Trump nearly comes to a realization over midterm losses only to blame the media

President Donald Trump almost came to a conclusive realization as to why his party got shellacked in Tuesday’s midterm election — but then he just blamed the media.

Trump has repeatedly said that the Republicans were defeated because he wasn’t on the ballot, despite pleading with supporters to vote as if he were on the ballot. But it also seemed to finally sink in when he admitted to some of his own errors with the eight-month-long war against Iran that he started.

“Two years ago, you won a big, some might say historic victory. Just now, the Republican Party in the midterms suffered a big, some might say historic defeat. Give me your political analysis of what just happened?” correspondent Ross Douthat asked Trump on 60 Minutes Sunday night.

“They didn't like the war. They didn't like the fact that gasoline went up because I had it down at a low. And there's a great dislike, incredibly, for Israel,” Trump replied.

The Iran war was unpopular with voters who saw gas prices skyrocket during the conflict. The national average for a gallon of gas was still above $4 on Sunday, about a dollar up from a year ago, according to the AAA Motor Club.

But when asked about the overall negative view of the economy due to the war, Trump began blaming the media for poor coverage. The president has often made his disdain for the traditional press known, repeatedly lashing out at journalists, including The Independent’s Andrew Feinberg, for asking genuine questions and trying to ban several outlets from the White House.

“In poll after poll, people say they're unhappy with this economy in a way they weren't in the first term. Cost of living, inflation, and so on. Is that all just the Iran war?” Douthat asked.

“The press doesn't cover positive news for Republicans. They don't cover, certainly, positive news for me. So I have to do it myself,” Trump said. “I have to get it out there. We have historically good numbers. We have the highest stock market in history.”

The president spent all of last month hosting rallies to try to drum up support from his base. But on Tuesday, in what was dubbed a “blue tsunami,” Democrats took control of the House and the Senate and won key governors’ races.

When high-profile Senate candidates Trump had fiercely campaigned for, such as Texas’ Ken Paxton, Ohio’s Jon Husted and Kansas’ Roger Marshall, lost, the president initially refused to take any responsibility.

“I wasn’t on the ballot, and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” he wrote on Truth Social on election night, despite having record-low approval ratings.

In the first major shakeup since the GOP’s shellacking, Trump replaced his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, with her deputy, Stephen Miller, this week. Miller is known as the architect of Trump’s hardline immigration policies — the same policies that many Americans have found too aggressive.

Douthat asked Trump during his 60 Minutes interview, taped shortly before Wiles’ ouster, whether he expects to fire anyone.

“I do, a little bit,” Trump said. “I love my cabinet. I think they’re good. But I’ll be doing maybe a few changes. I don’t want to mention who.”

Douthat also asked whether Trump had confidence in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth amid reports that either lawmakers will try to impeach him or the president may get rid of him on his own.

“I do,” the president said, mentioning the operation in Venezuela last January during which American forces covertly captured then-President Nicolás Maduro.

“You credit Pete Hegseth for that?” Douthat asked. “No, but he was a part of it,” Trump said.

Douthat probed Trump during the interview about how he would work with Democrats for the next two years of his presidency, mentioning his mocking nickname for Texas Senator-elect James Talarico.

“You did occasionally call him ‘Tala-freako,’” Douthat said. “Do you think you could work with the Democrats without insulting them consistently?”

Trump said he could, and then continued with the name-calling: “I also call many of them Dumocrats.”

“If it took six months of not insulting the Democrats to get a deal done, you think you could do it?” Douthat asked. “Very easily,” Trump replied.