Trump reacts to Republican losses and declines to take blame

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By the time the House and Senate had been called for Democrats on Tuesday, a consensus among members of both parties was forming: voters had rejected President Donald Trump’s record in office, and he would face a starkly different political reality for the remainder of his term.

Trump, however, sees it very differently.

“But I don’t view it as a hit on me,” Trump told Fox News in a live phone interview. “We’ve had the greatest two years in the history of the presidency in terms of the economy, in terms of all the things that we’ve done.”

The stunning results across a swath of America were not primarily the fault of the Iran war he began eight months ago — he told the Wall Street Journal that was only a “piece” of it — or the tariffs that drove up prices or his fixation on topics far from voters’ minds, Trump insisted.

It was the candidates who were to blame, he argued, helped along by favorable coverage of Democrats on his once-favorite channel, Fox News. The results were only a “little surprise,” he would later tell that channel. The winds of history were always against him, he’d long warned. He neglected to mention that he had selected many of the candidates himself.

“I thought they’d do better,” he told Fox, referring to Republicans in the third person rather than the party he is currently leading. Later, he attributed the losses to a “mood in the air.”

He also insisted Tuesday night that his governing agenda would continue apace, despite the dramatically altered political conditions in Washington.

The election results were the punctuation on a long and often frustrating campaign season for Trump, who spent the bulk of the last month flying aboard Air Force One to red states with the task of encouraging supporters to “pretend I’m on the ballot.”

The gambit did not work, but Trump saw fault not in his own performance but in that of the people he was trying to help.

“They just didn’t inspire the people to get out and vote,” he told Fox. “And I wasn’t on the ballot. If I was on the ballot, they would have got out.”

Many of the candidates who lost on Tuesday — including Darline Graham in South Carolina, Ken Paxton in Texas, Michael Whatley in North Carolina and Mike Collins in Georgia — were hand-selected by Trump himself, in some cases over the objections of other Republicans.

He did not mention that as he bemoaned the candidates’ inability to translate his support into votes.

“I had no choice,” he said of the decision to support Ken Paxton, the scandal-plagued candidate in Texas he endorsed over incumbent Sen. John Cornyn. “When it wasn’t fashionable, he kissed my ass.”

How intensively Trump wanted to pin blame on his party’s candidates seemed to vary by the minute.

“I’m going to become a Political Pundit, both good and bad, on the reasons these Candidates won and lost!” he wrote, ominously, on Truth Social a few minutes before midnight.

His first target was Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, the Republican incumbent who lost re-election to Democrat Gina Hinojosa. Trump deemed him a “Republican in name only” and claimed “He went back to his original formula, and it wasn’t pretty!”

But in a phone interview with Politico around the same time, he insisted he wasn’t interested in assigning blame.

“I don’t want to blame anybody,” he said. “I just want to say, you know, it was a very interesting period of time. I watched with great interest, learned from it.”

Trump sounded more conciliatory toward Democrats, who he will now be forced to rely upon if he wants to pass anything through Congress. He made similar pledges after Republicans lost the House in the 2018 midterms, but the offers of bipartisanship did not materialize.

“You know, I have a lot of friends that are Democrats. Believe it or not, I’ve already spoken to some of them,” he said, without naming them.

He spoke vaguely of trying to find areas of compromise, but insisted he had no regrets about the issue many Republicans blame most for Republicans’ woes — the war in Iran.

“I don’t think about it. I did the right thing,” he told the Wall Street Journal when asked if he had regrets about the war. “I would have done it again.”

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到周二众议院和参议院都宣布民主党获胜时，两党成员之间已经形成了一种共识：选民们已经否定了唐纳德·特朗普总统的执政记录，在他剩余的任期内，他将面临截然不同的政治现实。

然而，特朗普对此却有不同的看法。

“但我并不认为这是在攻击我，”特朗普在接受福克斯新闻电话直播采访时表示。“就经济而言，就我们所做的事情而言，我们经历了总统任期内最辉煌的两年。”

特朗普坚称，美国大片地区出现的惊人结果并非主要归咎于他八个月前发动的伊朗战争——他告诉《华尔街日报》，那只是其中的“一部分”原因——也不是推高物价的关税，更不是他执迷于选民漠不关心的话题。

他认为，罪魁祸首是候选人，而他曾经最喜欢的福克斯新闻频道对民主党的有利报道更是推波助澜。他后来告诉福克斯新闻，这样的结果“只是有点意外”。他早就警告过，历史的风向一直与他作对。但他却刻意隐瞒了自己曾亲自挑选过许多候选人的事实。

“我以为他们会做得更好，”他告诉福克斯新闻，这里他用第三人称指代共和党人，而不是他目前领导的共和党。之后，他把败选归咎于“当时的气氛”。

周二晚间，他还坚称，尽管华盛顿的政治形势发生了巨大变化，但他的执政议程仍将继续稳步推进。

选举结果为特朗普漫长而又令人沮丧的竞选季画上了句号。在过去一个月的大部分时间里，他乘坐空军一号飞往红色州，鼓励支持者“假装我的名字出现在选票上”。

这一策略失败了，但特朗普并没有责怪自己的表现，而是责怪他试图帮助的那些人。

“他们根本没能激励人们出来投票，”他告诉福克斯新闻。“而且我的名字不在选票上。如果我的名字在选票上，他们肯定会出来投票的。”

周二落败的许多候选人——包括南卡罗来纳州的达琳·格雷厄姆、德克萨斯州的肯·帕克斯顿、北卡罗来纳州的迈克尔·沃特利和佐治亚州的迈克·柯林斯——都是特朗普亲自挑选的，在某些情况下，这是不顾其他共和党人的反对。

他没有提及这一点，而是抱怨候选人无法将他的支持转化为选票。

“我别无选择，”他谈到支持肯·帕克斯顿的决定时说道。帕克斯顿是德克萨斯州一位丑闻缠身的候选人，他最终选择支持帕克斯顿而不是现任参议员约翰·科宁。“在不合时宜的时候，他却对我阿谀奉承。”

特朗普想要把责任归咎于本党候选人的强烈程度似乎每分钟都在变化。

“我要成为一名政治评论员，分析这些候选人胜败的原因，无论好坏！”他在午夜前几分钟在 Truth Social 上阴沉地写道。

他的第一个攻击目标是德克萨斯州州长格雷格·阿博特，这位共和党现任州长在竞选连任中败给了民主党人吉娜·希诺霍萨。特朗普称他“只是名义上的共和党人”，并声称“他又回到了老路，结果可想而知！”

但在同一时间接受 Politico 的电话采访时，他坚称自己对追究责任不感兴趣。

“我不想责怪任何人，”他说。“我只是想说，你知道，那是一段非常有趣的时期。我饶有兴致地观察着，也从中学习了很多。”

特朗普对民主党人的语气明显缓和，如果他想让任何法案在国会获得通过，就不得不依赖民主党人。2018年中期选举共和党失去众议院控制权后，他也曾做出过类似的承诺，但两党合作的提议最终并未兑现。

“你知道，我有很多民主党朋友。信不信由你，我已经和其中一些人谈过了，”他说道，但没有透露他们的名字。

他含糊地谈到要努力寻找妥协的领域，但坚称他对许多共和党人认为造成共和党困境的最主要原因——伊朗战争——没有任何后悔。

“我没想过这个问题。我做了正确的事，”当被《华尔街日报》问及是否后悔这场战争时，他这样回答道。“如果再来一次，我还会这么做。”