As Democrats swept to control of both chambers of Congress on Tuesday night, the White House settled on a message: the defeat was not President Donald Trump's. In conservative media, where many of his most loyal voices work, the mood was far less certain.
"President Trump was not on the ballot, and it's proven that Trump voters show up when he is on the ballot," a White House official told CNN. Another official said: "President Trump did a better job promoting many of the candidates on the ballot than the candidates did themselves."
Officials speaking to Bloomberg went further, tying the night to the fuel prices driven up by the war with Iran. "Anyone who voted Democrat today is going to have a serious case of buyers 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," one said. "Regardless of how today plays out, President Trump's resolve to stop the Radical Left is only going to become stronger."
Trump made the same argument himself when he phoned in to Politico's election-night broadcast, saying the voters he had urged at rallies to treat the midterms as a vote on him had not followed through.
"If I was on the ballot, we would have won very easily," Trump said. "I told the voters, 'Pretend I'm on the ballot,' but they didn't agree." In the same call, he struck a softer note on the Democratic majorities he will face for the last two years of his term.
"I have a right to veto everything, but I don't want to just sit there and veto everything for two years," he said. "We're going to work with the Democrats. They've already called."
Leavitt blames "the lying media"
On Fox News, the most pointed defense came from Karoline Leavitt, who recently joined the network as a paid contributor after stepping down as White House press secretary. She spoke on Fox's election-night panel as the network projected Sen. Ashley Moody's win in Florida.
"Unfortunately, I think the American people forgot about the good policy, maybe listened to the lying media on the other side," Leavitt said. "They got more money in their pockets because of the president's tax cuts." Her new employer was itself a target that night: Trump complained on Truth Social that in Fox's polling "Every question is a hit job," The Washington Post reported.
"It's not a red wave"
Her Fox colleague Jesse Watters offered viewers a blunter reading of the returns, with a nod to Trump's pledge that every American would get a $5,000 payment if Republicans kept both chambers.
"It's not a red wave. I don't think we're gonna get our $5,000 checks," Watters said. He argued that Trump had been handed three big problems and "solved two out of the three. He didn't solve the economy," The Hill reported.
On The Daily Wire's election-night special, Ben Shapiro was asked what lessons Republicans should draw from the results.
"First lesson, don't run terrible candidates," Shapiro said. He also acknowledged that the Iran war had been "not helpful" as it pushed up inflation and gas prices, The Daily Caller reported. Democrats, meanwhile, were savoring the night. In Detroit, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg took the stage at Abdul El-Sayed's election-night party after the Democrat's Michigan Senate win.
"The results are still coming in, but to put it very, very mildly, I'd rather be us right now," Buttigieg told the crowd, while cautioning that Republicans would still hold the White House for two more years, The Washington Times reported.
Videos: Politico, Fox News, The Daily Wire and AP via social media. Photo: Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons (file)
