President Donald Trump said that he would accept Democrats’ sweeping midterm election victories and work with their new congressional majorities, a notably conciliatory response after a night in which he also sought to distance himself from the Republican losses and acknowledged that the war in Iran contributed to them.
“I’m a little bit surprised,” Trump told Fox News Tuesday night, pointing to what he called “tremendous” campaign rallies. He also blamed Fox News, his frequently watched network, attacking a Democratic commentator and their ratings.
Trump’s willingness to accept the results does not mean he is preparing to yield much to Democrats. In the Fox interview, he said he could work with the party “on many things” but warned that he would veto legislation he opposed. He later reinforced the message on Truth Social with an image of a red cap emblazoned with one word: “VETO.”
As Democrats won control of the House and Senate, Trump insisted that the outcome should not be seen as a rebuke of him personally.
“I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Though Trump had repeatedly told rally crowds in recent months to “pretend” he was on the ballot, he and his aides cast the results in a different light as Democrats began posting early wins Tuesday night. One White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the administration’s thinking, told The Washington Post that the election was not a referendum on the president and blamed Republican candidates for their losses.
“President Trump did a better job promoting many of the candidates on the ballot than the candidates did themselves,” the person said.
Trump also blamed some of the losses on Republican candidates themselves. He was quick to go after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), whom he had endorsed, after Abbott lost his reelection bid to Democrat Gina Hinojosa.
“If Greg Abbott, the Governor of Texas, hadn’t become a RINO in the last six months of his Political Life, he wouldn’t have lost,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, referring to the term “Republicans in name only.” “He went back to his original formula, and it wasn’t pretty!”
Trump added in a follow-up post that he would be a pundit “on the reasons these Candidates won and lost!”
In a stream of interviews Tuesday night, Trump repeated that voters were particularly upset about the higher gas prices that stemmed from the Iran war. But he maintained his decisions were correct and said he would make no changes to his Cabinet.
“They probably weren’t happy — they weren’t happy with the oil price,” he told the New York Times.
“I did the right thing. I would have done it again,” he told the Wall Street Journal.
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