Trump, in Rare Reflective Mood, Blames Messaging and the Iran War for GOP Midterm Losses

On Friday, in the White House, President Donald Trump sat down with Ross Douthat for his first interview since the midterms. The setting was a week after an election the interviewers described as an extraordinary repudiation of his party. Republicans lost the House and the Senate. They also lost statewide offices in red states, from Texas to Kansas to South Carolina, that Democrats had not won in decades.

The interviewers noted that in the past Trump has answered defeat with claims of fraud and the effort to overturn the 2020 election. This time they found him surprisingly reflective, and seemingly accepting of the result. The conversation ranged over immigration, corruption, Iran, artificial intelligence, his potential successors and his own mortality, but it began with the results.

Asked for his political analysis, Trump first noted that he was not on the ballot, and said the outcome would have been much different if he had been. He pointed to the popularity and love he saw at massive rallies, but said those voters had to be transferred to candidates they did not like. Beyond that, he said, voters disliked the war, disliked that gasoline prices rose after he had brought them to a low, and showed what he called an incredible dislike for Israel.

Douthat pressed him on the candidates, many of whom Trump had chosen. He had endorsed Ken Paxton in Texas, who had a tough time, and Darline Graham in South Carolina, who lost in a very Republican state to a very liberal challenger. Trump said John Cornyn would have lost too, and that he backed Graham in honor of Lindsey, a friend. He noted he had won South Carolina and Texas by the highest votes in history, and said his endorsements were what carried the Florida candidates to victory. On why his appeal did not transfer, he said he thought people simply did not vote, and that in some cases they did not like the candidates.

Douthat then cited a social media post by Vice President JD Vance, who wrote that the reason Republicans lost was the Iran war, and who also made comments about Israel. Trump said he did not disagree. He said Vance had asked what he thought, and he told him to write what he wanted. Asked whether he would launch the war again, Trump answered with an emphatic yes, because Iran cannot be allowed a nuclear weapon. History, he said, will judge it a very good decision, though it may not be one for today and tomorrow. He said he would have been excoriated far worse had Iran obtained a bomb during his term, and that he has stopped them from getting one.

On the economy, which polls show Americans are unhappy about in a way they were not in his first term, Trump said the numbers are phenomenal and that the highest stock market in history proves it. He said the problem was bad messaging, maybe his own, and that the press does not cover positive news for Republicans or for him. Asked what the bad message was, he said they could not get the word across.

The loss hands Democrats new power over budgets, hearings and subpoenas. Trump said he had congratulated them after the election and was open to working with them, and the first thing he named was immigration. He said his policy both helped and hurt: he gave himself an A+ for closing the border and high marks for removing dangerous people, but said taking people with good jobs whose only violation was entering illegally hurt him. Asked whether the policy went too far, he said it might be too tough. He described a deal that would remove killers, drug dealers and the rough ones while letting people who have been here ten or fifteen years stay, among them hotel maids and landscapers. He acknowledged that people in his own administration want everyone removed.

Trump said Democrats have already called him, and that Texas Senator-elect James Talarico, whom he mocked during the campaign as Talafreako, had said nice things. He said he could go six months without insulting Democrats, whom he has also called Dumocrats, very easily. Asked whether he could work with them while they investigate his administration, he said he did it for four years, noted he was impeached twice, and said he cannot imagine a third impeachment. The interview then turned to the question of White House personnel changes.

What to watch now is whether Democrats take up the immigration talks Trump described, and whether the investigations they can now launch undercut them.