WASHINGTON — As President Donald Trump toured the country over the last few weeks, he told Americans to cast their votes as if he was on the ballot.
Tuesday night, they did just that and he won’t like the outcome once all the results are finalized.
Americans firmly rejected his administration’s his policies and the Republican party as a whole, lifting Democrats to a sweeping control of the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.
Democrats’ victory in the Senate comes after a win in the House, where Democrats are set to have what could be their largest majority in nearly two decades. They achieved this by flipping seven Republican-held seats in Michigan, Maine, Iowa, Kansas, Ohio, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas.
Trump’s own handpicked the nominees, including Ken Paxton in Texas and Darlene Graham in South Carolina, suffered historic and shocking losses. Democrats made inroads in the heart of MAGA country, including Iowa, Kansas, and Mississippi — although that race has yet to be called as of this writing.
Forty-three percent of midterm voters surveyed said one of the reasons they voted was to express opposition to Trump, whose job approval rating is lower than that of any president on Election Day in nearly two decades.
Seventy-one percent of voters — including 41% of Republicans — also said there is not enough congressional oversight of Trump.
Trump posted on social media that Republicans lost simply because he was not on the ballot.
“I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!,” he wrote.
Meanwhile, in a phone call on Fox News later in the night, he said that gas prices are to blame, but said he had no regrets about starting the war with Iran.
“I don’t think it’s the war, I think it’s the gas prices,” he said. “People agree with what I’m doing on Iran but they really, probably weren’t willing to do the short term consequence of paying more for gasoline.”
With Democrats holding majorities in both chambers, the Trump administration will now have to deal with investigations it avoided favorable Congress in Republican hands. The election results could influence the 2028 presidential race and the fate of Trump’s legislative plans in his final two years in office.
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) has said that Democrats aren’t focused on impeaching Trump but that they also haven’t ruled it out. Trump was impeached twice during his first term but acquitted both times by the Senate.
“The cost of living is way too high, and Donald Trump — along with his Republican sycophantic members of Congress — have actually decided not to do anything about it because so many of them are so focused on enriching themselves, their family members, their friends and their donors. There is a cost to corruption,” Jeffries told reporters before the election.
“These are all things that are going to need to be thoroughly investigated as part of our pledge to hold the crooks accountable, beginning on day one,” he said.
