In the run-up to the 2026 midterm elections, President Donald Trump repeatedly threatened to "nationalize" the contests to guarantee Republican victories rather than allow Democrats to prevail. Yet those who argued he ultimately lacked a magic button to press and cancel the elections wound up being correct. Democrats handily took back the Senate and House of Representatives without a peep of protest from the president.
Instead, according to reports, the president is listening to his fellow Republicans explain why they think the GOP lost. And they often tend to argue that the explanation is that he didn't do enough to further their own pet causes.
"Some conservative groups were quick to blame the losses on what they saw as Republicans abandoning longstanding conservative principles," reported Philip Wegmann of The Wall Street Journal on Thursday. "“Republican consultants got the campaign they wanted, and the defeat they earned. You cannot spend years telling your base to sit down and shut up, then act surprised when they don’t stand up for you on Election Day,” Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser wrote in a memo after the election, citing the administration’s lack of action on abortion as one reason religious voters didn’t turn out in support of Trump’s party."
Wegmann added, "The Taxpayer Protection Alliance, a conservative group focused on limited government, blamed Trump’s embrace of economic populism, particularly the use of tariffs, for driving up costs for voters and driving down GOP support
“These tariffs were a self-inflicted political wound that alienated voters,” the organization wrote in a postelection memo."
He continued, "Some on the right now argue that Tuesday night’s election results ought to force the GOP to return to what Sen. John Curtis (R., Utah) described in a social-media post as “principled conservative values.”"
The journalist went on, "“After the Biden era, Americans wanted an economy that worked for them,” Curtis wrote on Tuesday night. “Instead, they received a hastily executed war, headline after headline of scandals, a ballooning $40 trillion debt, and unpredictable tariffs.”"
Earlier on Thursday, CNN's Kristen Holmes reported that in the White House itself, advisers variously blame the Iran War and the fact that Trump himself was not on the ballot for the losses. One thing they do not blame, though, is the president's own actions."
“Behind the scenes, we’ve seen an enormous amount of finger-pointing and blame-shifting,” Holmes told CNN anchor Jake Tapper. “In terms of the president himself, he has continued to say, and that includes behind closed doors, that he believes the reason Republicans lost was not a rebuke of him, but because, in fact, he was not actually on the ballot."
Holmes added, "And I do want to note one thing here, Jake. He keeps talking about the size of the rallies, saying, ‘I saw all these people, and they did not come out to vote for the candidate.' But I went to a number of these rallies, and I interviewed those voters, and they were people who were already going to vote Republican. So it’s unclear that that’s really what happened here, that they didn’t transfer the love over to the candidates.”