WASHINGTON — As a blue tsunami descended on Washington, frustrated Republican operatives and people close to the White House were in agreement on one key point: the war in Iran was the chief cause of the destruction.
“People will try to overcomplicate this, but its really simple,” one national GOP operative told The Daily Wire. “This is 100% because of Iran. It’s all in the data and has been since a week after the war started. The economic anxiety is directly correlated with the war. We got our asses kicked because of it.”
And another source close to the White House simply texted, “It’s the war, stupid.”
Though Republicans had some victories to run on, including a secured southern border and culture war accomplishments tailor-made for the base, people in President Donald Trump’s orbit widely view the midterm elections as proof that the war in Iran was a mistake, at least politically.
Some of them want to blame Trump himself: one Republican operative pointed to the president’s approval rating, arguing that he is the “least popular president going back to Truman” heading into a midterm — and “Truman had just dropped an atomic bomb on Japan.”
Others just simply want the president to move on. One former administration official suggested that Trump should “quickly end the war on our terms, declare victory, and return to a laser focus on the issues facing American families here at home.”
“And stay the hell out of the Middle East,” the official added.
Trump spent the last month on the campaign trail, traveling to nearly two dozen states for a grueling array of stops that took up almost every day of his week. Across the country, he encouraged Americans to pretend he was on the ballot, stressing that they were choosing between radical Democrats and the continuation of pro-America policies.
He repeatedly cautioned that often, the sitting president’s party suffered in midterm elections.
As Tuesday’s election night began, White House officials told The Daily Wire that they were “cautiously optimistic,” pointing to the hard work the president had put in over the past month. One official said he “left it all out on the field” and that Republicans “are in a better spot now than they were four weeks ago.”
Hours later, as more and more dire results for Republicans poured in, another White House official was less hopeful, predicting that Republicans would “run through the tape and win as many races as possible.”
By 10 p.m., the White House described its mood as “defiant.”
“President Trump was not on the ballot, and it’s proven that Trump voters show up when he is on the ballot,” an official told The Daily Wire. “Also, candidate quality matters, and President Trump did a better job promoting many of the candidates on the ballot than the candidates did themselves.”
The official warned that anyone who voted Democrat on Tuesday will have a “serious case of buyers remorse when gas prices come down quickly when the Iran conflict is solved but they’re still stuck with a list of liberal extremist Democrats.”
“Regardless of how today plays out, President Trump’s resolve to stop the Radical Left is only going to become stronger,” the official predicted. “Buckle up.”
It was late Tuesday evening when the president himself weighed in.
“I wasn’t on the Ballot,” he said, “and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!”
.png)
.png)
