Trump On Truth Social Lashes Out At Claims He’s Furious Over Midterm Losses

Topline

Former President Donald Trump unleashed a tirade on social media Thursday, denying reports that he is fuming about the election results and rejecting claims he blames his closest confidants for high-profile losses after the midterm outcome shook his grip on the GOP and compromised his chances of waging a 2024 comeback.

Key Facts

Trump on Thursday contested reports that he blamed his wife Melania Trump and Fox News host Sean Hannity for urging him to back Pennsylvania Senate candidate Mehmet Oz, who lost on Tuesday when Lt. Gov. John Fetterman flipped the seat from red to blue.

Trump on Thursday, in one of five Truth Social posts, claimed Oz “was losing” before he endorsed him, but in reality, neither Oz nor Fetterman had won their primaries when Trump announced his support for Oz in April after Trump’s initial pick in the race, Sean Parnell, dropped out amid claims he abused his former wife.

Trump suggested Oz lost votes by making the “mistake” of refusing to deny the results of the 2020 presidential election, and while Oz did shy away from election denialism at the tail end of his campaign, he previously said the country “cannot move on” from Trump’s loss and employed at least two January 6 marchers on his campaign staff, Rolling Stone reported.

The former president essentially cut ties with Fox News–which hosted one-time Trump allies and conservative pundits in the wake of Election Day who criticized the former president for the GOP’s lackluster showing–writing: “Fox News was always gone . . . but now they’re really gone.”

As vote counts are underway in pivotal Senate and gubernatorial races in Nevada and Arizona, Trump claimed Nevada has a “corrupt voting system” and Arizona “wants more time to cheat,” but there has been no evidence of fraud in either state, instead, a surge of absentee ballots in both states and voting-machine glitches in Arizona have delayed results.

Clark County called Trump’s claims “outrageous” on Thursday in a statement that said he is “obviously still misinformed about the law and our election processes.”

Key Background

In addition to Oz, Trump-backed candidates lost up and down the ballot, from secretary of state and gubernatorial contests to House and Senate races. Candidates who helped Trump push false claims that he unfairly lost the 2020 election lost gubernatorial races in Michigan (Tudor Dixon), New York (Lee Zeldin) and Pennsylvania (Doug Mastriano). Republican Rep. and Trump ally Lauren Boebert of Colorado is hanging on to her seat by a few hundred votes in a race that has yet to be called. Trump’s pick in the Georgia Senate contest, Herschel Walker, netted fewer votes than Sen. Raphael Warnock and the race will now head to a runoff. Meanwhile, Trump’s enemies notched wins. Republican Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who famously refused to help Trump cheat in the 2020 presidential election, won re-election. Trump nemesis and Republican Rep. Liz Cheney’s endorsed Democratic candidates in Virginia, Rep. Abigail Spanberger, and Rep. Elissa Slotkin in Michigan, won their competitive House races. In a significant blow to Trump’s 2024 presidential aspirations, his former protégé-turned-competitor for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, won re-election by a hefty margin and became the first Republican since 2002 elected by Miami-Dade County. Following the losses, reports surfaced that Trump was fuming at Mar-A-Lago. In a rare, but tepid acknowledgement of defeat, Trump on Wednesday admitted the midterm results were “somewhat disappointing” in a post on Truth Social.

What To Watch For

Trump’s advisers are reportedly pushing him to delay his announcement that he will run for president in 2024 until after the Georgia Senate runoff on December 6 so the party can focus its efforts on electing Walker.

Big Number

48. That’s the percentage of Republican voters in a new Morning Consult poll taken before Tuesday’s election who said they would back Trump in a 2024 presidential primary, down from 57% in August. Meanwhile, DeSantis’ popularity has grown, with 26% of voters saying they would support him in the latest poll, compared to 18% in August.

Further Reading

Trump-Backed Candidates Have Mixed Showing In Midterms—And Trump Is Reportedly Furious (Forbes)