‘Buckle up’: A defiant White House pins blame elsewhere

The White House began Tuesday night with cautious optimism. As Democrats started racking up victories, President Donald Trump's advisers grew more candid — and defiant.

Trump spent the weeks before the midterms traveling across the country, hosting 30 events across 20 states in just over a month as he urged voters to "pretend that I'm on the ballot." What resulted was a midterm repudiation of Republicans that, as election night wore on, some in the White House were unwilling to own.

"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 Semafor, arguing that he "did a better job promoting many of the candidates on the ballot than the candidates did themselves."

Trump himself echoed the sentiment in a Tuesday night social media post : "I wasn't on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!"

The early results on Tuesday night made clear that Trump's aggressive campaign push wasn't enough to surmount public frustration with the Iran war and his tariffs' effect on the cost of living. Democrats quickly flipped North Carolina, held onto New Hampshire and Georgia — and then flipped long-scarlet South Carolina. Trump officials and people close to the White House quickly acknowledged that a massive blue wave was coming.

One Trump administration official emphasized how much the war has directly affected Americans. That conflict amplified voters' frustration as gas prices climbed, and many in Trump's base felt betrayed by a president who'd campaigned on launching no new wars.

Another Trump ally went even further, describing the war as a "disaster" and lamenting that "the Republican party doesn't understand the Trump coalition, even though it's 10 years in."

Officials' efforts to pin their stunning midterm setback on other GOP leaders suggest that the White House has no plans to seek conciliation with ascendant congressional Democratic majorities.

"Regardless of how today plays out, President Trump's resolve to stop the Radical Left is only going to become stronger," the White House official added. "Buckle up."

Trump told The New York Times late Tuesday that he would accept the results of the election.

In the past few weeks, some administration officials have begun looking to hire lawyers to preempt Democrat-led investigations — an early sign that they knew Tuesday night's results might not go their way. To that point, some advisers indicated to Semafor that the results rolling in so far were not surprising to them. Trump has often pointed over the past months to historical data showing that the party holding total control of Washington tends to perform poorly in midterm elections.

Even before polls across the country closed, the White House began circulating talking points highlighting Trump's efforts on the trail. That underlying message — that the president did what he could to help — largely persisted inside the administration as the losses mounted. One adviser told Semafor that Trump's thinking remains along those lines: that he did what he could.

Several Trump allies also argued to Semafor that poor candidate quality was partly to blame for Republican defeats, though the president openly endorsed several of the candidates who fell short.

Trump certainly made himself a central figure in Tuesday's election. Democrats looked to amplify his calls for voters to pretend he was on the ballot, believing that voters were so dissatisfied with the administration that a midterm referendum on Trump would reward them.

Trump watched the election results roll in from the White House East Room alongside Cabinet members, senior staff, and political advisers, another White House official told Semafor. At times, he took to Truth Social to rage against Fox News' coverage of the evening.

Some staffers ordered in from the Cheesecake Factory, an apparent nod to the now-famous quip from former President Barack Obama about Trump's decorating.

Tonight's results are a warning sign for the Republican Party as it tries to look past Trump. And they're likely to surface a question that some of his aides knew they'd inevitably face: whether the coalition that pushed Trump to power can be reconstituted, and what the party will stand for after Trump leaves office.

Some Republicans I've texted with tonight are already confronting that question. In the weeks and months ahead, anyone in the GOP who's eyeing a 2028 run will need to look at the midterm results and find ways to run with a different message than Trump — while not angering him or his base.