Dan Rather to GOP: Trump 'destroyed' you just like Lindsey Graham predicted

U.S. President Donald Trump gestures during an event at The Villages Charter School at The Villages, Florida, U.S., May 1, 2026. REUTERS_Nathan Howard

Veteran news reporter Dan Rather says President Donald Trump is singularly responsible for the American electorate flipping seats and shunning Republicans on Tuesday “in almost every state from South Carolina to Iowa, from Texas to Nevada.”

The rebuke was particularly “stinging” in the South, said Rather, where since the 1960s, with the advent of the Civil Rights Act, Republicans racist “Southern Strategy,” successfully shifted the South to Republican. On Tuesday Rather was still surprised that, for the first time in decades, the once reliable red swath at the bottom of the U.S. map “turned decidedly blue.”

“It is eye-popping to see Democrats elected in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Texas. And, as of this writing, Mississippi, yes, Mississippi, is too close to call,” said Rather.

How it happened is Trump, said Rather — but it was also Republicans’ compulsion to sacrifice their personal morals for Trump’s voters.

“As election night unfolded, it reminded me of the prescient Senator Lindsey Graham quote from 2016. ‘If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed … and we will deserve it,’” quoted Rather.

“Just about everything Trump has done during his second term hurt Republicans’ chances in the midterms,” explained Rather. “He pardoned every January 6 insurrectionist on Day One. He didn’t release the Epstein files. He suddenly started a war with Iran. He pushed millions off health insurance and cut food assistance for millions more. He rewarded his billionaire friends with huge tax cuts. He rekindled his close relationship with Russia’s Vladimir Putin while rebuffing NATO. He imposed tariffs, which raised prices. And he has engaged in so much head-spinning corruption it is hard to keep track.”

Trump also tipped the scales in favor of the Democrats by ordering Republican-led state legislatures to engage in unprecedented mid-decade redistricting — a move that yielded just one net positive seat for Republicans. And in Texas, the gerrymandering push actually lost a seat.

“And then there are the candidates he backed, who lost in once-reliably red states,” said Rather. “In a fit of pique, Trump decided to endorse Ken Paxton, Texas’s scandal-plagued attorney general, over stalwart Senator John Cornyn. Not only did Talarico take Paxton to the cleaners, but Republicans also spent more than half a billion, yes, billion, dollars on the losing race — money that could have supported other races.”

“Trump is unrepentant, pointing fingers everywhere but at himself,” said Rather, even if his vice president is now confessing that “Iran was a piece of it,” in a “rare moment of introspection.”

The damage to the Republican brand is done, however, and will take a long time to fix. But he said “Democrats have been handed a rare and decisive win,” and what they do with it will be the next chapter in a “stunning political turn of events.”

Americans did their part and voted on Tuesday, he said, but now it falls to them “to do anything and everything you can to reunite the country.”

“Hold your newly elected officials to account. Reach out through community service. Help your neighbors. Help your friends,” said Rather. “America as a whole needs to rededicate itself to the ideals found in the Pledge of Allegiance, ‘… one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.’

“We have just given ourselves a chance for a fresh start,” Rather concluded. “Now is the hour to seize it.”

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