What has Donald Trump said about the Midterm results?
Tuesday was not a great night for Trump-backed candidates, but the former president seems to be denying that reality.
Right-wing media is turning on Donald Trump. As results come in from Tuesday’s election, it has become clear that Trumpism does not have the same draw it did when Donald Trump was a candidate or sitting in the White House.
During the primaries, the GOP seemed like Donald Trump’s party, with his twenty-one senate candidates winning their state’s Republican nominations. However, in the general election, four candidates lost their races, with some, like conservative commentators Ben Shapiro pointing to the issue of “candidate quality” as an explanation for their losses. These include Dr. Mehmet Oz, who failed to keep Pennsylvania red in his race against Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman. Races in Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada are too close to call, but all three GOP candidates were endorsed by Trump and will reflect poorly on him if they lose.
In races for the House of Representatives, Trump’s failure to back winning candidates was even more apparent. In the GOP primaries, Trump endorsed 148 candidates, with only six losing or not qualifying for the general. At least eleven of these candidates, who made it to the general, lost their races in many areas Republicans had assumed they would win. If Republicans take the House, it will be by a very slim margin, and these eleven races help to explain the gap between what was expected and how the results are shaking out.
The ‘Red Wave’ was the media’s narrative, with some expecting the GOP to take back forty seats in the House of Representatives and move into the majority in the Senate...both of these possibilities are up in the air. Some aids close to Trump have told journalists at Rolling Stone that he is very angry with some of the races where he endorsed a candidate, like Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania.
Trump has posted on Truth Social denying these rumors. He told his followers that they should not believe the “fake narrative” by the “corrupt media” that he is upset, also mentioning that he is “busy looking into the future” and to remember that he is a “Stable Genius.”
Trump is worried about a possible presidential run by Ron DeSantis
Just a few hours ago, Donald Trump sent a message directly to his followers targeting Ron DeSantis. The e-mail is being pointed to as proof that the former president is concerned about a possible run by the Florida governor in 2024.
DeSantis has said nothing specific about his intention to run, when asked, he has responded that he is “only focused on the Governor’s race.“ Now that the race is over, this answer is not sufficient for Trump, who said that “in terms of loyalty and class, that’s really not the right answer.”
In the message, Trump, once again, referred to DeSantis as DeSanctimonious, a clunky nickname that has not caught on. Readers were also clued into some drama from 2018 when Trump said DeSantis, who was “politically dead” came to see him because he was “losing in a landslide to a very good Agriculture Commissioner, Adam Putnam, who was loaded up with cash and great poll numbers.”
DeSantis, on the other hand, “had low approval, bad polls, and no money,” but he called saying that an endorsement from the sitting president could help him win.
None of this seems to play well with GOP party leadership. Some even went so far as to call on Trump to delay any announcement of his intention to run for president until after the run-off in Georgia.
With the big announcement expected next week, only time will tell what Trump decides.