came on Saturday in Ohio, a crucial battleground where Republicans are seeking to retain their slim majorities on Capitol Hill.

He threatened voters with a withdrawal of federal funding for the state if they back Democrats next month. He said Republican elected officials often call him seeking resources for Ohio, but if Democrat Amy Acton wins the state’s gubernatorial race instead of Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, “I’m not going to help her”.

In his meandering, 90-minute appearance the president claimed to “know more about inflation” and “know more about anything than anyone in this room. Anybody anywhere in the world”. He boasted of having “among the highest IQs anywhere in the world, unlike some other people I can tell you about”.

Taking off down one particularly odd blind alley, he spoke of his decision to ignore doctors and continue taking high daily doses of aspirin. “I take an aspirin a day. I don’t know if it works, but psychologically I need it. It thins the hell out of your blood, I guess. I don’t know if it works or not but I’ve been doing it a long time, and here I am, making speeches…They said ‘Sir, you don’t need that’. I said ‘do me a favour, I’ve been doing ok for 35 years. Leave me alone’”.

When the speech finally lit upon an offramp, Trump urged his supporters to “just get out and vote”. “If you do that, we’re going to win and we’re going to win big. And we’re gonna shove it up their ass, ok?” The President branded Democrats “dumb sons of b*****s”.

Just in case voters are still weighing up their options, Trump also issued a new video in which he pledged to pay $5,000 (£3,785) to every American voter if the Republicans retain control of the House and Senate, payments that would require congressional approval. Many Republicans have balked at that move, with one calling it a “socialist vote-buying scheme”.

The President also made new pledges of payments to voters ahead of the vote – this time promising 20 million seniors $90 each to help pay for Medicare premiums.

Every new batch of polls makes even grimmer reading for Trump’s party than the last. Swings to the Democrats in recent days have given the president’s opponents cause to believe that they can win not only the House, but quite possibly the Senate as well.

At two separate appearances in Texas on Thursday, he managed to diss Ken Paxton, the scandal-soaked Attorney General who is battling to retain an all-important Republican seat in the US Senate. Polling shows that Paxton’s Democratic opponent, James Talarico, has now pulled ahead in the race, and Texas may be on track to send its first Democrat to the Senate since 1988.

Visiting a Texas factory, Trump said that Paxton “has been a friend of mine for a very long time… I have to always remember that, because he can be a pain in the ass sometimes, I’ve got to be honest with you”.

Then, for good measure, he questioned whether the Republican candidate was even in the room at the manufacturing plant in Denton where the get-out-the-vote event was taking place. “Is he here, by the way? Oh, there he is. I didn’t even know he was here! I don’t care!” Trump told the crowd.

Given a chance later in the day to offer a more full-throated endorsement of his Texan mini-me, Trump again praised Paxton’s loyalty but told a rally in Dallas that “whether you love him or don’t love him, he is a little controversial just like me. But whether you love him or not, he’s probably the best, or certainly one of the best, or the best Attorney Generals in the entire United States of America”.

Paxton’s image makers are presumably not trying to fit that slogan onto a campaign poster or bumper sticker.

In Alabama, Trump again assured voters that their concerns about “affordability” – the number one issue in the midterms – are all part of a Democratic Party conspiracy. “It’s a word that the Democrats gave,” he said on Friday, blaming his predecessor, Joe Biden, for the country’s economic travails. “Less than two years ago the Democrats handed us the dark age of America. We quickly turned that into what’s called the golden age of America,” Trump insisted.

He amplified that message by declaring on Truth Social: “I AM THE AFFORDABILITY PRESIDENT.” But regarding the country’s soaring petrol and diesel prices, the president told voters to suck it up. His war on Iran will end “one way or another…probably right after the midterms”, he claimed. “Remember about the oil, you’re paying the price, but boy is that a small price than would it would be if these lunatics were allowed to have a nuclear weapon and used it on Mobile, Alabama.”

Based on this evidence, the more Trump campaigns, the better the Democrats can expect to do.