Staring down a political drubbing that handed Democrats control of both chambers of Congress, US President Donald Trump said he would accept the outcome of the midterm elections — even as he swiftly worked to pin the blame on other Republicans.
On the campaign trail, the 80-year-old repeatedly urged supporters to “pretend I’m on the ballot.” In the end, voters acted as if he were, installing Democrats in charge of the House and Senate.
Yet Mr Trump, never eager to shoulder responsibility, framed the results as a counterfactual victory. In his first public reaction, he argued Republicans would have cruised if his own name had been on the ticket.
“I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE! Thank you for your attention to this matter,” Mr Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
With questions swirling about whether he might again reject an election result — after refusing to accept his 2020 loss to Joe Biden — Mr Trump later struck a more conciliatory note in remarks to the New York Times.
“I am absolutely willing to accept those results,” he told them.
“We’ll work with the Democrats, and we’ll, you know, look forward to working with them. We’ll probably work something out.”
But in an interview with Fox News, Mr Trump made clear he expects confrontation as well as negotiation, warning that Democrats would send him legislation he considers unacceptable and that he would block it.
“They’ll send over things that are insane, and I’ll veto them,” he said.
“And after a couple of months of vetoes, they’ll call and they’ll say, ‘how do we get this stuff done?’ And we’ll work together.”
Mr Trump also said the war in Iran had weighed on Republican candidates, while insisting voters supported his approach to the conflict.
“I think a part of it was Iran, but at the same time people understood the importance of what I’ve done with Iran,” he said.
A person holds a ‘Its Time For Something Different’ sign during an election night event
Later, he offered a sharper preview of how he planned to handle Democratic legislative efforts, posting an image of his signature red MAGA hat paired with a single word: “VETO.”
Inside the White House, a bunker-like mood set in as Mr Trump and senior cabinet members watched the bruising returns roll in during a reception in the ornate East Room.
“The White House mood is defiant,” a White House official told AFP.
Some staffers ate take-out from The Cheesecake Factory, a pointed jab at Democratic former president Barack Obama, who had once remarked that Mr Trump’s White House renovations were “looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory.”
‘Buckle up’
One White House official challenged the caliber of Republican contenders for the House and Senate.
That critique landed awkwardly: Mr Trump had endorsed many of those candidates and crisscrossed the country to boost them — even singling out, in one instance, the “ass” of Republican Ohio Senate candidate Jon Husted.
“Candidate quality matters, and President Trump did a better job promoting many of the candidates on the ballot than the candidates did themselves,” the White House official said.
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Mr Trump later said he intended to “become a political pundit” to explain why Republicans lost.
First on his list was Texas governor Greg Abbott, a loyalist who was defeated by Democrat Gina Hinojosa. Mr Trump argued that if Mr Abbott had not become a “RINO” — Republican In Name Only — “he wouldn’t have lost.”
Now the pressing question is how Mr Trump will navigate the final two years of his second term as a lame duck president, with Democrats controlling both the House and Senate.
Signals from the White House suggest he will not fade into the background.
Iran remains central to his focus, and there is widespread speculation that the president will resume large-scale military action against Tehran — escalating a war that, it has become clear, voters loathed.
“Anyone who voted Democrat today is going to have a serious case of buyer’s remorse when gas prices come down quickly when the Iran conflict is solved but they’re still stuck with a list of liberal extremist Democrats,” the White House official said.
The official also hinted at a harder edge toward Mr Trump’s political opponents.
“A final note here: regardless of how today plays out, President Trump’s resolve to stop the Radical Left is only going to become stronger. Buckle up.”
Even before the first wave of results arrived, Mr Trump appeared on edge, firing off a series of angry posts criticizing Fox News’s election coverage.
In one message published as the earliest polls closed, he claimed Fox’s ratings were “way down, not because of me, but because they are AGAINST me!”
